Cardozo hoops reunion set for Saturday

The third annual Cardozo basketball reunion will be held this Saturday at the playground of P.S. 46, located at 219th St. and 64th Ave. in Oakland Gardens.
Organized by longtime Coach Ron Naclerio, pickup games will run from 1-7 p.m. featuring players from each decade of the PSAL powerhouse. Among others, the program’s three NBA players - Rafer Alston, Royal Ivey and Duane Causwell - are expected to attend.
Last June, over 180 former Judges showed up for the day of hoops, including Ivey, Alston, Neil King, a 1987 graduate who now works in the U.S. State Department in Washington D.C., and Naclerio’s former coach at Cardozo, Al Matican. The gathering of Naclerio’s pupils began in 1981 on a tiny scale, and slowly intensified in recent years until his players convinced him to organize an official event.
Naclerio, the former minor league baseball player who has won over 500 games in 28 seasons at Cardozo, has received help spreading the word from several people close to the program. He has dispersed close to 2,000 flyers of the event, contacted several players he could not get a hold of last summer, invited hundreds of former Cardozo cheerleaders and baseball players he coached and played alongside. One former Judge put the flyer on his MySpace page. Naclerio also invited several college coaches, including Tom Pecora of Hofstra, Norm Roberts of St. John’s, Kevin Willard of Iona and Brian Nash of St. Francis.
After last year’s edition, he received dozens of phone calls of those who attended with praise and others who were not aware of the get together but wanted to be included this June.
“All the positive memories we had from it, it seemed like everybody wanted to be there,” Naclerio said. “Whatever it was last year, I expect twice as much.”