By The Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame
When the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame inducts its Class of 2024 later this year, the group of 10 inductees — major-league ballplayers Dusty Rhodes and Duane Singleton; boxers John “The Heat” Verderosa and Kevin Rooney; softball pioneers Vin Scamardella and Margaret Grenier; basketball stars Sharon McAdams and Clare Guerriero; golfer Rodney Stillwell, and football icon John Skronski — will be the largest since 1996, when the Hall was still just skimming the surface of 150 years of sports history in the old neighborhood.
Hall President Anthony Santo noted, “this year’s induction group bespeaks the rich and accomplished pedigree of Staten Island Sports. It’s one for the ages. The class includes a World Series hero, a national boxing champion, a Jaques winner and All-City pitcher, a Major League veteran, a legendary women’s basketball player and coach, the father of Staten Island softball, a women’s basketball pioneer and seven-time PSAL city champion, an All-American high school quarterback, a 50-year and counting Staten Island golf legend and Mike Tyson’s boxing trainer.”
When asked why such a large class in 2024, the Hall’s Induction Ceremony Committee Chairman, Bob Scamardella, said, “The Hall of Fame is proud of its stringent 80% vote requirement for induction. However, with new deserving nominees being elevated each year, the committee realized that many worthy candidates were denied admission because votes were spread out among the many. As a result, the committee established a moratorium on new nominees and this, I believe, has fueled the effort to see those who deserve it, get recognized. The extraordinary caliber of the Class of 2024 reflects well on the Hall’s selection committee and its selection process. This year’s induction ceremony will surely be one not to be missed.”
The Class of 2024 Induction ceremony will be held in the fall and a date should be announced soon.
For a closer look at the Class of 2024, please scroll down:
MARGARET GRENIER
Margaret Grenier, who won seven PSAL city softball championships and five Metro Bowl titles in 22 seasons as a high school coach and blazed a path for the generations of women coaches who followed, was schooling softball players at Curtis High School before the city had a place for them to play.
Her career record of 360-125 includes 10 Staten Island PSAL titles and 11 PSAL city championship-game appearances.
CLARE GUERRIERO
Clare Guerriero was a decorated two-sport star in high school — a two-time Advance All-Star in basketball and softball, an All-City pitcher and winner of the 1988 Jaques Award as the best basketball player on the Island, the Pegasus Award as the best PSAL senior and the Margaret Wigiser Award as the city’s best female athlete.
Then, she played it back at St. Francis College, where Guerriero was the Northeast Conference Newcomer of the Year; a three-year, double-digit scorer in basketball and old-school pitcher in the windmill era of softball, and an inductee of the St. Francis College Hall of Fame.
SHARON McADAMS
Sharon McAdams, Moore Catholic’s first 1,000-point scorer, led the Staten Island Catholic League in scoring as a freshman, and set school records in scoring, steals, assists and free throws at Moore and at St. Francis College, where she’s still the all-time leader in steals.
Back at Moore as a coach, the 1986 New York State Coach of the Year won three Staten Island Catholic League titles, two Archdiocesan titles, 3 Catholic Downstate titles, back-to-back New York State Federation championships, and 80 percent of her games.
DUSTY RHODES
Before he was a World Series hero, Dusty Rhodes was a journeyman outfielder for the New York Giants, best known as a left-handed pinch-hitter and post-game partier.
But in the 10th inning of the opening game of the 1954 Series, Rhodes hit a walk-off, three-run homer to beat the American League champion Cleveland Indians, winners of a then-record 111 regular-season games.
The next day he delivered all the offense the Giants needed with a run-scoring single and a late-game home run, then drove in two more runs in Game Three, setting the stage for a Giant sweep.
KEVIN ROONEY
Kevin Rooney was a New York Golden Gloves champion, 21-4-1 as a professional — a record that includes a meeting with four-division champion Alexis Arguello — and heavyweight champion Mike Tyson’s trainer during the meteoric start and explosive prime of Tyson’s career.
With Rooney in his corner, Tyson was 35-0, consolidated the heavyweight championship, and fought seven successful title defenses. Without him, he lost all three titles, while Rooney turned his focus to training Vinny Pazienza through his comeback from a near-fatal car accident, a broken neck, and a 13-month layoff to a Super Middleweight title.
VIN SCAMARDELLA
As a young man, Vin Scamardella was a dominating fast-pitch softball star, with 30 no-hitters and a perfect game to his credit, and a parade of suitors eager to acquire his services. But as good as he was in the circle, Scamardella’s lasting gifts to the game go far beyond strikeouts, wins or losses.
A lifelong player, umpire, and ambassador for the game, he led the drive to build the first lighted softball field on Staten Island, and made the game accessible to a wider spectrum of players by standardizing the rules and providing legitimacy for the modified-pitch version of the game, earning a place in the ASA Hall of Fame as “The Father of Modified Pitch Softball.”
DUANE SINGLETON
The Island has had other high school athletes who excelled in baseball and basketball; but only one, Duane Singleton, who scored 1,000 points on the hardwood, and then became a Major League centerfielder.
Drafted straight out of McKee/Staten Island Tech by the Milwaukee Brewers in the fifth round of the 1992 amateur draft, when he was 17, Singleton played 33 big-league games with the Brewers and the Detroit Tigers when he was still a teenager.
He hit .258 over parts of eight minor-league seasons, stole 30 bases five times, and went whole summers without committing an error, before finishing his career in the Independent Atlantic League, where the early promise of his speed and athleticism was still evident to anybody watching him play.
JOHN SKRONSKI
John Skronski was a High School All-American quarterback in the fall of 1978, throwing for 1,940 yards and 19 touchdowns for an undefeated Monsignor Farrell team, and one of three quarterbacks recruited by Notre Dame in its search for Joe Montana’s successor. (The other two were Dan Marino and John Elway; you might’ve heard of them.)
When Elway demurred, and Marino stayed home to play for Pitt, it seemed the job was Skronski’s, until a new coach decided he wanted an option quarterback to run his offense. He could’ve transferred; but Skronski remained loyal to his school, content to go through life as a Notre Dame man, and a Staten Island icon: the best there ever was in the old neighborhood.
RODNEY STILWELL
Rodney Stilwell has won all of Staten Island’s amateur golf tournaments, most of them multiple times, including five Staten Island Amateurs, six Staten Island Classics, and a combined 14 Senior Amateurs and Senior Classics. But there was a time when all that seemed impossible.
As a young boy, Stillwell was run over by a city bus, his right leg crushed, the knee ruined. In the years after college, the pain only grew worse, and by 1988, when he was unable to walk the courses, his competitive career seemed over.
Over time, advances in medicine provided a glimmer of hope. After several complicated surgeries and a three-year rehabilitation program, Stillwell returned to competitive play at the age of 46, his game as good as ever; adding to his string of titles and, in 2013, becoming the only man to complete the “Staten Island Slam” – winning the Staten Island Amateur, Staten Island Classic, Senior Amateur and Senior Classic in the same year.
JOHN “THE HEAT” VERDEROSA
John “The Heat” Verderosa, Rooney and Al Tobe’s P.A.L. stablemate when the three Stapleton teenagers won New York Golden Gloves titles at Madison Square Garden on the same night in 1975, was 16-2 and a three-time Gloves champion as an amateur, 28-3 and a one-time USBA Super Featherweight champion as a pro, and a promoter’s dream.
True to his nickname, the 2022 New York State Boxing Hall of Fame inductee brought the heat every night, most famously in the 1983 TKO victory that ended former Featherweight champion Sean O’Grady’s career.
