Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame
Relive It All Again
Dr. Mark Sherman, in concert with his surgical tech Jacob Carey, founded the Unity Games, bringing sixth, seventh and eighth-graders from disparate backgrounds together for games and workshops, using basketball as the lure.
In 40 years as a team doctor, Sherman stood on the sideline for 1,000 high school football games, refusing any out-of-pocket payment, and recruiting colleagues to provide free screenings for every public-school player in the city.
Howie Ruppert was a transformative coach at St. Peter’s High School; at the College of Staten Island, where he won back-to-back CUNY championships and a Metro Coach of the Year award; and at Seton Hall where, as an assistant coach, he helped steer the Pirates’ run to the 1989 NCAA championship game. But one triumph stands above the others.
When Ruppert’s 1983 St. Peter’s team won the CHSAA city championship, they became – and remain – the only Staten Island high school boys’ basketball team, public or private, to win a city title.
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.
Bobby Rodriguez set pass-catching standards at Susan Wagner High School, where he caught 161 passes and scored 202 points; and at Georgia Tech, where he was part of the Yellow Jackets’ 1990 co-national championship team.
Rodriguez caught 51 passes as a college senior, fourth best in the Atlantic Coast Conference, to finish his career with a school-record 115 receptions. He remains among Tech’s all-time leaders in every receiving category.
Cathy Morano established a legacy of relentless excellence – 10 New York City championships, including six in a row – as the softball coach at Tottenville High School.
Morano’s teams won 117 straight regular-season games, a streak that stretched over parts of seven seasons, and played in 12 straight city championship games. All the while, Morano doubled as Tottenville’s basketball coach, winning 379 games in 28 seasons on the bench.
John Drebinger, a onetime sprinter who ran the 100 in 10.4 seconds at Curtis High School in 1911, equaling the New York City public-school record, was one of the country’s most respected sportswriters.
After starting his career at the Staten Island Advance, Drebinger covered the Yankees, Giants and Dodgers for the New York Times, and wrote the lead story on every World Series game from 1929 to 1963. He was the 1973 recipient of the J.G. Taylor Spink Award, emblematic of membership in the “Writers’ Wing” of the Baseball Hall of Fame.
