Chin well equipped to recount UNLV glory days

Large shipping boxes packed with everything from women's socks to men's jocks are stored everywhere, some high on shelves and some stacked on the floor of UNLV's equipment room.

This is home away from home for Larry Chin, who has spent nearly 35 years -- almost 30 full time -- washing game jerseys and practice shorts while folding roughly a million towels.

No one has been in UNLV's athletic department longer than Chin, who watched the football team win big and the 1990 basketball team win it all. He did everything from hand deliver moist towels to Jerry Tarkanian to get soaked in the infamous Water Bomb Game against Utah State.

And for most of the past 17 years, Chin has been the equipment manager for the women's basketball team. He watched Kathy Olivier play for the Lady Rebels and now coach them.

"I'm a year older than this school," said Chin, 52. "How young this school is and how prominent those four letters are -- U-N-L-V -- it's pretty amazing."

It's a career Chin never planned on, but fell into as a junior at Western High School when he realized that at 5 feet 6 inches and 155 pounds, he was too small to continue to play football. He became team manager and eventually received a scholarship at UNLV to serve as a student manager.

Except for a three-month stint paying out jackpots and fixing slot machines at a downtown casino -- where he met his wife, Onnie -- Chin has been surrounded by sweat-soaked uniforms ever since.

He began in 1974 as a student equipment manager with the Ron Meyer-coached football team, which went 12-1. Chin stayed with football through 1976, then switched to men's basketball.

On his first meeting with Tarkanian, the legendary coach said, " 'I'll never tell you how to manage my team, and don't you ever tell me how to coach my team,' " Chin recalled Tark telling him.

No complaints from Chin, who later became known as the guy who got Tark his famous damp, white towels to munch on during games. That image lingers, but Chin said he tried to downplay the importance of the towels and even left them behind on trips.

"I didn't want to make the towel an issue because the towels weren't what we were about," Chin said.

The Rebels were about more than that, and in 1990 it all came together.

Chin conducted bed check on the road, but said the players kept each other in line.

"People around the country who hated us thought we were a bunch of street thugs, and the truth was we were the total polar opposites," Chin said. "They had a complete mission in mind to win the national championship."

But before they made it, there was the Water Bomb Game on March 1, 1990, at Utah State. With the second half about to begin, Chin thought an Aggies fan was pouring a drink on him, but instead blue-green water was shooting up from a small device planted behind UNLV's bench.

The Aggies were assessed a technical foul for the delay, and UNLV's Larry Johnson made two free throws in an 84-82 victory.

That prank fed the Rebels' hunger. After routing Loyola Marymount 131-101 to reach the Final Four, an NCAA official asked Chin if the team wanted to cut down the nets. Chin asked Johnson, who replied, "No, those aren't the ones we want."

Johnson and his teammates cut down the right nets after smoking Duke 103-73 in the championship game at Denver. Duke, of course, got revenge the following season with a 79-77 victory in the NCAA semifinals.

About halfway through the chartered flight home in 1991, boosters began to get up to ask for the players' autographs, lightening the heavy mood.

"It was good because (the players) realized they were still loved by their fans and their community," Chin said.

It was the end of an era more than even those onboard realized. Tarkanian's battles with the NCAA and then-UNLV president Bob Maxson led to his ouster in 1992.

Rollie Massimino took over that fall and brought his own equipment manager, but Chin was left to dangle until January before receiving word of his fate.

So he moved to women's basketball, which also was making NCAA Tournament appearances, but the winning under then-coach Jim Bolla was difficult to notice given the men's outsized success.

Except for two seasons (1996 to 1998) when LaDonna McClain was coach, Chin has been with the women's team ever since. He also handles men's and women's soccer.

"I'd be fine finishing with women," Chin said. "It's not so much that I miss men's basketball. I miss having Jerry Tarkanian, Tim Grgurich, Larry Johnson" and others.

Chin's days usually are a jumble of laundry and ordering new or replacements items, but as much as that part of his job has remained constant, much has changed.

Gone are the 70-hour work weeks and constant travel. Like the other full-time managers, Chin now stays home while student managers go on the road. Other than when soccer and basketball overlap during late fall -- and Chin works about 10 hours of overtime per week -- he sticks to a mostly 40-hour schedule.

The year-old contract with Nike to be UNLV's sole supplier also simplifies Chin's job because all of the school's orders are under one purchase number and Nike's available inventory is shown online.

These days are spent adding boxes to UNLV's already crowded equipment room to make sure no coach or athlete lacks for anything when fall sports begin practice next month.

And then it's another year of wins and losses, elation and heartbreak. No one at UNLV has been there longer to witness those moments up close than Larry Chin.

"When I go to these Hall of Fames -- Southern Nevada or UNLV -- it's like homecoming to me," Chin said. "I know everybody."

Contact reporter Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2914.