Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame

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Monsignor Farrell HS gives beloved former football coach Dennis Barrett a maroon-and-gold sendoff

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By Staten Island Advance

Amboy Road in front of Monsignor Farrell High School on Tuesday, July 16th was adorned in maroon and gold, and rightfully so.

The Oakwood school paid tribute to Dennis Barrett, the school’s beloved former head football coach and faculty member, who passed away last week at age 77. Members of the Farrell community lined Amboy Road as a sign of respect and admiration as Barrett’s funeral procession passed in front of the school on the way to Moravian Cemetery.

Farrell students, dressed in uniform, stood in silence with American flags, Monsignor Farrell High School flags, and their sports equipment as a final salute to the coach, who also recently served as a member of the Monsignor Farrell High School Board of Trustees.

The procession stopped in front of the Farrell Chapel for a blessing by school Chaplain Fr. Jeff Pomeisl and the playing of Amazing Grace by bagpiper Christian Meyer, Monsignor Farrell Class of ’21, who then switched to the trumpet for the playing of Taps before proceeding under NYPD escort to Moravian Cemetery. An estimated 50-car procession of family and friends followed. “Coach Barrett was faith in action. He was the living epitome of our mission,” said Farrell president and CEO Lou Tobacco, a member of the Lions’ Class of 1990. “He taught, coached, and mentored all, developing the whole man, a person aware of his own God-given talents, confident in his abilities, and oriented to the service of others.”

When it came to teaching and coaching, Barrett’s philosophy was: “You have to love them and they have to know that you love them,” and he did, and his students and players loved him back.

“It is truly a sad day for the entire Barrett family,” said Brian Hall (Farrell Class of 1977), who played for Barrett at Farrell in the 1970s and remained a close friend. “He truly touched the lives of so many, making a difference in the lives of all the people that he met.”

Another of Barrett’s players at Farrell and close family friend Mike Marino explained, “The common thread among all those that I met who knew Dennis was that he always made you feel special and that you had his complete attention. In short, you knew that he loved you. That was his magic, that he truly loved you,” adding, “I wouldn’t be where I am without Dennis Barrett.”

Coach Barrett served as the head coach of Farrell from 1968-1980. He compiled an impressive 103-13- 6 record. But the wins only tell a small part of the story of Dennis Barrett.

He was a teacher, a coach, and a mentor not just to those who played for him, but to anyone who was fortunate enough to cross paths with him. Young men from other schools on Staten Island would seek his help, which he would gladly give. That is the type of man he was.

“It’s a very somber day knowing that we are never going to be able to speak to Coach again,” lamented Rich Fugazzi, another former Farrell player and close friend who flew up from Florida to attend the services. “The beautiful display from the Farrell Family today as Coach passed by the school this morning one last time was heartwarming and inspirational. His passing is going to leave a huge void in many lives, but the memories of him will last forever.”

Farrell alumnus David DiTommaso echoed Fugazzi’s sentiments. “The students of Monsignor Farrell holding the American flags in front of Farrell was a great tribute to Coach.”

A memorial celebrating Coach Barrett’s life is being planned at Farrell to be held when conditions permit.

NOTES: Farrell and the Barrett family would like to sincerely thank alumni Jack Oehm, Hall, Marino and Mike Lanza, as well the FDNY Ceremonial Unit, the NYPD, the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation, and all of the Faithful men of Monsignor Farrell High School for their help in Tuesday’s special salute to Barrett.

Hall of Famer, Brenda Jordan, ahead of her time hoops start, dies at 77

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Hall of Famer Brenda Jordan, an ahead-of-her-time athlete who scored 1,000 points before that was a thing in girls basketball – and, for that matter, before girls basketball was much of a thing on Staten Island – and regularly beat the boys at their own games, died April 16 of complications related to Alzheimer’s Disease. A member of the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame Class of 2017, Jordan was 77.

Before players like Gerry Lawless, Sheila Tighe, and K.C. Comeford changed the way girls were expected to play on Staten Island, and long before women like Nicky Anosike and Jen Derevjanik made their mark in the WNBA, Jordan was an outlier, holding her own in Stapleton schoolyard games against the neighborhood boys. One of those neighborhood kids, John DiMaggio, who would go on to be an All-Met basketball star at Wagner College, pushed Jordan to abandon her set shot in favor of a jumper. They nailed a hoop to a telephone pole in the street, and wore it out over countless hours of practice, day and night.

It was her lifelong friend, Louise Dolce, now Louise Nicolosi, who recruited Jordan to join the parish basketball team at Immaculate Conception. “I was two years older, and the team captain,” Nicolosi said. “But Brenda was our mentor. She wanted to win every game. She taught us so much, and we started winning Island championships.”

