Bob Hurley Sr.

is a coach without a
team. Now he's on a bigger mission
By Dana O'Neil 7 hours ago
JERSEY CITY, N.J. He woke up around 7, flipped on some Pandora
music and scrolled the three newspapers he reads religiously. News
consumed, he fired up the laptop, scanned through some pertinent box
scores and checked his email.
Next he found something to fidget over. Hed already bought the
eucalyptus oil, polished the wood surround on the fireplace and
rearranged the shelves behind the sofa. The scratch on the range hood
needed attention. Toothpaste, he had read, would take it out.
Later in the morning, he hopped on his bike and rode around the park,
stopping about 30 minutes in for some calisthenics. After a quick shower
he drove over to Union City, picked up the two grandkids and brought
them back to the cozy apartment he and his wife share on the edge of the
Hudson River. The view makes the place the Statue of Liberty sits
smack dab in the middle of the living-room window and he makes the
view. A squirt of spray and a wipe with one of those good microfiber
sheets does the trick.
Dinner out with friends, back home in time to catch some hoops on
television and Monday was in the books.
There was just one problem. Monday was the first day of high school
basketball practice in New Jersey, and for the first time in 50 years, Bob
Hurley Sr. didnt have a team to coach.
There is nothing right about that sentence. Bob Hurley is meant to be a
high school basketball coach as sure as Frank Sinatra was born to be a
singer. Hurley came to St. Anthonys, an oasis of a high school in
hardscrabble Jersey City, as the freshman coach in 1967. Five years later
he was put in charge of the Friars varsity. Under his Hall of Fame
watch, St. Anthonys won 1,184 games and 28 state championships and
went undefeated in eight seasons, the most recent in 2016. Countless
players went on to college careers, and even more went on to productive
lives, their time under Hurleys benevolent dictatorship not only
giving them a safe haven as high schoolers but guiding them into secure
adulthood.
Now Hurley sits peering out of his freshly wiped window while children
from a Montessori school enjoy recess in the park beneath him. In a few
years those same kids will call the St. Anthonys building home.
Administrators plan to refurbish the old school and eventually move the
students, the ones whose parents pay more than $20,000 a year for pre-
K, into the same place that never charged more than $6,100 for a
Catholic high school education.
That, of course, is the reason Hurley is lounging around in a University
of Rhode Island sweatshirt while basketball goes on without him. Last
year, the cost to educate one St. Anthonys high schooler ran about
$13,000, leaving a $7,000 chasm between tuition and expenses. School
officials including Hurley, who became president in 2014 refused
to raise tuition, knowing full well it would price out the kids who needed
the place the most. Fundraising efforts came up woefully short, and the
Catholic Church could not (or would not, depending on whom you ask)
offer any assistance.
Finally on June 30, St. Anthonys closed its doors for good, shuttering
Hurleys legendary career along with it.
So whats a 70-year-old man with a wealth of knowledge, a Rolodex of
contacts and a burning passion for basketball supposed to do with his
time?
Well, start a revolution, for one.
===
Tweet.
The whistle blows, and Hurley points to the center circle. Kids scramble,
screaming, Dont be last! Dont be last! because the last one there has
to do push-ups.
Tweet
The whistle blows, but Hurley doesnt point to the circle. Kids raise the
ball and their arms over their heads.
It took us about a month to get that down, Hurley says with a chuckle.
It was a struggle.
Back in February, when the red-inked writing of debts owed appeared
on the wall of St. Anthonys future, Bob and Chris Hurley started to
consider what they could do next. Full-bore retirement was never going
to be an option. Even when her husband was coaching and had little time
to spare, Chris would return home from running errands to find the
furniture in the house entirely rearranged. Oh, please, she says. He
cant sit still.
She worried about her husband of 47 years, and by extension, herself.
Chris was as much a part of St. Anthonys basketball as Bob was. She
practiced the family values he preached, opening her home for
overnights and pancakes for kids who needed a place to crash.
Coaching at another school had little appeal to either of them. He didnt
want to be an assistant the suggestion seat, he calls it and feared
that trying to recreate what he had at St. Anthonys would only serve to
tarnish what he built at St. Anthonys. The place worked because it was
his for 50 years, his old-school rules and discipline understood and
accepted by both players and their parents.
