Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame
Relive It All Again
Carolyn Cassidy Cudone played on a winning Curtis Cup team in 1956, featuring the best American amateur golfers against those from Great Britain, and captained another winning team in 1970.
Cudone won a record six consecutive U.S. Women’s Senior Amateurs; five Met championships; six New Jersey match-play championships, and 11 stroke play titles; and five South Carolina state championships.
Nick Bruno was the first basketball player to score 1,000 points for a Staten Island high school, the 1957 Jaques Award winner as the Island’s best player while at Port Richmond, and MVP in the Sandlot Alliance Baseball All-Star Game.
After finishing his career at Iowa State, Bruno came home to teach, inspiring generations of students at PS 44, Mariners Harbor, with his credo, “A book in one hand, a ball in the other.”
Mid-Island’s 11 and 12-year-olds won the 1964 Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pa., beating Monterrey, Mexico 4-0 behind a no-hitter by Dan Yaccarino in the championship game.
The world champions: Yaccarino, John Currado, Ed Godnig, Frank Higgins, Greg Klee, Gary Kresge, Bob Nugent, Jeff Paul, John Porcell, Dom Quattrochi, Dick Smiechowski Mike Troiano, Mickey Wicinski (players); Bill Rogers, Bob Klee (coaches).
Tom Tierney won more than 900 games – eight wins for every loss – and six city championships as the baseball coach at Tottenville High School, and was the 1986 National High School Coach of the Year.
Tierney was an All-Yankee Conference baseball and football player at the University of Vermont, and winner of the Semans Trophy as the school’s outstanding athlete.
Jeanine Radice was the MAAC Conference and Metro Basketball Player of the Year at Fordham, where she was also the Met Intercollegiate and two-time MAAC cross-country champion, and the school’s Athlete of the Year.
Winner of the inaugural Warren Jaques Award as Staten Island’s best schoolgirl basketball player while at St. Joseph by-the-Sea, Radice was also the first female runner to qualify for the Kinney national high school cross-country championships.