Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame
Relive It All Again
Edna Hanley Strachan was a speed-skating champion at the peak of the sport’s popularity, winning the New York City Silver Skates in 1937 and 1938 in front of overflow crowds at Madison Square Garden.
Among her dozens of titles, Hanley Strachan doubled in the 1936 Interstate Outdoor Championships, winning both the 220 and 440-yard sprints in sub-freezing temperatures at Bear Mountain.
Hal Squier became sports editor of the Staten Island Advance in 1923 and stayed 40 years, chronicling the games at every level but relentless in his promotion of local sports, a philosophy that guided the paper’s coverage for decades to come.
Squier’s Midget League, the first organized youth program on Staten Island, served as the model for every sandlot program that followed.
Robert Pipkins, the youngest athlete and first African-American to represent the United States in the luge, became the first American to win a major international event when he won the 1992 Junior World Championships in Sapporo, Japan.
He went on to represent the United States in two Winter Olympics, finishing 21st at the 1992 Games in Albertville, France, and 16th at the 1996 Games in Lillehammer, Norway.
Robert Pipkins was a teenage longshot at the 1992 U.S. Olympic Trials until his final run, when he broke the course record at Mt. Hoevenberg in Lake Placid, and was added to the three-man United States team as a discretionary pick.
Jim Mutrie managed the 19th Century New York Metropolitans of the American Association and New York Gothams of the National League, and is credited with giving the modern Giants their nickname.
Mutrie, who moved to Staten Island when the Giants played part of the 1889 season in St. George, won three pennants and 61 percent of his games, the second-best managerial winning percentage of all time.
Curtis High School standout Dino Mangiero, a third-team All American and All-East defensive end at Rutgers, played six seasons as a nose guard with the Kansas City Chiefs, Seattle Seahawks, and New England Patriots of the National Football League.
He built a second career as a coach, building or revitalizing high school programs at St. Joseph by-the-Sea, Poly Prep in Brooklyn, and Mater Dei Prep in Middletown, N.J.
