Dylan Butler

Dylan Butler

Live blog: CHSAA Class AA intersectional championship

March 13, 2010 , ι DYLAN BUTLER

Can’t make it to Fordham University’s Rose Hill Gymnasium Sunday afternoon? No problem. The Post’s CHSAA boys basketball beat writer Dylan Butler will be courtside for the Class AA intersectional... Read on

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The Butler Did It

March 13, 2010 , ι DYLAN BUTLER

Long before he was the PSAL girls soccer commissioner, Will Stasiuk was picked to coach the Richmond Hill girls soccer team. There was just one problem. He didn’t know the first thing about the sport and it was one day before the start of the season.
	 
“I had no idea what to do,” Stasiuk said. “I’m sitting there with books in my hands trying to figure this out.”
	 
Richmond Hill athletic director Peter Gibbs handed Stasiuk a phone number and gave him his instructions.
	 
“Call Charlie Zink.”
	 
Stasiuk did and Zink took care of the rest, from a crash course in the sport to providing a place for Stasiuk’s team to play.
	 
“Charlie had voluntarily given us use of the field behind the old St. Anthony’s Hospital,” Stasiuk said. “Out of his own pocket, Charlie would hire a kid to cut the grass for me. He was wonderful.”
	 
Zink, a girls soccer pioneer, died on Feb. 24 from pneumonia. He was 78.
	 
“He coached girls soccer before girls really played soccer in the tri-state area,” Stasiuk said. “He was coaching girls soccer before it was in vogue, like it is a bit more now.”
	 
Limiting Zink’s impact in the sport to just girls soccer is like saying John Lennon was just a good song writer. After his start at the Holy Child CYO program, Zink coached the junior varsity boys at Archbishop Molloy and the varsity boys at Monsignor McClancy and St. Francis Prep.
	 
“He was just a great guy,” said Alan Wharton, a longtime official and referee assignor for the PSAL and CHSAA. “He had a great impact on soccer, especially in Queens. He was a very good man and he’s going to be sorely missed.”
	 
Zink, along with his wife Joy, was also instrumental in forming the first girls travel team out of the Queens Soccer Club and they coached the New York City girls scholastic soccer team at the Empire State Games from 1979-1990.
	 
Many of his club players formed the dominant Richmond Hill girls squads that won the PSAL title from 1982-85.
	 
“There might have been a select number of teams for girls all the way out on Long Island, but there was nothing in Queens. If you were a girl growing up in Queens, you didn’t have many options,” longtime Molloy boys soccer coach Andy Kostel said. “He was someone who was a quiet promoter of girls soccer in this area when no one cared at that point.”
	 
Even after a failed hip replacement surgery limited his ability to coach, Zink formed the Kiwanis Cup in 1994, a tournament for PSAL girls soccer teams with an emphasis on teamwork.
	 
“He didn’t care who won or lost, but he loved the fact that girls from different schools and sometimes different ethnic backgrounds would socialize,” Stasiuk said. “The biggest award given out at that tournament is the sportsmanship award.”
	 
Judy Zink has followed in her father’s footsteps, having coached the junior varsity girls at Archbishop Molloy for six years. She played at St. John’s University on a scholarship in the late 1980s and that, too, she credits to her father.
	 
“When I saw Molloy had an opening, he definitely influenced me because I saw how much he enjoyed it,” Judy Zink said. “I think I have the same passion he had for soccer and for helping kids succeed. I thought it was pretty neat I was able to start at the same school he coached in.”

Zink’s wide-ranging influence on soccer was recognized with an overflow crowd at his wake and funeral. Judy Zink said all 200 of the Mass cards her family ordered were gone by the second day. It took five memorial guest books to list all those who attended.
	 
“I couldn’t believe how crowded the funeral parlor was,” Stasiuk said. “I couldn’t believe how many lives he touched.”
	 
Indeed, although he sometimes ruled with an iron fist, Zink was well respected and loved by his former players. Three years ago, a bunch of his former players penned letters to thank their former coach.
	 