Ultimately the couple decided that their future lay in Bobs past. Before
he came to St. Anthonys, Hurley spent a few years at St. Pauls, his
parish grammar school. He coached about 100 kids there, combining
knowledge with know-how. Dribbling drills, for example, were held in
school hallways, chairs serving as defenders to weave around.
Why not revisit those roots? So the couple formed the Hurley Family
Foundation, a 501(c) nonprofit dedicated to teaching kids in the Jersey
City area the fundamentals of basketball. They had no experience in
running a foundation, but after trying to raise $1 million annually to
keep St. Anthonys open, that turned out to be a breeze. A lifetime in
Catholic education has taught the Hurleys the art of penny-pinching, and
they realized they merely needed rent money for the Community
Education Recreation Center (CERC), where St. Anthonys practiced
and played for years, insurance, T-shirts and some gear. A golf outing,
run by Chris and the couples daughter, Melissa, covered the bulk of the
expenses. Donations took care of the rest.
The foundation launched in September, with Hurley running a league
focused on instruction every weekday. From 3 to 4:30 p.m., elementary
school kids owned the court. From 4:30 until 6, high schoolers
commandeered the space.
There are no travel teams, only in-house games, and each Friday is
FIBA three-on-three day, kids allowed to choose their own teams for the
competition. Admission requires nothing more than a parents signature
on a permission slip, as well as an understanding that if you dont show
up for the fundamental work, you dont play in the games.
That last stipulation, of course, is revolutionary.
For years, Hurley has watched what he considers the devolution of the
game, sports specialization leading to sport fatigue, summer-league
showcases and travel teams creating a generation of kids who play
basketball but dont know how to play basketball. A varsity kid, pretty
good player, will drive to the basket and not be able to shoot a left-
handed layup because nobody ever said to him, You need a left-hand
finish, Hurley laments.
He purposefully didnt advertise in the fall, content to let the soccer,
football and cross-country athletes enjoy their seasons. Word of mouth
and Hurleys reputation brought plenty of kids to the gym anyway
(about 40 for the younger session; 20 for the high school group), and
those who showed up were greeted with a heavy dose of skill work.
Hurley frequently crushed his kids hopes at the door, telling them there
would be minimal or no scrimmaging. Instead theyd learn what a pivot
foot is and how to use it; the proper way to throw (and catch) various
passes; weak-hand dribbling; finishing with the off hand; and
conditioning.
Were not trying to promote the best player in town, Hurley says.
Hes probably overly promoted anyway. Were trying to give other kids
a chance to become basketball players.
It took a while. Hurleys hunch that kids arent taught properly was
backed up by just how long it took them to understand what to do when
he blew his whistle. But rather than grow frustrated with their lack of
understanding, he merely dug in deeper, working even more on the
basics. Slowly he was rewarded with progress, and now, three months
later, the same kids who didnt know what to do when the whistle blew
are deft ball handlers who can dribble two basketballs at a time. Its
amazing what they can do, Chris says. So great to see.
Already the Jersey City mayor is itching to get Hurley to add more
clinics and leagues in other parts of the city, but he is reluctant. He fears
that spreading himself too thin will only dilute what hes trying to
accomplish. He has big dreams he hopes to raise enough money to
pay for 15 to 20 kids to attend the summer camp he has been running in
the Poconos for the past 25 years, and he intends to purchase adjustable
baskets so the little kids can play on appropriate-sized rims but the
dreams are localized. People here will listen to me if I open my
mouth, Hurley says. Were trying to commit ourselves to the kids
right here. I dont want to start it and abandon them.
Thats not to say that Hurley cant effect change elsewhere. If anyone
can galvanize basketball to refocus on fundamentals, it is Hurley, whose
tentacles stretch far and whose ideas carry instant credibility. In the last
few months, hes met with officials from the NBA, the NBA Players
Association and USA Basketball. They all want to make donations to his
league, but they also want to know how they can cultivate the same
programs elsewhere.
Hurley has been, as is his wont, frank. Current and former NBA players
love to lend their names and their checkbooks to travel teams Chris
Paul, Kyle Lowry, Kobe Bryant and Penny Hardaway are among those
sponsoring teams but Hurley wants them to scrap that and run
leagues and clinics in their hometowns instead.
The only way to change whats wrong with the sport, he believes, is to
reconstruct it from its foundation. You can reach so many more kids
this way, he says. And thats really what we need to do.
