By Mitch Abramson and Dylan Butler
Molloy's Jack Curran, Campus Magnet's Chuck Granby, St. John's Prep's Jimmy Gatto, August Martin's James Kearney, McClancy's Don Kent, St. Francis Prep's Tim Leary, Christ the King's Bob Oliva and Cardozo's Ron Naclerio are fixtures on the high school hardwood, legends of the game.Jack CurranJack Curran sits at his desk in the athletic office at Archbishop Molloy, the door wide open. It's about 10 minutes after a late season practice when Curran pulls out an orange and a knife, slicing several pieces.As if the smell wafted into the locker room across the hall, one by one his players appear. “Billy! You want an orange?,” Curran bellows.Six-foot-eight senior Billy Morrissey nods, takes a piece and tells Curran that he will see him tomorrow.In walks senior James Basile, who takes another slice.”James! You need high energy.””That's why I'm eating an orange, coach,” Basile responds.”You've got to do something, you need something,” Curran quips. “You know? You can't go on steroids so you have to use natural stuff.”Curran is a legend at Archbishop Molloy. He replaced Lou Carnesecca as head coach and has been at the school as long as the school has been known as Molloy, since it moved from 76th and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan and changed it's name from St. Ann's.He has been inducted into seven different hall of fames and is referred to with reverence wherever he goes. Yet day after day Curran follows the same routine. He leaves his home in Rye and arrives in Briarwood around noon. He eats lunch at about 12:30 p.m. and then either prepares for a game or practice. When it's done, he's cutting up oranges and his players are constantly visiting their coach.Curran was selling building materials in western Massachusetts when he read a small article that said Carnesecca had left St. Ann's to become an assistant at St. John's. Curran, who coached CYO basketball and semi-pro baseball, called LIU coach Clair Bee, the man responsible for the invention of the shot clock and the 1-3-1 zone, for advice.”He said why don't you go down and get that job?” Curran said.Curran did. He said he was offered $4,500 a year, $4,000 to teach and another $500 to coach, although he negotiated to get $500 each for baseball and basketball.He's coached both sports at Molloy since then. At the age of 74, Curran still throws batting practice for his baseball team and is as sharp as the knife that cuts his oranges.In his 48 years at Molloy, Curran has won five city championships and had seven players – most recently Kenny Anderson, a player he says still calls him frequently – play in the NBA. The game and the players have changed during Curran's time and when Molloy went co-ed in 2000, it has limited the amount of top flight players who can walk into the building.But Curran has showed no signs of slowing down. “I don't know what the heck I would do,” Curran said. “I don't think I could do nothing for a long time.”Chuck GranbyChuck Granby speaks to his daughter four times a day: In the morning, twice in the afternoon and once before he goes to sleep. Sometimes their conversations last hours. Granby, the boys' basketball coach at Campus Magnet, believes in communication. In his 36th season as coach, he still keeps in contact with most of his former players, logging more hours on the phone than a receptionist.Granby has a ton of stories that he rattles off like a race horse announcer, zipping through his memories as if he's leafing through a scrapbook.There was the time in 1985 when former St. John's star Greg “Boo” Harvey led Campus Magnet – then Andrew Jackson – to a city championship, converting skeptics along the way who doubted the talent level of the team.Or the time two of his players, Vernon Moore and Stanley Wright, just missed out on making NBA rosters, or the time when Quaron Pender, otherwise known as Storm P when he raps, another former player, got a role in the recent movie “Cookout,” starring Queen Latifah.He recalls the time he was coaching at the Empire State Games and, staring at his talent-laden bench, subbed out former Knick Mark Jackson for Dwayne “Pearl” Washington, the former standout from Syracuse. Coaching the likes of Chris Mullin, Kenny Smith, Rod Strickland, and basically every other New York City player who ever made a headline, he won eight gold medals at the Empire Games.He can rattle off his career statistics just as quickly as he can his memories: He is the all-time leader in the PSAL in victories with 591 against 143 losses; he has made the playoffs 33 times, won 22 division titles – all in the 'A' division – and captured six borough championships.The only total he won't give is his age. He has an ongoing friendly bet with his players to guess that stat, although he gave them a hint by saying he is in his 60s.”I always was a firm believer that you should try and help children the best way you could,” said Granby, who will be inducted into the New York State Basketball Hall of Fame Saturday in Glens Falls. “You still want to win, but you should help the kids get into a college first.”Jimmy GattoJimmy Gatto sits in a cramped corner office of the boys' locker room in the basement of St. John's Prep in Astoria. There's enough room for a desk and a couple of chairs. Basketball videos and books line the black book shelf along the wall and a few pictures of his former teams decorate the otherwise bleak looking space.”This is my big-time office,” Gatto joked.But Gatto doesn't care about having an elaborate office, with trophies and banners and plaques. His main concern, his concern for the past 35 years, is simply coaching the fundamentals of basketball.And