“We hope you understand how much these years being around you meant to all of us,” said one former player. “You welcomed us with open arms, criticized us when we needed it and showed us love and understanding when we didn’t deserve it.”
	 
Stasiuk said he vividly remembers one of the last conversations he had with Zink. It was at the Kiwanis Cup, which added a boys tournament in 2005.
	 
“He turned around to me with tears in his eyes, 'I can’t believe how much it has grown,'” Stasiuk said. “I don’t think he was just speaking about the Kiwanis Cup.”
	 
No, girls soccer in Queens has taken off and Zink deserves much of the credit, even though he never sought the attention.
	 
“He’s been a pioneer in Queens soccer for many years,” Forest Hills coach Bob Sprance said. “He’s a soccer man, but he’s also a classy gentleman outside of the sport. He’s just a very nice man.”
	 
dbutler@nypost.com

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Live blog recap: CHSAA Class AA boys semifinals

March 09, 2010 , ι By DYLAN BUTLER

Read what Dylan Butler had to say from courtside at the CHSAA Class AA intersectional boys semifinals at St. John's, pitting Christ the King vs. St. Raymond's in the 6 p.m. opener, followed by Rice... Read on

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The Butler Did It

March 06, 2010 , ι DYLAN BUTLER

Tonight at the Ice Hutch in Mount Vernon, Game 2 of the Catholic High School Hockey League’s Class B semifinal will be played. St. Joseph by the Sea won the first game and is looking to book its spot in the finals, where St. Francis Prep awaits. Defending champion Holy Cross is trying to stave off elimination and force a decisive third game.
	 
Xavier was supposed to be Sea’s semifinal opponent. The Knights clinched the fourth and final playoff berth on the last day of the regular season, tying the Vikings 4-4 in Bayonne, N.J. on Feb. 23.
	 
Instead, Xavier administration pulled the team out of the playoffs, prematurely ending the high-school hockey careers of its seniors. While athletes in other sports have ample opportunity to compete collegiately, there are no such options for high school hockey players in New York City. Those same seniors will likely never play a competitive organized hockey game again.
	 
Why? Because the opening game of the best-of-three series was scheduled to be played at the War Memorial Rink at Clove Lake Park on Staten Island.
	 
“That was the deal breaker,” Xavier coach Al Di Mauro said. “We’re not playing in Clove Lake.”
	 
It’s not because the rink’s scoreboard clock works some of the time or the ice has “nooks and crannies,” according to Di Mauro. It has everything to do with a Dec. 20 encounter between the two teams there and the riot that nearly ensued.
	 
In last year’s CHSHL ‘B’ semifinal series, Xavier swept favored St. Joseph by the Sea and both teams had several returning players. The first time the two squads met this season was at Clove Lake and emotions, both on and off the ice, boiled over.
	 
“During the course of that game there were several incidents between parents in the stands and coaches,” Di Mauro said.
	 
Physical altercations on the ice and verbal ones off of it resulted in an ugly scene, bad enough that the officials called the game with 45 seconds left in the third period following yet another skirmish between the two teams. There was an alleged spitting incident, a screaming match between opposing coaches and cursing between the spectators. Oh, and St. Joseph by the Sea won, 4-0.
	 
Old time hockey? No, disgraceful hockey.
	 
Both teams were on their best behavior for the next meeting, Feb. 2 at Bayonne, a game won by Sea, 5-2, and 21 days later back at Richard Korpi Ice Rink, Sea rallied from a 4-0 deficit to forge a 4-4 tie.
	 
“We played St. Joe’s twice [in Bayonne] after that game in December and the kids played the games hard and in a positive way,” Xavier athletic director Rod Walker said. “I think we demonstrated to ourselves and the league that we could play that team in a closely contested game in a different environment.”
	 
To reward St. Joseph by the Sea for finishing atop the ‘B’ division, the opening game of the semifinal series was scheduled for Clove Lake. That was unacceptable for Xavier administrators, who feared a repeat of the December incident.
	 
