A chance to make a difference: high school basketball isn't the big time, but it's a great training ground for life

Sporting News, The, March 4, 2005 by Bob Hurley

As a probation officer for 30 years on the hardscrabble streets of Jersey City, N.J., I mostly would spend my days immersed in the most hardened of souls and most shattered of lives. In too many cases, there were men beyond redemption once they reached my desk.

When the clock struck 4, I could start on my way to basketball practice at St. Anthony High School, the sick feeling over those lost lives replaced with a determination to work with my young players. My kids came out of the same neighborhoods and housing projects as my cases did, but the difference was I still had a chance to steer my players toward a better future.

That's the essence of the reason I never accepted any of the offers that occasionally came to me to leave St. Anthony for college coaching. For me, high school hoops is where I can make the greatest difference in kids' lives. I believe I've developed a formula--built on old-school discipline--that helps young men start productive lives with a strong work ethic and good values.

During my 33 seasons at St. Anthony, we've won 843 games and have nearly a .900 winning percentage. We've won 22 state championships and two USA Today national titles and have bad four undefeated seasons. But what makes me proudest is that every one of my players--including my sons Bobby (Duke) and Danny (Seton Hall)--except one over these three-plus decades has gone on to college, many becoming the first in their families to do so.

What's more, the success of the basketball program has been the driving force in exposure and fund-raising that has allowed us to keep the school's doors open. Our school is housed in an 88-year-old tiny brick building that has faulty heat and no gymnasium. We have 200-plus students, and more than half of them live below the poverty line of $16,000 per year. Our kids have been traipsing around the city for three decades, using 25 different gyms for practice and nine different gyms for home games during that time.

Year after year, it's a new generation of kids who keep me committed at St. Anthony, and it's the graduates who've gone into the world who keep me inspired.

One of my favorite stories--which an ex-player told author Adrian Wojnarowski in The Miracle of St. Anthony: A Season with Coach Bob Hurley and Basketball's Most Improbable Dynasty--is about Mark Harris, a young fireman trapped on the roof of a burning building in Jersey City. When Harris and a fellow firefighter's life hung in the balance, he said, some of the lessons learned during his high school basketball career flooded back to him. In the middle of that rooftop blaze, the scene turned into slow motion for him--like he was on the basketball court again.

All of the things that we preach at St. Anthony--thinking before you react, having poise in pressure moments--helped him keep his composure. He and his partner ended up escaping to a neighboring roof.

They can't pay you enough in the so-called big time to replace the thrill of affecting young men in such a way. I know there are thousands of high school coaches across the country who feel exactly like I do.