Profile: Donald Rhynhart

By Lindsey Pizzica Rotolo
Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., a national outplacement firm, estimated that American companies lost as much as $3.8 billion dollars in worker productivity last March due to the NCAA playoffs, or March Madness, as it is commonly referred to. Perhaps one reason for the high level of intrigue is the chance that an underdog team may make their way to the finals.
Norfolk resident Donald Rhynhart was once part of a team like that. Western New England College’s (WNEC) basketball team was District 31 NAIA Champions in 1970 and 1971, and was ranked sixth in the nation in 1970. Rhynhart played guard for the WNEC Golden Bears from 1969 to 1972.
In those days, there was no Division III in college, just Division I, Division II and the diverse National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA). The NAIA had schools as small as Guilford College, with an enrollment of 500, and schools as large as Eastern Michigan University, with an enrollment of 22,000. Today, over half the NAIA schools are Division I schools.
Rhynhart’s college team played in two consecutive championship tournaments that were held in Kansas City, Missouri in 1970 and 1971. In those tournaments, 18 future American Basketball Association (ABA) and National Basketball Association (NBA) players participated, including one on Rhynhart’s team.

Donald Rhynhart (on right) in 1978 at the Celtics free agent camp with longtime Celtics player, the 6′ 9″ Dave Cowens.

Growing up on a dairy farm in Morris, CT and attending Wamogo Regional High School in Litchfield, CT, Rhynhart remembers being excused from milking the cows on game days. His father offered him and his siblings the upper portion of the family farm if they didn’t want to go to college, but all six of them chose college. Not a choice many of his teammates from inner cities were faced with.
Basketball was in the blood of the Rhynhart family. Rhynhart’s older brother, mother and grandfather all played college basketball, and his son, Eric, after him. His mother played on the women’s team at the University of Connecticut in the 1930s. In 1978, Rhynhart signed a professional contract to play for the Bracknell Bullets in London, England, and then returned to the states to coach for a couple years at Lyndon State College in Vermont, where he had the pleasure of coaching future Philadelphia 76er, Rickey Sutton.
Rhynhart returned home in 1980, and continued to coach at local schools and play in men’s leagues across Connecticut. As recently as 1995, Rhynhart was named MVP of the Forty and Over Masters Challenge annual tournament in New Milford, CT.
Despite a horrific accident in the fall of 2005, when his truck rolled on top of him and left him in a coma for three weeks, Rhynhart appears today much like he did in the early 1970s. Six foot, three inches tall, and 230 pounds, Rhynhart is somehow able to continue his work as a builder despite the loss of most of a lung and severe arthritis in the right side of his body.
Toughness runs in the Rhynhart family, too. Rhynhart’s dad, Donald Sr., a lifelong dairy farmer and cattle dealer was gored by a bull when he was 78 years old, and went on to live another 13 years.
Rhynhart owns his own business, Rhyno Builders, and is currently working on a year-long project in Goshen, CT.