Honoring Gus Alfieri: Player, Coach, Writer

11/17/2014

Gus Alfieri writes his own stuff. This is no small accomplishment for any athlete, any coach, any public figure, who decides to put out a book.

Alfieri won championships as a player and a coach; now he is being honored with the Lapchick Character Award on Thursday in New York. After writing a biography of his mentor, Joe Lapchick, the coach of the Knicks and St. John’s University, Alfieri helped originate the Lapchick Character Award Foundation to honor coaches who demonstrate the good side of sports.

In a world of award ceremonies, this annual November luncheon is special. It comes up Thursday at 11:30 AM at the Wyndham New Yorker, catty-corner to Madison Square Garden, hours before the 2K Classic, benefiting the Wounded Warrior Project Coaches for Cancer doubleheader.

This is probably the most equitable awards event in any sport. No women are being honored this year but since the first luncheon in 2008 the Lapchick Award has gone to pioneers of women’s basketball -- Pat Summitt of Tennessee and Kay Yow of North Carolina State among others. In 2012 I loved hearing Cathy Rush, who won three national titles with tiny Immaculata in the 1970’s, telling stories about the low budgets, the buses and dicey flight connections, the recruiting.

Bootstrappers have great tales to tell. One of the best was Clarence (Big House) Gaines from Winston-Salem State, who died in 2005. His protégé, Earl Monroe will talk about him on Thursday. Another recipient will be John Kresse, who played for Lou Carnesecca at St. John’s and led the College of Charleston into Division I and the NCAA tournament.

Alfieri will be honored by his associates in the Lapchick Foundation, a no-brainer, considering this award was his idea. He is the epitome of the student-athlete that all sports schools like to envision. He played for Lapchick, helped win the National Invitation Tournament in his senior year – and kept going, right through a Ph. D. and a long run as coach of St. Anthony’s in Huntington Station, N.Y.

Later, Alfieri wrote “Lapchick: The Life of a Legendary Player and Coach in the Glory Days of Basketball,” published in 2006. Like any responsible author, Alfieri included the complex parts but also pointed out how Lapchick came to warn younger players about gambling after being burned by two teammates of Alfieri, and how Lapchick was a pioneer in race relations as a player, hugging his African-American opponent before every barnstorming game.

Alfieri is completing his next book, “Once in a Lifetime: A Basketball Coach’s Memoir of a Championship Team,” about his St. Anthony’s team that dominated New York State in the 1970’s.

For information: http://www.characteraward.com/

8 Comments

mike from whitestone

11/17/2014 06:32:23 am

Thanks GV for putting this up in lights.
To the Coach, thanks from your 4 year student manager at St Anthony's and more importantly, congratulations. From my days as a camper at All American Camp in the early 70's through today, you have been a model in dedication and fearlessness for what you believe in.
You showed me about and gave me responsibility at an early age and belieed in me.
I laugh now thinking of how you would get my attention in all four corners of any gym........."Connors!"
My jumper or man-to-man never took me too far, but the skills required for managing are still being used. A life lesson.
My dad, brother and I all salute you here.
Maybe we can get the guys to run a Charlie Brown or Stack for you Thursday at lunch!!

Once more, congratulations Coach.

Thanks again GV.

George Vecsey

11/17/2014 08:10:24 am

Gee, Mike, he seems so easy-going. GV

mike from whitestone

11/17/2014 09:15:11 am

GV

He is...........he tolerated me for four years!!
Just don't tell anyone!!

:>)

Alan Rubin link

11/20/2014 12:34:54 am

Very nice tribute.

Good coaches teachers have a lifelong effect upon many of their players that goes beyond just teaching the techniques of the game.

Thanks for sharing.

Ed Martin

11/20/2014 09:39:48 am

Alan, not to change the subject (yes, it is), but your alma mater, Lehigh is about to play its 150th football game against Lafayette at Yankee Stadium. I think even a soccer goalie must have a take.

Cheers.

Alan Rubin link

11/20/2014 02:57:03 pm

Ed

The 150 year Lehigh-Lafayette football rivalry is the longest continuous one in the US. It is nice to see them on a big stage.

Although not a football fan, I will watch the game.

Lehigh has had many good football teams over the years, including an undefeated season and a one loss season when I was there.