In the summer she pitched and played shortstop for the Rosebank Cardinals – a boys team – in the Police Athletic League, only occasionally removing her ubiquitous baseball cap, so some beaten club could have their “Omigod, the pitcher’s a girl!” moment.
As an eighth grader at St. Joseph Hill Academy, Jordan was watching the varsity basketball team practice, when a loose ball bounced her way. She retrieved it and flipped it behind her back toward the hoop, off the backboard, and in. The coach, Ruth Burbank was watching. Without a second thought, Burbank announced, “You’re on the team next year!”

She scored 1,180 points in just 46 games at Hill, averaging 25 a game over four varsity seasons. The first time she broke the school single-game scoring record, with 46, the old record belonged to her older sister Maureen. The last time, she poured in 53 in a 67-51 victory against St. Peter’s, outscoring the program that would become the standard for girls basketball on the Island, all by herself.
The high school boys who came to watch her play – that was something else people weren’t accustomed to in those days – started calling her “Cousy,” an homage to the Boston Celtic star Bob Cousy, then in his 1950s prime.

“She was unstoppable,” Jordan’s old teammate Louise Nicolosi said. And then, after a pause, “but never a show-off.”
She stayed close to the games after high school, as a player in the Staten Island Women’s Softball League; and as a light-hearted presence on the bench at St. Peter’s softball and basketball games.
More recently, Jordan and Nicolosi, still best friends after all the years, reveled in watching the growth of women’s college basketball – Jordan was an incurable Notre Dame fan – and the WNBA; a joy informed by those championship runs in elementary school when the game plan, as Nicolisi remembers it, was as pure as one of the jumpers Jordan learned from John DiMaggio.

“Get the ball to Brenda, and we win.”

Hall of Famer Heyward Dotson, iconoclastic star, dies at 71

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Hall of Famer Heyward Dotson, a Rhodes scholar, and the first Staten Island basketball player to score 1,000 points in both high school and college, passed away May 1.

Dotson, who attacked life on and off the court with a singular intensity, and always on his own terms, was 71.

He showed an inclination to forge his own path at an early age. After graduating from Markham Intermediate School – where he failed to make the basketball team as a seventh-grader – Dotson spent the next four years commuting by bus and ferry from Mariners Harbor to Stuyvesant High School in lower Manhattan, one of the city’s most demanding academic programs, where he was an All-City player as a senior, averaging 34 points a game, and playing mostly as a center.

At Columbia, he morphed into a 6-foot-4 point guard who could muscle his way to the rim or find Columbia’s other scorers where they were most effective; and a relentless defender who savored the personal battles with stars like Niagara’s Calvin Murphy, Louisville’s Butch Beard, and Princeton’s Geoff Petrie.

Paired in the backcourt with another sophomore from the city’s public housing projects, Jim McMillan, they brought a swagger and toughness that drove the 1967-68 Lions to the first – and still the only – Ivy League championship in school history.

Along the way, they won the Holiday Festival, finished in the top 10 nationally; and, in a city increasingly divided over an unpopular war on the other side of the globe, managed to unite a cosmopolitan campus behind its basketball team.

Drafted by the NBA Phoenix Suns and the Indiana Pacers of the American Basketball Association, Dotson deferred his pro ambitions to accept a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford, the oldest institution of higher learning in the English-speaking world, where he studied assorted foreign languages and English Literature, and found time to lead the Blues to an All-England championship.

Back in the States, he had a tryout with the Knicks and brief stints in the ABA and the Eastern Basketball League, went to law school, and spent the rest of his adult life in private and public practice, teaching, and championing community causes.

Inducted with the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame’s second class in 1996, and the Columbia Hall of Fame in 2018, Dotson is the second SISHOF inductee to pass in the space of a few weeks, following the death of Brenda Jordan, the first women’s basketball player to score 1,000 points, on April 16.

To the end, blessed with a keen intellect and a quick tongue, he could be prickly around opponents and teammates alike.

Pressed about his relationship with his own college coach in a 1968 interview with the Columbia student newspaper, he acknowledged that Jack Rohan was “a competent coach … extremely competent.”

And off the court?

“We’re courteous to each other,” Dotson said.

 

 

Hall of Famer Claude Schoenlank, a Staten Island tennis legend, and Hall of Famer, dies at age 76

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Hall of Famer Claude Schoenlank (Class of 2001), who hammered his way to a once-unthinkable 41 Staten Island tennis championships – singles, men’s doubles, and mixed doubles – passed away June 9, at the age of 76.