Gatto's done that very well. This year he joined the exclusive 500-win club and captured the CHSAA Class A title that eluded him four other times. Once, when he was much younger, he thought about coaching college ball, like his friends Pete Gillen and Brendan Malone. He even got a call to interview for the vacant University of Hawaii job in the 1970s. He didn't follow up and Rick Pitino got the job.Now Gatto believes he's found his niche.”Maybe my place and my thing is high school,” he said.Gatto started coaching at St. John's Prep, then called Mater Christi, in 1963. He was a physical eduction teacher and still has five classes today. He won a pair of city titles in 1978 and 1979 with greats including Vern Fleming and Red Bruin.There have been some great games, such as the league game against Xaverian in 1978 when his star Dwayne Johnson, who went to Marquette, scored 35 points only to be bested by a kid called Chris Mullin, who scored 45.There was the city championship game that year, at a sold out St. John's when Mater Christi shook off two regular season losses to Holy Cross to win the crown.Still, Gatto is learning the sport every day.”As old as I am, I always seem to go to one or two clinics,” he said. “I'm always trying to learn, to better myself, even after all these years. I don't try and just stand still.”James KearneyIt's the early 1980s and August Martin's James Kearney still sees the players sprawled out on the court. Kearney is coaching in the PSAL Class B city title game at St. John's University against Beach Channel. His team just won a game it should have lost, erasing a three point deficit in the final eight seconds on a miracle jump shot.”And the players from Beach Channel just dropped,” he said, the cadence of his speech slowing down for effect. “They collapsed, not so much from disappointment, but from total disbelief. That's something I will never forget for as long as I live.”Kearney recently finished his 34th season coaching boys' basketball at August Martin. He's won more games than he can remember and more division titles than he can recall – although he guesses he's won 10. He also won some city championships, a total he puts, and again, he's rummaging through his memory, at three, but the image that lingers in his mind is the reaction of the kids from Beach Channel, who may as well have been his own, falling to the floor.It's clear from this what has kept him in the game so long: Kearney is a teacher first, a coach second. For him, seeing the kids react in such dramatic fashion was more potent than winning a city title.”Stats were never important to me,” said Kearney, who grew up in South Ozone Park and attended John Adams High School. “That's not why we're doing what we're doing. My title is teacher-coach. The youngsters, with whom I work, have a title: student-athletes. It seems that in both instances, the first part of our titles have been forgotten, and the emphasis now is on the coach and athlete. The championship rings and plaques, to me, are the players who go on and have great lives and careers and families. I could care less about trophies and medals.”And that's all you have to know about Kearney. He'll remind you that in 34 seasons, he's had only four losing teams, two of which played out over the last two years. And he estimates that he's sent 30 kids to play Division I basketball, one of whom, Sean Green, was a forward for the Indiana Pacers in the 1980s.”I'll stop coaching when I can't talk to the kids anymore,” he says, which is never because Kearney is never at a loss for words, which is a good thing for August Martin.Don KentDon Kent has been inducted into the McClancy Hall of Fame and this year will be enshrined into the CHSAA Hall. He's done so despite a career record (353-415) under .500, proving that success isn't necessarily measured in wins and losses.”I still feel young, I think I still relate to the kids,” Kent said. “I don't think I can have a run as long as Jack Curran, God bless him with those two sports.”Kent, who was a sprinter, a pitcher and a basketball player at St. Francis Prep, has two brothers who are Franciscan brothers, both of whom are employed at St. Francis Prep. Bro. Ed Kent is an English teacher and Bro. Robert Kent is the baseball coach.Kent's coaching career started at Bishop Riley, where he was the last coach at the school before St. Francis Prep took the building over. He then coached at Christ the King from 1974-1981, but was fired when he refused to cross the picket line during the teacher strike of 1981.Bob Oliva, who was the freshman coach at the time, did cross the line and took over for Kent. The two haven't been close since.”I've never brought my hurt from the strike into the realm of basketball,” Kent said. “To the day I die I will not have the fullest respect for him because of the stand that he took, but by the same token we're in the same business and I am congenial to him.”Kent, who was a physical education teacher with Jimmy Gatto at St. John's Prep, accepted a job to teach and coach at McClancy in 1982.Kent entertained the possibility of coaching college basketball. He received an offer from NYU and interviewed twice at St. Francis College. But he's been at the East Elmhurst all-boys school since, winning his only city title (CHSAA 'A') in 1990. After struggling in the 'AA' the last few years, McClancy went back to the 'A' level and advanced to the Class A quarterfinals this year following a 17-9 season.Tim LearyTim Leary wasn't planning on a high school basketball coaching career. But as he waited for the call from the New York City Police Department to follow in the footsteps of most of his family, he decided