“If you have an intense situation during a regular season game, what do you think a playoff game is going to be?” Di Mauro asked. “Emotions are only going to escalate.”
	 
Xavier officials were willing to play the game at any of the league’s rinks, even at the Staten Island Skating Pavilion, but Di Mauro said the CHSHL failed to resolve the issue.
	 
“The league took itself out of the decision process, out of the middle and threw it back into the lap of both schools,” he said.
	 
Neither side would budge, leaving Walker no option, he said, but to pull his team out of the playoffs. He and Di Mauro notified the team on Monday and Tuesday.
	 
“My guys want to play, the coaching staff wants to play,” Di Mauro said. “The kids have earned that right. The Xavier administration felt that they didn’t want to jeopardize anyone’s safety or well-being. We know what the right decision was, which was to play the game at a neutral site knowing the history of this season.”
	 
CHSHL president Frank Dunn declined comment, referring all questions to Walker.
	 
“It seemed to me poor judgment given the experience we had in December,” Walker said about the league’s decision to put the opening game at Clove Lake. If a third game in the series was necessary, it also would have been played at Clove Lake.
	 
It seems like pulling a team that worked so hard to make the playoffs is a rash decision, the final option after all other possibilities have been exhausted. Couldn’t both schools make sure security was beefed up in the rink? Couldn’t they separate the fans like they do for soccer matches around the world? Maybe New York’s Finest would have quelled the emotions.
	 
“That wasn’t on the list of final options, let’s put it that way,” Walker said. “It’s so far off from what we’re about. We’re certainly not meeting our standards [as a league] if we’re having that conversation.”
	 
Instead, we’re having this conversation, one about how a high school hockey team earned the right to play in the playoffs only to have that chance cruelly stolen from them because adults didn’t do the right thing.
	 
Which adults? You decide.
	 
dbutler@nypost.com

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The Butler Did It

February 26, 2010 , ι DYLAN BUTLER

I dubbed this “hell week” – 18 CHSAA boys basketball playoff games in seven days. Midway through, though, there was a brief respite when Mother Nature dumped several inches of a slushy slop on New York Thursday.
	 
The CHSAA Archdiocesan semifinals scheduled for Mount St. Michael were postponed and rescheduled for Saturday and Friday's Brooklyn/Queens Diocesan title game was moved to Saturday, giving me a chance to catch my breath and reflect on what might have been the most dramatic 24 hours of basketball I’ve ever seen in more than a decade of covering high school sports in New York City.
	 
Four games in two boroughs, three decided by four points or less, two won at the buzzer.
	 
It started with my first taste of the rivalry between Xavier and Regis, a pair of Manhattan schools meeting in the Class A intersectional second round at Cardinal Spellman Tuesday night.
	 
There’s no love lost between the Jesuit institutions, as was evident by a pair of intentional fouls and probably one more that wasn’t called. It wasn’t the crispest game ever played, but the intensity was there, every possession played like it was the last.
	 
Xavier had a five-point lead with 3:44 left in the fourth quarter, but Regis came roaring back, Rob Mohen tying the game at 52 with 48 seconds left. The Raiders had a chance to win it at the end of regulation, but Dan Morris’ baseline jumper rimmed out with two seconds left.
	 
Bobby Bruns nearly came up with the game-winner in the first overtime, but he just missed the baseline jumper.
	 
It’s about this time that Bishop Ford coach John Infortunio was scouting up the road at Mount, texted for an update. As I told him the game was heading into a second overtime, he joked that it was Syracuse-UConn in the Big East tournament all over again.
	 
“Bite your tongue,” I shot back. I was there at the Garden that night working on a Kemba Walker feature for FiveBoroSports.com and I don’t think I left the Garden until almost 3:15 a.m. As memorable a night and a game, I wasn’t looking for a repeat at Cardinal Spellman, not with two stories to write on a Tuesday night.
	 
