Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame
Relive It All Again
Margaret Grenier, who won seven PSAL city softball championships and five Metro Bowl titles in 22 seasons as a high school coach and blazed a path for the generations of women coaches who followed, was schooling softball players at Curtis High School before the city had a place for them to play.
Her career record of 360-125 includes 10 Staten Island PSAL titles and 11 PSAL city championship-game appearances.
Bill Wolfe was a gritty point guard and middle infielder at Curtis High School, where he helped the Warriors win back-to-back city championships in baseball, and go deep into the public school playoffs in basketball; and at Wagner College, where he starred in both sports, and is in the school’s Hall of Fame.
Decades later, that same hard-nosed competitive spirit drove Wolfe to dozens of racquetball titles, often against younger opponents, and two national senior championships.
James Sparrow set scoring records at McKee High School, where he was the school’s first 1,000-point scorer; at Laurinburg (N.C.) Institute, where he broke Basketball Hall of Famer Charlie Scott’s records; and at North Carolina A&T, where he scored 1,986 career points.
A three-time All-Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference player and 1976 MEAC Player of the year, Sparrow led the Aggies to four regular-season and conference tournament titles. His record 30-point tournament scoring average, set in 1976, still stands.
Greg Pedro scored 1,406 points at St. Peter’s High School, a Staten Island schoolboy record at the time; but his signature triumph was leading the Eagles to the 1983 New York CHSAA championship, still the only city title for a boys’ high school team from Staten Island, public or private.
A two-year letterman at Michigan State and an all-conference guard and two-year captain at Fordham, Pedro led the Rams to a MAAC championship game, where his game-high 32 points included eight three-pointers, a Meadowlands record.
Only three Staten Island boys’ basketball teams made it to a city championship game. The others were the 1977 McKee team led by Hall of Famer Kenny Page and the 1938 St. Peter’s team that included Hall of Famers Jack McGinley and Buddy O’Grady.
Jesse Carlin, a 2008 All-American in the 800 meters and the Distance Medley Relay at the University of Pennsylvania, finished third at the 2009 USA championships. A five-time ECAC champion and four-time Heptagonal champion, she set Penn records at 400, 500, and 800 meters, some of which still stand.
Carlin was a New York state champion, four-time CHSAA champion, and eight-time Staten Island champion at St. Joseph by-the-Sea High School, where she set nine individual school records at distances from 200 to 1,000 meters.
