Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame

Relive It All Again

Basketball

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Jack McGinley

Jack McGinley, who played on the St. Peter’s High School team that made it to the 1938 city championship game, returned to make the Eagles the standard against which all Staten Island basketball programs were measured. McGinley’s teams won 319 games – three wins for every loss – and 14 Staten Island championships in his 21 seasons at the helm. In one stretch the Eagles won 32 straight in the Staten Island High School League.(Read more...)

Bill Murtha

Bill Murtha, Staten Island’s second 1,000-point scorer and the first to score 50 points against an Island rival, led St. Peter’s High School to a 28-win season. He was MVP of the Iona College Tournament in a losing cause, and the 1961 Jaques Award winner as the Island’s top player. The star of an undefeated frosh team at Loyola-Chicago, the 1963 NCAA champion, Murtha transferred to George Washington, where he averaged 15 points a game (Read more...)

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Jim Mutrie

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.(Read more...)

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Harry O’Brien

Harry O’Brien coached the Curtis High School baseball team for 28 seasons, and the basketball team for 26, mentoring future major leaguers and establishing a dominating presence unmatched by all but a few coaches anywhere. O’Brien’s baseball teams won 20 Staten Island championships, including 10 in a row, made it to the city championship game five times, and won a city championship in 1941.(Read more...)

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Kevin O’Connor

Kevin O’Connor, the longtime general manager of the Utah Jazz, was a leader wherever he played, from Monsignor Farrell High School to Belmont Abbey College, where he was captain of a team that went 21-5. O’Connor coached at VMI, Colorado and UCLA, where he was Larry Brown’s top assistant on the team that went to the 1980 national championship game, and an NBA scout and personnel director for Utah before taking charge of the Jazz.(Read more...)