2010 Athletic Hall of Fame Program

The Fourth

Saint Peter’s Prep

Athletic Hall of Fame

Induction Ceremony & Dinner

November 4, 2010 Saint Peter’s Prep Jersey City, New Jersey

The Fourth Saint Peter’s Prep

Athletic Hall of Fame

Induction Ceremony & Dinner Honoring

Mike Burgess

Jack Cassedy, ’48

Jim Deveney, ’53

Doug Gronda, ’86

Mike Hurley, ’56

John Irvine, ’83, P’11

Tony Mendolla, ’62

Jerry Vayda, ’52

The 1951-52 Basketball Team

The 1952-53 Basketball Team

November 4, 2010 – 6:30 p.m.

Saint Peter’s Prep – Jersey City, New Jersey

Program for the Evening Master of Ceremonies Joe Parkes, S.J., ’62 t

Invocation and Welcome Bob Reiser, S.J. President, Saint Peter’s Prep t

Order of Induction Mike Burgess

Cross Country, Track & Field Coach

Jack Cassedy, ’48 Track

Jim Deveney, ’53 Baseball & Basketball

Doug Gronda, ’86 Wrestling & Football

Mike Hurley, ’56 Football

John Irvine, ’83,P’11 Soccer Player & Coach

Tony Mendolla, ’62 Football

Jerry Vayda, ’52 † Basketball & Baseball

The 1951-52 & 1952-53 Basketball Teams t

Dinner

in the O’Keefe Commons t

Pride & Glory

† posthumous

Mike Burgess

Speed and endurance – the two keys to success in any race. The record will show that Mike Burgess’ cross country and track & field teams have displayed ample speed, and they only seem to get faster.

Prep has earned 19 Jersey City and 17 South Hudson cross country titles in Mike’s storied coaching career. In the past seven years alone, 24 of his indoor and outdoor runners have earned all county honors.

Four indoor seasons in a row have seen Prep represented at the Nike Indoor Nationals. The past two Penn Relays have seen Prep’s 4x400 team bring home the gold medal in their class – most recently with a blistering school-record time of 3:18.88. And this past summer, Prep’s own Najee Glass traveled to Singapore, where he helped the United States medley relay team bring home the gold in the inaugural Youth Olympic Games.

As for endurance, consider this: Mike Burgess has coached Prep runners at the varsity, JV and freshman levels each season, in all three seasons each year, since 1983. That’s 82 straight seasons, through the end of this year’s cross country campaign. Along the way, he’s taught character along with athelticism, and done it all with a style all his own.

Character, of course, is the name of the game at his day job, too: as a crisis intervention teacher at Ferris High School, Mike enforces the rules while helping students learn to resolve conflicts in a mature and constructive manner. He and wife Barbara reside in Jersey City. They have one daughter and three grandchildren, including Prep freshman Corey Fogg.

Jack Cassedy, ’48

Reading over Jack Cassedy’s accomplishments as a member of the Prep track team, one might mistake it for a list of championships a runner could have won in Hudson County high school athletics circa 1948. Amazingly, however, these titles all belonged to young Jack Cassedy: Jersey City indoor and outdoor champion; regional champion; Hudson County champion; Jesuit champion; New Jersey interscholastic indoor and outdoor champion; and national interscholastic indoor champion. Whether competing individually or as part of a relay team, when Jack Cassedy stepped to the line, he was the man to beat. When he wasn’t running for Prep, he was running for office, serving as president of his class for the first three years, and as a student council representative as a senior.

Small wonder, then, that college track teams were engaged in a race of their own to offer Jack athletic scholarships. Ultimately, he accepted the first ever track scholarship to Providence College, where his heroics continued as he won numerous championships.

After college, Jack would be invited to join the prestigious New York Athletic Club’s track team, competing alongside several 1952 Olympians.

Jack has been retired since 1993 from a career in the insurance industry that saw him rise to several leadership positions, most recently chairman and C.E.O. of SCB, Inc. He and wife Betty split their time between Normandy Beach, New Jersey and Naples, Florida.