Not a problem. Bruns ended the drama with a clutch buzzer-beating 15-footer at the end of the second overtime. Xavier wins it, 66-64. The senior guard earlier this year converted a remarkable 4-point play to beat Mount St. Michael.
	 
Meanwhile, 1.3 miles away, Post colleague Marc Raimondi was covering the other two Class A intersectional second-round games and both went to overtime with St. Joseph by the Sea beating St. Edmund Prep and Cardinal Hayes edging Bronx rival Fordham Prep with Davon Sylvester forcing overtime with a banked 3-pointer at the buzzer.
	 
The scene shifted to St. Francis Prep in Queens for the Brooklyn/Queens Diocesan semifinals on Wednesday. An intense back-and-forth battle between Holy Cross and Christ the King came down to the wire where the Royals, who have played a brutal non-league schedule, pulled it out thanks to a monster block by sophomore sensation Omar Calhoun.
	 
That only served as the lead-in for the main event as Brooklyn rivals Bishop Loughlin and Xaverian went toe-to-toe.
	 
The Lions, ranked No. 1 in the city by The Post, had won both regular-season meetings and were the heavy favorites. But Xaverian coach Jack Alesi always gets his team to play hard and Wednesday night was no exception.
	 
Justin Exum showed why he was a first-team all-league selection when he buried a deep 3-pointer with 10 seconds left to tie the score at 52. A week earlier the senior guard did the same thing from the same exact spot to force overtime against St. Francis Prep.
	 
But Bishop Loughlin came away with the win on a stroke of brilliance by Jayvaughn Pinkston, who scored a game-high 30 points. The Villanova-bound McDonald’s All-American went up a few notches in my eyes when he didn’t force up a shot, but instead passed out of a double-team to find Kareem Canty, who ended the game with a floater in the lane as time expired.
	 
It is performances like these, the first two buzzer-beaters in the 70 basketball games I’ve covered this year, that make “hell week” a bit easier to handle. It’s also what makes high school basketball so enjoyable.
	 
Maybe it wasn’t hell week after all.
	 
dbutler@nypost.com

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The Butler Did It

February 19, 2010 , ι DYLAN BUTLER

In the next week, the CHSAA will announce its all-league teams and its player and coach of the year. Late next month, after the New York State Federation tournament in Glens Falls, The Post will do the same.
	 
While contemplating who the best players are in each borough and the city and who might be The Post’s boys basketball Player of the Year, I thought about what the league might look like had there not been a host of transfers over the last few years.
	 
With that in mind, I thought I’d have some fun and say what if? What if the players who left for New Jersey powerhouses and prep schools around the country stayed at their original schools? What would those teams look like? Who would be the favorite? Who would be on the all-city team then?
	 
First, here’s what my Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda teams look like, listed by former school and current institution in parenthesis.
	 
First-team 
	 
Doron Lamb-- Bishop Loughlin (Oak Hill Academy)
	 
Ashton Pankey– Archbishop Molloy (St. Anthony’s, N.J.)
	 
Devon Collier– All Hallows (St. Anthony’s N.J.)
	 
Sidiki Johnson– St. Raymond’s (St. Benedicts, N.J.)
	 
Shane Southwell– All Hallows (Rice)
	 
Second Team
	 
Kamari Murphy– Bishop Ford (Lincoln)
	 
Ede Egharevba– St. Francis Prep (Thomas Edison)
	 
Reynaldo Walters – Archbishop Molloy (Cardozo)
	 
Jose Rodriguez– St. Raymond’s (Impact Academy, Nev.)
	 
Joey DeLaRosa– St. Raymond’s (Impact Academy, Nev.)
	 
How would this chance the CHSAA landscape? Christ the King and Rice would still be in the conversation when it came to Class AA intersectional title contenders, but so would a few other teams.
	 
Bishop Loughlin is having a solid season, is currently No. 1 in The Post’s New York City boys basketball rankings and can also win its first city title since 1992. The Lions have arguably the most dominant player in the city in Villanova-bound Jayvaughn Pinkston, who last week became the first McDonald’s All-American in school history.
	 
