Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame
Relive It All Again
In 30 years as the basketball coach at her alma mater, St. Peter’s High School for Girls, Joan Gumb won 555 games and helped shepherd the game from the six-a-side, halfcourt game of the 1960s to the fastbreak style of the modern era.
A two-time New York State Coach of the Year, Gumb guided the Eagles to New York State championships in 1985, 1987 and 1989.
Curtis High School product Terry Crowley, one of the top pinch-hitters in baseball, played 15 big-league seasons, most of it with the Baltimore Orioles, where manager Earl Weaver dubbed him “The King of Swing.”
Crowley played in three World Series and retired with 108 career pinch-hits, sixth on the all-time list, before beginning a 30-year career as the batting coach for the Orioles and Minnesota Twins.
Sal Somma, a onetime high school dropout and teenage runaway, kicked the extra point that gave NYU a 7-6 upset over Vince Lombardi and Fordham’s legendary “Seven Blocks of Granite,” denying the previously undefeated Rams a trip to the 1937 Rose Bowl.
In a coaching career that spanned parts of five decades at Curtis High School, Mt. St. Joseph Academy in Vermont, and New Dorp High School, Somma’s teams won eight New York City championships and a Vermont state title. His vision led to the creation of the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame; at the inaugural induction ceremony in 1995, two years after Somma’s death, his was the first name called.
Sal Somma is best known for his time at New Dorp High School, where his teams won six city championships. But before serving in the Navy during World War Two, he was the coach at Curtis for four years, guiding the Warriors to back-to-back undefeated seasons in 1939 and 1940.
Jim Albus, a Jaques Award winner as Staten Island’s best high school basketball player and a college outfielder, was a four-time Met PGA Player of the Year and 1990 PGA of America Club Professional of the Year before winning the 1991 Senior Players Championship, and joining the Senior Tour.
He went on to win six Senior titles and more than $6 million on tour, setting records for most birdies and most rounds in the 60s, and earning a reputation as “the Jack Nicklaus of the club pros.”
