Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame
Relive It All Again
Lynn Tighe, a Parade Magazine All-American at St. Peter’s High School and All-Big East point guard at Villanova, led the Wildcats to back-to-back conference championships and the school’s first-ever appearances in the NCAA Tournament.
Second all-time at Villanova in assists, Tighe returned to her alma mater as an assistant coach and athletic department administrator.
Walter Scholl was a football star at Curtis High School, where he set a city scoring record and led the Warriors to an undefeated season; and at Cornell, where he sparked the Big Red to a No. 1 ranking.
Scholl’s legacy, though, dates to his last-second touchdown pass against Dartmouth when Cornell, after learning the winning score came on a “fifth down” play – even with an 18-game win streak and national championship hopes on the line – opted to forfeit the victory because as he said, “It was the right thing to do.”
George Genovese, a slick-fielding minor-league shortstop and manager, made it to the major leagues for three games with the 1950 Washington Senators, before leaving his mark on the game as a scout.
In four decades as a scout for the Giants and Dodgers, he signed more than 40 players who made it to the big leagues, including Jack Clark, Bobby Bonds, Matt Williams and two-time National League home run king George Foster.
Frank Genovese, known as Chick, spent 20 years as a minor-league player and manager – once playing 269 consecutive games without an error – before becoming one of baseball’s most renowned scouts.
As one of the first scouts to focus on Latin America, where he signed Hall of Famer Juan Marichal, Manny Mota, and the three Alou brothers – Jesus, Matty and Felipe – he helped change the face of the sport.
Teddy Atlas, whose boxing career was cut short by injury, trained world champions Mike Tyson, Barry McGuigan, Simon Brown and Michael Moorer, who he famously cajoled into defeating Evander Holyfield.
While training fighters and serving as ESPN’s lead boxing analyst, Atlas founded the Dr. Theodore Atlas Foundation, a grassroots philanthropic organization helping Islanders in need, in his father’s name.