Jim Deveney, ’53

It’s fitting that Jim Deveney’s classmates called him – still, in fact, call him – “Jim Jim.” After all, he represents not just one great Prep athlete but two. There is the basketball Jim, the “glue” that held together the state champion basketball team of his senior year, a team we honor this evening. It was Jim’s free throw against Trenton Catholic that cemented the state title. And even more impressively, there is the baseball Jim. That’s the Jim who dominated the talk of Hudson County baseball in 1953, notching hits in eleven consecutive at-bats. Even after a controversial scoring decision saw him reach on an error in the twelfth at-bat, Jim, undeterred, went on to earn three more walks and two more hits for a total of seventeen plate appearances on base safely.

That magical 1953 season capped a high school career in which he posted a batting average over .500, committed just one error and struck out only three times. Coach Bill Cochrane was impressed, remarking, “You can’t strike him out!” The Pittsburgh Pirates were impressed, too, signing him to a minor league contract.

Both basketball Jim and baseball Jim earned all-city, all-county and all-state honors during Jim Deveney’s four years at Prep. Now retired from teaching in the Elizabeth public schools, he resides in Bayonne.

Doug Gronda, ’86

The 1985 Prep football team earned the school’s first county title since the undefeated season of 1958. Fittingly, one of three cocaptains 25 years ago was Doug Gronda, whose father, Rich, ’59, had been a part of those fabled teams of the late ’50s. The senior running back and linebacker was co-mvp of the county championship game against North Bergen.

But for all his gridiron heroics, Doug Gronda’s name was made on the wrestling mats. The first Prep wrestler to win 90 matches, his school win record stood for nearly 20 years. In all four years of his Prep wrestling career, he placed in the district finals, winning the title in 1985.

He finished two seasons in the regional top-three and reached the quarterfinals of the state tournament in 1986. The three-time Maryland Province Jesuit Tournament winner was a member of a team of North Jersey all-stars who took on the visiting Japanese under-18 national team, a member of the state freestyle team that competed in the junior nationals, a 1985 AAU all-American and the 1985 Eastern U.S. freestyle champion.

Following a four-year wrestling career at Brown, Doug went on to earn two master’s degrees and an M.D. from Boston University, spending time as an assistant wrestling coach at Harvard along the way. He lives in Upton, Massachusetts with wife Judy and their two daughters. He practices medicine as part of a 50-member multi-specialty group, and serves as medical director of Saint Patrick’s Manor, a skilled nursing facility in Framingham.

Mike Hurley, ’56

“It appears that I was destined to attend Saint Peter’s Prep at an early age,” Mike Hurley recalls, “since my father, Thomas, ’27, advised me that I had no other options.” If it was a matter of destiny for Mike to attend Prep, then it was also a matter of destiny for opposing linemen never to forget the day they first lined up opposite this hard-nosed tackle. And so was it destined for the scribes of New Jersey high school football to take notice: in his senior year, he was named to the Newark Star-Ledger All-State and All-Group first teams; the Jersey Journal All-County and Catholic Group A All-State first teams; the Hudson Dispatch Parochial All-State first team; the Newark News All-North Jersey Catholic Prep Schools first team and All-State third team; and the Advocate All-North Jersey first team.

When all the ink had dried, Mike accepted a four-year football scholarship from Coach Mike Holovak at Boston College, where he played in the inaugural game at Alumni Field in 1957. With a degree in industrial management in hand, Mike recejved a commission in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he attained the rank of captain and played football while stationed in Virginia and California. Now retired after a long career at the American Can Company, which saw him rise to director of international sales and marketing, he lives with wife Lorraine Ann in Newtown, Connecticut, where he has served three terms on the town’s Legislative Council. They have three daughters and six grandchildren.

John Irvine, ’83, P’11

In the fall of 1979, a freshman from Jersey City put on a Prep soccer uniform for the first time. Over the next four seasons, John Irvine would go on to become an All-County and All-State goalkeeper for Coach Connie Gallagher. As a walk-on at Rider College, he played his way to a scholarship offer for sophomore year, but he transferred to Saint Peter’s College. And that’s where the real story begins.

John returned to Prep in 1985 while he was still in college, to coach the JV soccer team. More than 50 wins and a county title later, John moved up to coach varsity in 1990, succeeding Jack Raslowsky, ’79, who had just been appointed principal. In 18 seasons, John’s teams amassed a record of 217-113-33 (with 144 shutout wins, the proud ex-goalkeeper adds), earning five city, four league and six county crowns, and two state sectional appearances.