Schoenlank’s passing, the same day as iconic football coach Dennis Barrett, was one of four Hall of Fame inductees over the last two months, following the loss of basketball stars Brenda Jordan, a pioneer of the women’s game, and Heyward Dotson, the first Staten Islander to score 1,000 points in both high school and college.

Schoenlank announced himself to the tennis community at an early age, winning three New York City private schools championships – the first when he was still in eighth grade – two city PSAL championships while at Curtis High School, and his first Staten Island singles title in 1963, all as a teenager.

A three-time Staten Island Triple Crown winner – singles, doubles and mixed doubles in the same year – he also won a pair of New York City singles, and the 1974 Bermuda Lawn Tennis Association International Open.

Absent from the local courts for three years while going to school in Germany, he returned to complete his undergraduate degree at Wagner College, before settling into a career as the resident teaching professional at the Richmond County Country Club.

Blond and mustachioed, with the build of a pulling guard – or, more particularly, the professional golfer Craig Stadler, a look-alike contemporary and multiple-time winner on the PGA tour – he spent two decades scattering would-be challengers in his wake, while winning another 13 singles titles – including 10 in a row between 1969 and 1978; a dozen in men’s doubles, including seven in a row with three different partners; and 15 in mixed doubles.

Some of those numbers would eventually be surpassed by another Hall of Famer, Ed Perpetua, whose win total, like Schoenlank’s, included the 1988 men’s doubles when the two generational champions teamed to win the whole thing, in an unofficial passing of the torch.

Even in his competitive twilight, Schoenlank remained a dangerous adversary. When he went out in the semis of the 1983 singles tournament, the big crowd – outsized for a semifinal – sent him off to a prolonged standing ovation, an homage worthy of the champion he was. His final Island title came in the 1994, the year Schoenlank turned 50, and 31 years after his first Island championship.

In more recent years, Schoenlank was a regular presence at Hall of Fame reunion dinners and Unsung Heroes breakfasts, a genial reminder of an era when tennis was in its ascendency on Staten Island and everywhere else, and in this neighborhood most of the tournament hardware gravitated to one man.

SISHoF loses friend, board member & legend with passing of former football coaching great Dennis Barrett

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A stranger, seeing him for the first time toward the end, when he was a smaller version of himself, might not have guessed it. But Staten Island lost a giant on Monday.

Dennis Barrett, a charismatic coach who came to the Island straight out of college, and the projects, and made a career of building indomitable football teams and young men of character, first at Monsignor Farrell High School, and after that at the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point – and, in the process, elevated the game and everyone who was part of it in the old neighborhood – died yesterday, five days after his 77th birthday.

In 14 seasons at Farrell, Barrett coached six undefeated teams – one year the Lions gave up a total of six points all season – and in one four-year stretch they won 33 straight games. The first year they joined the venerable Catholic High School Football League, Barrett’s boys won the whole thing, and then beat the public school champs in the Metro Bowl, which made them the best team in New York City, hands down.

Then he went to Kings Point, a military school with all the rigors of West Point and Annapolis and none of the glamour, where all that high school stuff wasn’t supposed to work, and did the same thing. He inherited a downtrodden program that hadn’t won a game the season before he got there, and left a decade later with the most victories in school history.
But Barrett’s enduring legacy is the army of kids … now middle-aged men … who played for him, or coached with him, or both, and were changed forever by the experience.

“I’ve been around a lot of impressive people. and a lot of different philosophies,” Kevin Coyle, who worked his way through the college coaching ranks to a long career in the National Football League, told the Advance in 2013, when he was defensive coordinator of the Miami Dolphins. “But no one in my life made more of an impression. “I became a coach because I wanted to be him.”
Barrett’s coaching style was the antithesis of “social distancing,” the self-defense mechanism forced on us by the coronavirus pandemic.

His modus operandi was to jump into players’ lives, and stay there.

He was, to borrow one of his favorite words, relentless about that sort of thing.

“You have to love ‘em,” he once told a friend who was thinking about getting into the business.

“You have to love ‘em … and they have to know you love ‘em.

“And once they know that, you can do anything with ‘em.”

Dennis Michael Barrett was born and raised in New Rochelle, where his father was a cop. The family lived in public housing, and money was tight. When the weather was warm and neighbors were grilling outside, he and his brothers learned to linger on the periphery, waiting to be asked if they might like a hot dog or a burger. Chances were it might be their best meal of the day.