to coach and teach.That was 33 years ago.”I just kind got the fever at that point,” he said. “I just enjoyed it too much, so I just kind of hung around and stayed with it all these years.”Leary, who is a dean at MS 126 in Greenpoint, has coached at St. Francis Prep for 32 years. He was a standout at the school when it was in Brooklyn and played on the same team with Kent, St. Peter's coach Bob Leckie and former St. John's great Sonny Dove. They all followed CHSAA Brooklyn/Queens president Ray Nash. When Chick Keegan, who won five city titles at St. Francis Prep, left for the newly-opened Bishop Ford in Brooklyn, Leary, whose team lost to Lew Alcindor's Power Memorial team in the city final in 1963, took the job while he waited.”I never though it would last 32 years to be honest with you,” he said. “But it's been a lot of fun. When the kids come back years after they play, you enjoy it even more. It's fulfilling.”Leary won one city title-the Class A title in 1992. There's been a ton of memories, including more than a few tough losses for Leary, who is one of five CHSAA coaches to be in the 500-win club. He remembers losing to St. Raymond's in the city semifinal by a point in 1969. And then there was a tough semifinal loss to a Tolentine team that was ranked No. 1 in the country. Even this year, Leary nearly coached the Terriers to an upset win over Christ the King. Leary hinted at possibly retiring from teaching in June but as for coaching and the thrill of a Friday night game in front of 3,000 spectators at St. Francis Prep? Not a chance.Bob OlivaOct. 2, 1978 is one of the most memorable dates in Yankees history. It's the day Bucky Dent hit that home run over the Green Monster and the Bronx Bombers won the divisional playoff game against the hated Red Sox.Bob Oliva, too, remembers that date because he went to the game. But it also marked the start of his historic coaching career at Christ the King.That morning, as the diehard Yankees fan was leaving with friends from a bar he owned on Liberty Avenue – it was appropriately called the Short Porch – Oliva received a call from Christ the King athletic director Fr. John Savage about coaching the freshmen team.Oliva, who started coaching CYO ball at St. Teresa's in Richmond Hill at the age of 15, jumped at the chance.”He said, 'I can't offer you much,' but what he offered me was the world,” Oliva said. “I didn't realize it.”Three years later Oliva became the varsity coach when Kent refused to cross the picket line during the teacher strike of 1981 and success was nearly immediate. In 1984 Brian Royal led the Royals to the first city championship in school history. In 1989, Khalid Reeves, who Oliva calls the “greatest player ever at Christ the King,” led CK to a second city title and in 1995, with future NBA first round picks Lamar Odom, Erick Barkley and Speedy Claxton, Christ the King won a third. Despite the success on the high school level, Oliva never entertained the notion of coaching collegiately.”A couple of the things I don't like to do in life, I don't like to talk on the phone, I don't like to write letters and I hate driving. And those are the three requisites you have to have when you're coaching,” he said. “I was out on all accounts.”Added Oliva: “I love New York, I love Queens, I love this age group. This is the greatest place in the world to work. They've been so good to me, I guess I've been good to them.”Ron NaclerioIn his 24th season as Cardozo's head coach, Ron Naclerio, who still lives in Bayside and was a basketball player for the Judges, has been a study in consistency. He is still the maniacal genius who storms up and down the sidelines, clasping his hands behind his head, game-planning opponents as if he was a private detective that he was when he began coaching in the mid 1970s. That part about him will never change. His spirited behavior on the sidelines has turned Naclerio into a quasi pop star in the land of high school hoops. Reporters often flock to his games because his teams are always among the best in the city. But players also travel to the school because Naclerio is one of the top teachers in the game, an Einstein of jump shots and defensive schemes whom NBA players frequently contact for private tutorials in fundamentals. His numbers back up his reputation: He overall record is 465-147; he has captured 17 division championships and two city championships, one as an assistant and one as a head coach in 1999. Royal Ivey, a rookie with the Atlanta Hawks was groomed by Naclerio at Cardozo, as was Toronto Raptor Rafer Alston, and Duane Causwell, who spent 12 seasons in the NBA.Naclerio began as assistant at Cardozo, coaching under Al Matican while he was a student and baseball player at St. John's, where he roomed with former Met John Franco.Naclerio actually played in the Chicago White Sox organization and led the minors in stolen bases for the Niagara Falls White Sox in 1979, but a ripped ligament in his left ankle ended his baseball career. Naclerio was named the head coach in 1981, the youngest high school coach in America at the age of 21.Naclerio was 1-21 his rookie season and 20-4 his second year, a reversal that was the result of going to clinics and reading every bit of literature on basketball his library card could handle. “Matican sat me down and told me I would make a fine coach,” he said. “But he thought the hardest thing that I would have to come to grips with was that the majority of the kids don't have the dedication and love for the game that you have, and he said that would be my toughest thing to overcome as a coach.”Twenty-four years later, Naclerio's players are still trying to keep up with him.
