Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame
Relive It All Again
Dennis McKnight, a lightly-recruited lineman at Susan Wagner High School and an undrafted free agent from Drake, played 11 seasons in the National Football League, all but two as a starter with the San Diego Chargers.
He was the leader of the offensive line in San Diego, voted captain and player rep by his teammates, and an alternate to the 1988 Pro Bowl, before finishing his career with the Lions and Eagles.
Bill Jankunis high-jumped 7 feet, 5¾ inches at the U.S. Olympic Trials, the fifth best jump in the world at that time, to defeat the reigning world record-holder and qualify for the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal, where he finished 13th in the world.
Jankunis became the first Staten Island jumper to clear seven feet as a senior at New Dorp High School, before going on to set the Big 8 Conference record of 7-4 at the University of Colorado.
Jack Hynes was among the best players in what passed for American professional soccer in the 1940s and 50s, despite being seriously wounded at the Battle of the Bulge in World War Two.
Hynes was the American Soccer League MVP in 1956, at the age of 36, and runner-up the following year, and won the league title in his final season as a player-coach in 1960, the prelude to a distinguished high school and college coaching career.
Jack Hynes, who set up two goals as the United States national team beat Cuba in qualifying for the 1950 World Cup, was banished from the national team after his criticism of the selection process made the New York papers.
Nick Fotiu, the first born-and-raised New Yorker to play for the New York Rangers, began his hockey career as a teenager playing roller hockey in the playground at PS 46 in South Beach, while still at New Dorp High School.
Self-motivated and largely self-taught, he wound up playing two seasons in the World Hockey Association and eight more in the National Hockey League, scoring 64 career goals and skating in two Stanley Cup Finals.
John Engles, a High School All-American and two-time winner of the Warren Jaques Award as Staten Island’s best high school basketball player, set an Island scoring record with 1,399 points while leading St. Peter’s to a 22-1 record and the No. 1 ranking in New York State.
An All-Ivy forward at Penn, he returned from two serious knee injuries to be named the Quakers’ MVP and Philly Big 5 Player of the Year in 1976, on his way to the Big 5 Hall of Fame.