Equally important is the legacy of sportsmanship and integrity John helped establish for Prep soccer, reflected in the numerous sportsmanship awards he and his teams earned during his career – among them, a 1992 Jack Schrumpf Sportsmanship Award from the Referees’ Association, a 1998 Jersey Journal Everyday Heroes Award and a 1998 Award of Excellence from from the National Federation of State High School Associations and the NJSIAA. A three-time Jersey City and four-time HCIAA Coach of the Year, John now serves as Prep’s director of admissions. He resides in Kearny with wife Ticia and son John, a current Prep senior.

Tony Mendolla, ’62

In the ’50s and ’60s, Coach Bill Cochrane fielded great Prep football teams, composed of great Prep football players. Tony Mendolla epitomized the Prep football tradition of excellence both on the field and in the classroom.

A three-year starting halfback, Tony was best known for his ability to break away for a long gain, making him a scoring threat from any field position. In a scrimmage against Snyder, Tony burst into the spotlight as a sophomore with an 88-yard touchdown. He steadily led the team in rushing and scoring, earning spots on the Coaches Fifth Quarter, Sunday Daily News and Hudson Dispatch All County Teams and the Parochial All-State Team. As a senior team captain, he won the Tommy Meyers Trophy as MVP of the Thanksgiving Day game against Dickinson. And through it all, he remained a four-year honor student, in the top ten percent of his class.

After returning to Prep for four years as a math teacher and assistant football coach, Tony began at 25-year career with Continental Insurance, during which time he continued to teach math and computer science at the college level. He would return to the classroom full-time before retiring in 2007. He and his wife of 44 years, Carmela, reside in Manchester, New Jersey. They have two daughters and three grandchildren.

Jerry Vayda, ’52

Whatever the sport, whatever the era, great teams have certain things in common: the right coach, the right talent, the right chemistry.

And to have the right chemistry, a team needs a catalyst – that player who gives his teammates an edge and makes it all happen.

In the case of the 1950-51 and 1951-52 Prep basketball teams, that player, that catalyst, was Jerry Vayda. With his tenacious rebounding, laser-accurate shooting and lightning-quick passing, Jerry could help his team from anywhere on the court. In the 1951-52 county final against Saint Michael’s, it was Jerry’s gutsy rebound against Tommy Heinsohn that turned the tide in Prep’s favor.

Based on the astonishing 44 scholarship offers he received, college coaches, too, knew that Jerry Vayda was a special player. He chose to attend the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the first recruit for new coach Frank McGuire. Over his four years as a Tar Heel, Jerry once again proved to be a catalyst, twice earning the Foy Robinson award as the most inspirational player on the team. No less an authority than Lennie Rosenbluth, who succeeded Jerry as captain of the UNC basketball team and led the Tar Heels to the 1957 national championship, credits his predecessor with laying the groundwork for UNC’s legendary basketball reputation. This evening, we are honored to have Jerry’s widow, Priscilla, on hand to accept his award.

The 1951-1952 Basketball Team

The 1952-1953 Basketball Team

The late 1940s and early 1950s represented a “golden era” for high school basketball in Hudson County in general, and at Saint Peter’s Prep in particular. Coach Roy Leenig and his teams dominated the courts of Jersey City, not to mention the rest of the county, the state and even the entire Eastern Seaboard.

Arguably the most outstanding among the Prep squads of that era, the 1951-52 team complied an overall record, including tournament play, of 25-2. Along the way, they took the Jesuit Tournament, Jersey City, Hudson County and New Jersey Catholic A titles, before capping the season with a second straight triumph in the Eastern States Catholic Invitational Tournament (ESCIT). That tournament, held from 1938 through 1962, brought together the greatest high school hardwood heroes on the East Coast, and amounted to a sort of de facto national championship.

By all accounts a worthy successor to that squad, the 1952-53 team repeated the feat of losing just two games in the course of the season, sewing up the Jesuit Tournament, South Hudson and New Jersey Catholic A championships. Sadly, we can never know whether a third straight ESCIT crown was in the cards; a change in NJSIAA policy kept Leenig’s crew from participating in the post-season tournament. To the players and those who followed the team, however, a three-peat (to use a term coined decades later), which would have retired the ESCIT trophy and housed it permanently at Grand & Warren, seemed a distinct possibility.

As Prep’s basketball program once again rises to prominence, it is fitting that we honor these two teams and their legacy of excellence.