Sports gave him purpose. He was an all-district wrestler and a 5-5, 150-pound quarterback at New Rochelle High School, where the football team lost one game his junior year. The next year, with Barrett completing 60 of 78 passes and directing an offense that scored 36 points a game, they didn’t lose any. The Huguenots were the top team in the state, and Barrett was voted All-County and All-State. Plus, he found a calling.

He watched his high school coach, Lou Amonson, turning boys into men, and it seemed like a worthwhile thing for a man to do. Recruited to the University of Cincinnati, Barrett suffered a back injury that ended his college career almost before it started. But all that meant was he got a head start on his life’s work.He stayed at Cincinnati for a brief stint as a graduate assistant, the equivalent of a master’s degree in coaching, before jumping at the chance to have his own team at Farrell.

“The only thing I knew about Staten Island,” he said, “was that it had a ferry.” In those days, Barrett was a tight bundle of muscle and energy, whose very being radiated purpose.Even the way he said “football” … hard emphasis on the first syllable … signaled intensity. He was an ahead-of-his-time high school coach, running cutting-edge offenses and bringing a college coach’s faculty to scouting and in-game adjustments. When all that failed, he willed his teams to a higher level, the way he did the day John D’Amato ran through a glass door at the conclusion of one of Barrett’s halftime talks.’Amato, who played at Ohio State and UMass and became a prominent Staten Island lawyer, wasn’t an outlier. One time or another, those locker-room talks made the hair stand up on the back of the neck of trainers, priests, athletic directors, team doctors and jaded sportswriters; and, once he got to Kings Point, the occasional admiral or lieutenant commander.

“He made you feel important,” John O’Leary said. “He gave you the courage to do things you didn’t know you were capable of doing.” And when they lost, which was almost never, the coach told ‘em he loved ‘em. When Barrett went back to Cincinnati, it was to play the No. 1 high school team in the country, Moeller Catholic, in front of 27,000 fans at ancient Nippert Stadium.By then, the biggest college coaches in the country were paying attention to what was happening in Oakwood. Woody Hayes and Bo Schembechler came to visit. Joe Paterno. Paul Dietzel, who won a national championship at Louisiana State, created a fuss when he arrived by helicopter.

Barrett’s boys went off to play at Ohio State, Michigan, Notre Dame and the Ivies, and came home to be doctors, lawyers and CEOs, cops and coaches. A lot of coaches. Barrett was best man at their weddings, godfather to their kids, their North Star in times of crisis. It wasn’t always a smooth ride. Barrett’s Kings Point teams were often over-scheduled, but Coast Guard, always the game that mattered most at Kings Point, wasn’t his toughest opponent. Called out by family and friends, he kicked the drinking habit that brought his father low, and threw himself into the roles of speaker, counselor, and Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor with the same passion he brought to football. In the hands of a sober Barrett, AA became one more way to save the world, one drunk at a time.Retirement should’ve been a victory lap. Barrett, the first chairman of the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame, was inducted in 1999, after the waiting period he helped impose on committee members, himself included. When some of the old guard organized a 70th birthday celebration, 300 of his former players showed up. Just this year, an Islandwide football award recognizing academic achievement, leadership, and community service, was launched in his name.

He leaves behind a daughter, Denyse Barrett Flynn; brothers Arthur and Kevin, and a sister, Faith; a grandson, Kerry Cosgriff; and a great-granddaughter, Clara Cosgriff.And his boys. Just this spring Mike Marino, the center on Barrett’s first team at Monsignor Farrell and a physical therapist who put his own life on hold to help manage the coach’s care these last few years, stumbled on a 50-year-old letter from the freshman football coach at Brown, welcoming him to the university, and to a new world of possibilities. In tears, Marino read the letter to his wife. “I wouldn’t be where I am without Dennis Barrett,” he said. “I wouldn’t be who I am. It all starts with him.”
There were dozens just like him. Hundreds.

The last few years were rough on both families. Barrett battled a smorgasbord of medical issues, any one of which, by itself, might’ve worn out a less stubborn man, one who hadn’t beaten Coast Guard six years in a row … and booze, too.

It mattered little if they were related by blood or by football. If they spent any time around Barrett in his prime, he left an impression.
That’s how it was that October afternoon in 1987 when an undermanned Kings Point team went toe-to-toe with the best club in Wagner College history, stretching the eventual Division III national champions to their limit before falling just short at the final whistle.One of Walt Hameline’s assistants watched, with equal parts relief and wonder, as Barrett’s Mariners left the field.
“I don’t know how they did that,” he said, before catching himself.

“No, wait … that’s not true. I do know how they did it.

“They were inspired.”