This year they have been just awful, winning just one game and getting blown out in many of the losses.

However, Lehigh-Lafayette games in all sports have had a fairly interesting record of upsets.

I’ve just made an acquaintance with Joe Weiss, who played soccer for Muhlenberg, 1989-1993.

It is a little after your time, but you might know of him if you follow their program. From what I can tell, they seem to have a good program now.

Thanks for the interest.

A pleasant Thanksgiving to all.

Bruce Weir

11/22/2014 02:04:35 pm

Thanks George for posting the tribute to my old St Anthony's HS Basketball Coach Gus Alfieri. As a former player on his teams during the 1970s, I am very happy for Gus to receive the Lapchick Leadership Award. It is especially nice that he received it along with John Kresse. I have fond memories of playing for Gus at St. A's back in the day. I remember he sometimes shared stories about Joe Lapchick, during basketball practices, and it was interesting to learn more about him through reading his book. You had to be tough (mentally and physically) and smart to play for Gus. He emphasized the fundamentals, hard work, team work, and the importance of being prepared for situations that would arise during the game. Gus used many complicated offensive\defensive schemes that befuddled athletically superior opponents and resulted in two NY State HS Championships. He turned a basketball game into a chess match; while many opposing coaches thought they were playing a simple game of checkers.

Like his old coach, Gus taught us many lessons that could also be used off the court. One of my favorites was his "Patience and Prudence" lesson which was the basis for his offensive philosophy. I'm also glad to hear that he still operates his Summer Basketball Camp, with his son Ron, and passes on his lessons to young kids. Many great coaches and players passed through the camp, in the past, and shared their knowledge. From the late 1960s thru early 1980s, the quality of basketball played in the New York City metro area on all levels (Pro, College, HS) was at a high point and Gus's teams exemplified it. It really was a special exciting time. I was lucky to have played back then on the HS and College levels and experience it. Sadly, when young, you do not notice and appreciate history, as well as, when you are older. It is nice to reflect back now and see the connection to Joe Lapchick, and the development of organized basketball, through my old coach’s teachings and his efforts to remember and celebrate his old coach.
Thanks again,
Bruce Weir
Cincinnati, OH

PHIL BUTTLING

2/18/2015 02:45:50 pm

I WENT TO ST FRANCIS PREP AND WAS A CLASS MATE OF A GUS, LATIN CLASS BRO BENNY. IS THIS THE SAME GUS ?

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More and More, I Talk to the Dead--Margaret Renkl

NASHVILLE — After my mother died so suddenly — laughing at a rerun of “JAG” at 10 p.m., dying of a hemorrhagic stroke by dawn — I dreamed about her night after night. In every dream she was willfully, outrageously alive, unaware of the grief her death had caused. In every dream relief poured through me like a flash flood. Oh, thank God!
Then I would wake into keening grief all over again.
Years earlier, when my father learned he had advanced esophageal cancer, his doctor told him he had perhaps six months to live. He lived far longer than that, though I never thought of it as “living” once I learned how little time he really had. For six months my father was dying, and then he kept dying for two years more. I was still working and raising a family, but running beneath the thin soil of my own life was a river of death. My father’s dying governed my days.
After he died, I wept and kept weeping, but I rarely dreamed about my father the way I would dream about my mother nearly a decade later. Even in the midst of calamitous grief, I understood the difference: My father’s long illness had given me time to work death into the daily patterns of my life. My mother’s sudden death had obliterated any illusion that daily patterns are trustworthy.
Years have passed now, and it’s the ordinariness of grief itself that governs my days. The very air around me thrums with absence. I grieve the beloved high-school teacher I lost the summer after graduation and the beloved college professor who was my friend for more than two decades. I grieve the father I lost nearly 20 years ago and the father-in-law I lost during the pandemic. I grieve the great-grandmother who died my junior year of college and the grandmother who lived until I was deep into my 40s.
Some of those I grieve are people I didn’t even know. How can John Prine be gone? I hear his haunting last song, “I Remember Everything,” and I still can’t quite believe that John Prine is gone.
-----
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/30/opinion/death-grief-memory.html
Jan. 30, 2023

Honoring Gus Alfieri: Player, Coach, Writer

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