===
All of this is not to say Hurley is no longer hurting. That angry faculty
members questioned whether he did all he could to save the school still
stings; that the Friars lost their last game to Hudson Catholic in the
sectional title game still hurts like hell. He knows he fought as hard as he
could, courting donors and starting a GoFundMe page, and that he was
victimized by the failing business model of urban Catholic education,
not lack of effort.
But the school he helped establish is closed, and that is a defeat a man
with just 125 losses in 45 seasons will always have a hard time
accepting. Plus, he misses it. The foundation and the giddy youngsters
are a welcome distraction, but it was the high school kids he always felt
an affinity for. They needed him, and in retrospect he realizes he needed
them, too.
Being a high school coach doesnt pay the bills, so for the bulk of his
career, Hurley also worked as a probation officer, a perfect gig for the
son of a one-time Jersey City beat cop. From that side of the table, he
saw all that a city could do to mess up a kids life. With a whistle and a
clipboard, he found a way to make things better, coaching and basketball
reaffirming his fervent wish to do people right.
Until last week he could pretend it hadnt changed that much. He
welcomed kids from all across the city and surrounding area some
from Jersey City public high schools, others from nearby Catholic
schools and one kid who commuted from the suburbs an hour away
to his late-afternoon sessions. But high school practice beckons, and
when the sessions reconvene after Thanksgiving, he will be working
with middle schoolers, not high schoolers.
Do I miss the high school kids? he says. Of course.
That doesnt even begin to graze the surface of how he feels about his
own players. The closing of St. Anthonys also created a group of
basketball orphans. Players from that last team are now scattered
Alexander Rice is at Mater Dei, near where his father, King, coaches
Monmouth University; Ithiel Horton enrolled at Roselle Catholic; Nigel
Marshall will play for Bishop McNamara in Maryland; and Ogbeneyole
Akuwovo, better known as Savior, will play for Ranney High School
near the Jersey shore.
They all call Hurley regularly. Their new schools are fine, but they are
unfamiliar and therefore uncomfortable. He takes every call but is
keenly aware that he is no longer their coach. Instead hell have to be
content with being their biggest fan.
When Hurley decided to begin his foundation, the only thing Chris
asked was that he not work the weekends. She did not entertain
excursions to rustic B&Bs or antique markets. I wanted to be able to go
to games, she says.
A typical Hurley weekend goes much like the one that just passed. On
Friday night they drove to Connecticut for Saturdays Hall of Fame
Tipoff tournament. The next morning they drove to the University of
Rhode Island, where their son Dan is the coach. The Rams played Holy
Cross on Sunday afternoon.
At some point theyll fly to Tempe to watch Arizona State, where older
son, Bobby, is the coach, and over the course of the season, theyll try to
get to Merrimack College and Cheyney State and hopefully catch St.
Bonaventure as the Bonnies pass through on the Atlantic 10 schedule.
Those are among the 20-some schools that count a former St. Anthony's
player on the roster.
Now with the high school season about to begin, theyll add the games
that include members of that final St. Anthonys roster. But in those
bleachers Hurley will be particularly careful. Well say what parents
should say after they watch their kids play, Hurley says. Mrs. Hurley?
What do we say?
I really enjoyed watching you play tonight, Chris answers on cue
before her husband finishes the thought.
And leave it at that. Leave it at that. Just get to the end of that sentence,
and drop a period.
===
After St. Anthonys closed, the school hosted Trophy Night, inviting
former athletes and students to collect whatever trinkets and mementos
they could find. Hurley claimed just one a small plaque from 1988-
89, commemorating his first undefeated season.
The choice was as much practical as it was sentimental it was one of
the few things he and Chris could find a spot for in their downsized
apartment. It sits on the mantle. On the floor beneath it rests the ESPY
he won in July as the nations best coach. It makes for the perfect trophy
sandwich. He says that is enough, that aside from keeping the school
open, he had no more professional goals to achieve. Had St. Anthonys
stayed open, he might have surpassed Morgan Wooten for second on the
all-time wins list. But whats that matter? he says.
No, there are plenty of loose ends with St. Anthonys closing, but Bob
Hurleys legacy isnt one of them. He became exactly what he was
supposed to become a basketball coach.
Now its time for a fresh start. Bob Hurley, revolutionary, has a nice ring
to it.
(Top photo: Elsa/Getty Images)