Four Manitowoc Lincoln greats will take their well-deserved place on the Lincoln Wall of Fame Friday night.
Don Rabas is a 1953 graduate of LHS who excelled in football and track and field. He played college football at Northwestern University, earning a bachelor’s degree in education. Rabas would go on to teach for 40 years, 38 of those at Kewaunee High School. His football teams won 191 games during a 30-year span, which included 10 conference titles and a 28-game winning streak from 1968 to 1971, during which they held the opposition scoreless for 68 consecutive quarters.
Doug Free is a 2002 LHS graduate who was first team all-conference in his junior and senior seasons, and was named the FRCC Defensive Player of the Year plus garnered first team all-state honors his senior season. Free earned a scholarship to Northern Illinois, earning multiple honors, and was drafted by the Cowboys in 2007, where he played ten seasons before retiring in 2017.
Baseball was Eugene ‘Geno” Mand’s claim to fame. He taught and coached various sports for 33 years at Washington Junior High School in Manitowoc. Geno became the head baseball coach for the Ships in 1981, where his teams won 223 games along with five conference and eleven regional titles and a state berth in 1992.
Mark Christensen came to Lincoln High School in 1994, where he taught social studies and coached the Ships’ Boys basketball team until 2010. Christensen won 555 games during his 33-year career, including taking the Ships to back-to-back state tournaments in 1998 and 1999.
All four will be inducted during halftime of tomorrow night’s boys’ basketball game versus Ashwaubenon with coverage on “WOMT 100” and WOMTRadio.com beginning at 7:00 p.m.
