After graduating from OLS in 1978, Tim O’Toole went on to Stepinac then Fairfield University, playing basketball all the way through. His coaching career has been spent on the basketball courts of colleges all over the country, from Cal Berkeley and Stanford to Duke to Syracuse to Pittsburgh. Tim says that to this day, he still follows OLS basketball and checks the scores of games as they’re posted. Because for him, none of his career would have happened if it weren’t for a seat on top of the radiator in that little gym.
“My family moved to White Plains in 1967 when I wast just two years old. My brothers all played basketball — Brendan, Bobby, all of them. So when I was in kindergarten, first grade, second grade, my father would bring me to the gym. Basketball was always his love, and he would help Hoot Miller, the coach, every now and then. I would be sitting on the radiator at OLS, happy as a clam. And my eyes were like big marbles watching those kids in the eighth grade play, thinking, One day I might be able to play at Our Lady of Sorrows!
And then, as fate would have it — Mr. Miller had intramurals. And when I was in the second grade, every time there was an intramural game, and I would go and wait, because sometimes there were only four people that showed up, and I would be just hoping and praying, and sure enough, Mr. Miller would put me in. Everybody — because there were so many kids — they’d be on the radiators waiting to get in. We all kind of had that same hope.
I was in the second grade when I had my first basket in a game. Mr. Miller sent me all the way to one end, and then as soon as they got the ball, they fired it to the other end, and I just dribbled it, whipped it up there, and it went in. I remember it to this day.
So many of my dreams were in basketball, and they started at Our Lady of Sorrows. All of my dreams and aspirations started there.
When I was in the fifth grade at OLS, Rhonda Henry was my fifth grade teacher, and she asked all of us about goal setting. What do you want to do when you grow up? I remember in fifth grade our classroom was downstairs — the fifth and eighth grade classes were right next to each other — I said, I want to get a Division One scholarship. Because my dad had a Division One scholarship at Boston College. And I didn’t really know what that meant, but if I was gonna go to college, I knew I’d have to pay for it, and I didn’t have any money. So I was like, all right, I’ll try to get a scholarship. That’s what was going on in my little head.
So speed the clock up: I think I was in the eighth grade and Chris O’Gorman’s brother Teddy was going to Iona. We went to see an Iona game, and they were playing this team called West Point. I didn’t know anything about it. And Coach K (Mike Krzyzewski) was coaching. When I saw West Point that day — I was enamored. Looking back, there was a magnetism about Coach K and his team. The fire, the intensity, the enthusiasm. I mean, it was eye-opening. I’m like, I want to learn that. Whatever they’re doing up there, I gotta figure it out.
That game was on a Saturday. I wrote a letter that night: “Do you have a camp? I want to learn how to play defense like you guys.” I mailed it out to West Point Monday. And sure enough, six days from the day I sent it, I got an application to West Point’s basketball camp. It was $185. I remember I went to my mom and dad and said, “I want to go to this camp. I want to take $185 of my caddy money from Ridgeway.”
Then suddenly it’s August, the summer after graduation from OLS, and I gotta go to camp. Now, there’s no Chris O’Gorman with me. There’s no Stevie Steinthal, there’s no Frankie Henderson. I’m by myself. I’ve bit off way more than I could chew. Coach K sees me with my mom and dad, and he and my old man hit it off — because they were both basketball guys. Coach K was probably 30 or 32, and he sees me, I’m nervous, and he made me feel welcome. He brings us right into the registration line, and they’re chatting, and then the next thing you know, he picks up my bags and walks up four flights to my room 408.
The coolest part was, every day at lunchtime, when the rest of camp went to have lunch, I stayed and played with these older guys — the counselors — and they’re probably thinking, what is this kid doing? But I had the greatest coach of all time, the greatest defensive guy, teaching me how to play defense. He would nudge me — jump to the ball, like that. Every day from 12 to 1, that whole week.
My mom always said: Never forget what that man did for you. He wasn’t Coach K back then, he was just “that man.” But she had such respect, because he saw a scared child, and he went out of his way to help that kid. Which is kind of what we all learned at OLS, right? You’re part of a team. You help the guy that needs help.
Even after I graduated from OLS and went to Stepinac, I would go back to OLS and work out. Sister Patricia was great about letting me go back in. It might have been a liability! But every day, I would be changing on the stage, the little place in the back up top. I lived for it. Thank God for Sister Alma, Sister Cecile, Sister Catherine, Sister Patricia. How much time I spent in that gym!
I have to talk a bit about my dad: My dad, Tommy O’Toole, was an All-American at Boston College. He led the nation in assists. He was the all-time leading scorer when he left there. The game was different back then, but he left his mark. He was drafted by the Washington Bullets and the Rochester Royals. He never talked about this, ever, to me or any of my siblings. But my grandmother would tell us how great he was. And growing up in the New York area, everywhere I went, everybody knew my dad.
He would never coach any of his own kids. He didn’t want to put that pressure on us. But as soon as we left OLS, he jumped into Sorrows and helped out.
I remember him being honored at Our Lady of Sorrows one night. He always talked about the importance of participation for everybody — same status, different roles. That’s part of being on a team. He didn’t believe in cutting anybody, because he thought: How can you cut a little kid that wants to do this? And he’s a genius, because kids get better as they get older. So this whole idea about participation, doing different things — he was always like, if you want to play Stepinac or anywhere else, you can’t just be shooting all the time.
He would go to the kid that was downtrodden, that might have been picked on, and say: “I got you.” That was my father’s gift. He would be pied-piping, because he knew: Be part of a team. Be part of something. You’ll have a role. You’ll feel good. Hopefully it’ll be life-changing. And that was his magic — he would pull all of you in. He’d be intense as hell but he could make everyone feel better.
My dad, Tommy O’Toole, just had this gift. He had a gift with people.
I’ve been doing this 38 years now. And the players, they’re everything to me. These kids are coming from all different walks of life, war-torn countries. Every different socio-economic condition under the sun that you can possibly imagine. And I go back to what I learned from Coach K, my dad, and Hoot Miller — you pull a team together around your defense. On defense, you can all be where you’re supposed to be. You need each other. Trust is built on that side. And if you can forge that bond where they fight together, they become buddies for the rest of their lives.
As a coach, as I walk into these places — the Cameron Indoor at Duke, the John Paul Jones Arena at Virginia, whether it’s the PAC-12 or the Final Four, for me it all started, without question, in that little gym at Our Lady of Sorrows. The memory of leaping off the stage to do a suicide is still so vivid, to this day.
Before every game today, I always go back. It all started, every bit of it, at OLS, sitting on top of that radiator.”