Duck Ramsden played on Nick Cariglia’s Warren High School five that captured the 1961 Class C Basketball Championship.  (This title team was the first Warren High basketball winner since the 1929 Class B championship unit.) 

The following year they were beaten by Barrington in a one-game playoff for the Class C Championship.

Duck received Class C basketball honors in his sophomore year of 1961 and was named All Class C Eastern in 1962.  He played sparingly in his senior year as he struggled with mononucleosis.  In football he played on Pat Abbruzzi’s first two Redskins’ teams and was named All Class C or All Eastern Division in both seasons.  Duck was honored as the Class of 1963’s Outstanding Student Athlete.

In the summer of 1963 the Bristol Summer Basketball League featured some of the state’s best players, including Vic Collucci and Jim Larranaga of Providence College.  Duck set single game and playoff scoring and rebound records and was voted the league’s Most Outstanding Player.

He played college basketball at the University of Rhode Island and Evansville University before continuing his efforts while in military service.  He was a member of base championship teams in Thailand and California and was selected the Outstanding Player of the 1971 Mather Air Force Base All Star game.

At the University of Southern Indiana he was an assistant basketball coach from 1973 to 1977.  In 1977 the team reached the NCAA Division Two quarterfinals.  For the next three years he was the head coach of Indiana’s Gibson Southern High’s boys basketball team.  He then left full-time coaching to go into the business world, but has coached freshman, junior varsity, and kids basketball until the present day.

In his book Glory Days, Billy Reynolds of the Providence Journal had this to say about playing against Duck in 1962, “Similar to the first game against Warren, I had been frustrated for three quarters, followed all over the court by Don Ramsden who seemed to live inside my uniform just like he had in the first game.  He bumped me when I cut through the lane.  He dogged me step for step.  He was physical with me, and I didn’t do well with that.  I liked playing against zone defenses where I could get my shot off without someone in my face, not being shadowed by someone whose breath I could smell.”

Picture from Hall of Fame archives (1961 Class "C" Basketball Championship starting five)