Sponsors & Donors

We are grateful for this evening’s sponsors, whose generous donations will support the Hall of Fame Scholarship Endowment.

Sons & Daughters of Saint Peter

Tom Sullivan, ’53 In Honor of Jim Deveney, ’53 Jesuit & Special Guest Sponsors Rich Barnitt, ’56 In Memory of Lou Rettino, ’59 Joe Carr, ’61 In Honor of Tony Mendolla, ’62 and John Irvine, ’83, P’11 Jim Hackett, ’56 Rich Hamilton, ’90 Brian Harkins, P’13 In Honor of Mike Burgess

Ken Kunzman, ’54 Patrick Mellea, P’04 In Honor of Mike Burgess and John Irvine, ’83, P’11 Jack Savage, ’57 In Memory of Rev. Joe Novak, S.J. Paul Schaetzle, ’71 Priscilla Vayda In Memory of Jerry Vayda, ’52

Contributors to the Hall of Fame Scholarship Ed Corrigan, ’62 In Honor of Tony Mendolla, ’62 Dan Federman In Honor of Mike Hurley, ’56 Larry Fell, ’54 Matt Foster-Moore, ’00 In Honor of John Irvine, ’83, P’11

John Frost In Honor of Jim Deveney, ’53 Michael Giacone, P’12 Julia Mendolla Rienzo In Honor of Tony Mendolla, ’62 Saint Peter’s Prep Advancement Staff In Honor of John Irvine, ’83, P’11

The Prep Alumni Board The Athletic Hall of Fame was created in 2005 by the Saint Peter’s Prep Alumni Board, which sponsors this evening’s induction ceremony and dinner.

For their leadership and continued support, we wish to thank the members of the Alumni Board: Bob Colacurcio, ’73 President Rich Hamilton, ’90 Vice President Ray Aumack, ’55 Tony Azzarto, S.J. John Bergin, ’50 Gene Boyle, ’56 Lou Castelli, ’66 Jack Caulfield, ’71 Lou Cella, ’50

Kevin Brodbeck, ’89 Secretary Len De Pinto, ’76 Gabe Doria, ’81 John Feeney, ’80 Dave Finn, ’82 John Gibney, ’81 Joe Giglio, ’87 Jim Hardiman, ’47 Steve Hudik, ’85

Jerry Lally, ’56 Joe Massarelli, ’80 Robert E. Reiser, S.J. Jim Ryan, ’66 Jack Savage, ’57 Paul Schaetzle, ’71 George Taite, ’73

Athletic Hall of Fame Selection Committee Tony Azzarto, S.J. Gerry Bellotti John Bergin, '50 Lou Castelli, '66 Joe Cooney, '45 John Feeney, '80

Joe Guarino, '86 John Gibney, '81 Ed Grant, '43 Rich Gronda, '59 Rich Hansen Mike Hogan, '72 Jim Horan, '70

Jim Keenan, S.J. Joe Parkes, S.J., '62 Jack Raslowsky, '79 Paul Schaetzle, '71 T.J. Sullivan, '93 Joe Urbanovich, '65

Acknowledgments

& Special Thanks

Prep’s Office of Institutional Advancement, along with other members of the Saint Peter’s Prep staff, have played an essential role in ensuring the success of this evening’s event.

In particular, we thank the following.

For Their Leadership Support:

Chris Casazza, ’97 Chief Advancement Officer

Bob Reiser, S.J. President

Gary Bogdanski, ’02 Director of Alumni Relations

For Their Ongoing Logistical Support:

Kevin Albers, Nancy Cunningham, P’99,’01, Danielle DiCerbo, Fred Galano, Mike Jiran, ’03, Debbie Lillis, P’10, Ginny Needham-Doyle, P’07, Renee Rivera, Liz Walsh and the Prep Operations Staff

t Program design: Mike Jiran, ’03 Printing: CD Graphics – Joe Villanella, ’79

Pride

&Glory It is our Pride and our Glory, old in song and in story; and we cherish your name and we love your fair fame for the days of long ago.

And we your sons will be loyal to Saint Peter’s so royal.

May your banners still guide us wherever we go!

It is a story of gladness, with no shadow of sadness; our years spent with you, Saint Peter’s so true, and you hold our hearts’ love yet.

And through the years we will treasure, with a joy beyond measure, the gifts you have given.

We shall never forget.