We also had Mr. O’Toole as our gym coach. He’d actually come out and play CYO basketball with us — just like one of the boys — and he’d kick our butts just like he did everybody else.
When you ask what made OLS basketball special to me, I think it’s pretty simple. We were 10-, 11-, 12-year-old kids, and basketball was the big thing. If you were one of the basketball players, you were one of the cool kids — that’s just how it was.
We were the first team to win the big Kennedy Tournament over at Stepinac. That’s something I’ll never forget. But to really tell the story right, I have to start with the year before, because there’s a story there that I had to live with for a long time.
Our team was Kevin Crowley and me at the guards. I’m 5’10”, and then we had Ricky Young, who was probably about six feet tall in eighth grade. Chris Peck was our power forward, and Jim McLaughlin and Larry Cook were the sixth men. That was our squad.
The year before our championship run, we were playing Sacred Heart — one of the teams we always competed hard against. Kevin Crowley was the best player on our team, and he fouled out. My brother Bernie was the point guard that year, and with Kevin gone, I had to step in. And what do I do? I throw an errant pass right to Jack Fogarty from Sacred Heart. He goes down for the layup, and we lose the game. I had to live with that for a whole year.
So when we came back the following season, there was something to prove. The Kennedy Tournament, held over at Stepinac, was like the culmination of everything. Four teams were in it — St. Francis out of the Bronx, Sacred Heart, Our Lady of Sorrows, and I believe St. Bernard’s. To get to the final, we had to go through St. Francis. Everybody was afraid of them. They had big kids, they were always tough to beat, and I think they’d won it several years running.
We get down to the wire, and it’s back and forth, back and forth. At the buzzer, we’re down by one — and Ricky Young gets fouled. Now, eighth graders don’t drain two foul shots under that kind of pressure. That’s just a tough thing to do. But Ricky drains the first one. And then he drains the second one. And we win the freaking game! I don’t think Our Lady of Sorrows ever beat St. Francis there before that moment. Ricky’s a legend among all of us because of it. We still credit him to this day.
The next day we played Sacred Heart in the final and beat them by fifteen or twenty points.
For us to win that tournament was a big deal for Our Lady of Sorrows and a big deal for all of us. That team, that tournament, that year — it stays with you. I’ll never forget it.”