It’s 251 wins and counting for Rick Perez, who nows shares Reading High record (updated)

(Reading High’s opponent for Friday night has been corrected from an earlier version of this story.)

After three years on the job as Reading High basketball coach Rick Perez was frustrated and ready to quit. He actually turned in his resignation just before his fourth season, vowing to leave if the Red Knights didn’t win the county championship that season.

They did. He stayed.

Eight years — and two PIAA championships later — Perez has reached the top of the wins charted at Reading High, a 69-40 win at McCaskey Thursday giving him 251 victories.

That ties the record set by Jim Gano, who coached the Red Knights for 10 years, from 1971-81.

Perez will go for the record-breaker Friday night in the second game of a doubleheader at the Geigle, against Cardinal O’Hara.

Win No. 251 was never in doubt.

All-State guard Ruben Rodriguez scored 10 of his game-high 21 points in the first quarter as the Red Knights raced to a 23-9 lead. They were up 48-20 at the half — the second straight game in which they’ve dropped 48 first-half points.

Aris Rodriguez, fresh off a 30-point performance in a season-opening win over Central York, knocked down a couple of first-quarter 3-pointers and finished with 12 points. Myles Grey scored 12 as well, hitting two of the Red Knights’ eight 3-pointers.

Perez went 15-15 in his second season and had a 50-33 record and no state playoff wins after three seasons — not quite up to Reading standards.

“Those first couple of years were scary,” Perez told Tony Zonca of MikeDragoSports.com last season. “I was ‘attacked’ by fans.  I doubted my work and felt a lack of support.  I felt like everybody was awaiting my first big mistake so they could cancel me.”

The program took a huge step forward in 2014-15, the sophomore season for Lonnie Walker IV. The Knights went upbeaten in Berks I play, won a Berks Conference title, reached the District 3 Class AAAA semifinals and finished 24-6.

A year later, with Walker and senior guards Khary Mauras and Damon Stern leading the way, they won county and district titles, reached the PIAA semifinals and finished 28-4.

In 2016-17, Walker’s senior year . . . well, you know how that ended, with Reading’s first PIAA championship.

Perez hasn’t thought about leaving since, and no one would let him at this point.

In his 11 seasons he’s gone 251-73 with nine division titles, five Berks titles, four district titles and two PIAA titles — that’s two more than all of the other Reading coaches put together. The most recent came in 2020-21 under the most difficult of circumstances, battling COVID-19 all season and then star-studded Archbishop Wood in the state finale.

Red Knights beat ’em all.

Perez, a two-time Pennsylvania Class 6A Coach of the Year, is now in his 12th season, tied for the longest tenure in program history, which dates to 1901. Early last season he broke the program record for games coached.

One more win and he will surpass Gano, who set the bar high for all coaches who have followed. He won an incredible 83.1 percent of his games — a Berks record — three Central Penn League titles and six District 3 titles. He took his team to the state semifinals three times and to the championship game once but never won that last game.

“I idolize Coach Gano and all the coaches in our fraternity,” Perez told Zonca last season. “I know firsthand what it takes to coach and succeed here.  Each of us has sacrificed so much that only those who have sat in that seat understand.  I’ve lost a bit of myself in this journey, but, dammit, I’ve gained a whole lot more.”