Cavataio picks St. John’s

Mike Cavataio started attending St. John’s games at the age of eight with his father, Mike Sr. He was too young to have seen the school’s glory days of Chris Mullin and Walter Berry, but he did get to follow the Ron Artest, Erick Barkley and Bootsy Thornton team that made it all the way to the Elite Eight in March of 1999.
Now, the St. Francis Prep small forward will get the chance to make his own legacy for the Red Storm.
Cavataio, the leading scorer in the Catholic League at 25.3 points per game, gave a verbal commitment to Coach Norm Roberts and St John’s Sunday evening - two days after Roberts watched Cavataio play live for the first time against Molloy and offered the scholarship through St. Francis Prep Coach Tim Leary - after watching the Red Storm upset Syracuse at the Garden in person.
“It was the best school I think I could play for, from the best conference,” he said in a phone interview Monday night. “I’m thrilled.”
Cavataio also had scholarship offers from Manhattan, Hofstra and Boston University.
After leading Christ the King to a city championship his freshman year, tragedy struck. His mother, Joanne, died of a heart attack on April 4, 2004. Then, more hardship - he broke and re-broke the same ankle his sophomore year. A day into the next school year, he transferred to St. Francis Prep to be near his sister and friends, many of whom attended the Fresh Meadows School. Because of league rules as they pertain to transfers, he had to sit out the entire season.
Even with close to two years of high school inactivity, he remained a known quantity in the eyes of local scouts who had seen the athletic 6-foot-5 winger over the summer on the A.A.U. circuit with the Long Island Lightning. So when he started putting up prolific numbers around the New Year, interest was rekindled.
“During the whole recruitment process, the conferences started getting higher and higher,” the Forest Hills native said. “I just wanted to play at the highest level.”
For that reason - and many others, including the opportunity to stay local and team with his former Christ the King teammate, point guard Malik Boothe, another St. John’s commit - Cavataio chose the Jamaica school.
“All these other schools are great schools,” he said, “but when St. John’s made the offer … it was a pretty easy decision to make.”