But, had Doron Lamb stayed in Fort Greene, Loughlin would have two All-Americans on the same court. Lamb, a 6-foot-4 guard from Laurelton, came three points shy of a record set by LeBron James when he dropped 49 points in Oak Hill Academy’s loss to St. Peter’s Prep (N.J.) in the Primetime Shootout in Trenton Saturday. He counts Arizona, Kentucky, Kansas, UConn and West Virginia among his suitors and would have given Loughlin a ridiculous inside-outside threat.
	 
All Hallows shocked the league with its run to the Class AA intersectional semifinals a year ago, but had Shane Southwell and Devon Collier not left two years ago, the Gaels would be among the favorites to win their first title since 1985.
	 
Imagine Kansas State-bound Southwell in the same backcourt with Michael Alvarado, who is heading to Manhattan College, and 6-foot-7 Oregon State-bound Collier sharing the frontcourt with 6-foot-5 Omar Kellman, who is drawing interest from Queens College.
	 
Instead, Southwell is at Rice, trying to lead the Raiders to back-to-back city titles and Collier is at New Jersey powerhouse St. Anthony’s, along with Maryland-bound Ashton Pankey, who left Archbishop Molloy two years ago.
	 
Had Pankey stayed, he would have provided the Stanners with the one thing they desperately need – size. Before he started at the point for Cardozo, the No. 1 seed in the PSAL’s Class AA citywide playoffs, Reynaldo (Junior) Walters was also at Molloy.
	 
Add those two players to a starting lineup that includes shooting guard Ernest Rouse and solid forward Chris Dorgler and Molloy would have been a very tough team to beat.
	 
And then there’s St. Raymond’s. No team in the CHSAA has been hit harder by transfers in the last two years with eight players bolting from The Bronx. A few of those players – Kevin Parrom (Arizona) and Omari Lawrence (St. John’s) wouldn’t have been in the mix for the Ravens this year, but several other players would have.

damion reidFormer St. Raymond's standout Sidiki Johnson is now at St. Benedict's Prep in New Jersey.

Chief among them is Sidiki Johnson, who will join Parrom at Arizona. The Ravens arguably would have had the best frontcourt in the CHSAA with the 6-foot-8 Johnson joining stellar sophomores Daniel Dingle and Kerwin Okoro. Add Jose Rodriguez and Joey DeLaRosa, who both left for Impact Academy in Las Vegas, and St. Ray’s would have been one of the deeper teams in the league.
	 
Even St. Francis Prep, which won its first league game in three years Tuesday night with an overtime victory against Xaverian, would have been much improved had Ede Egharevba, a 6-foot-5 unsigned senior who is drawing interest from Stony Brook and Rhode Island, not left for Thomas Edison.
	 
Bishop Ford has done a great job this season to win another CHSAA A-South division title and is among the top seeds in the upcoming Class A intersectional playoffs, but the Falcons would have been even more dangerous if 6-foot-8 Kamari Murphy didn’t bolt for four-time defending PSAL champion Lincoln.
	 
But they did leave, every one of them. There’s a variety of reasons, from a change of scenery to more exposure to being asked to leave. The teams move on and a city champion will be crowned at Rose Hill Gym in The Bronx next month. It should be a great final month of the CHSAA season.
	 
It could have, however, been so much better.
	 
dbutler@nypost.com

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The Butler Did It

February 11, 2010 , ι DYLAN BUTLER

Every time she steps on the basketball court, every time her name is mentioned over the public address system at Dowling College, Connie Simmons is honoring her grandfather’s legacy.
	 
Before there was Kobe Bryant, before there was LeBron James, even before there was Moses Malone, there was Connie Simmons.
	 
Simmons is the second player to ever make the jump from high school to the NBA, making the leap from Forest Hills HS in 1946.
	 
The 6-foot-8 forward had planned to play at Holy Cross with Bob Cousy, but instead he joined his brother, Johnny, on the Boston Celtics. He averaged 9.8 points and 6.2 rebounds per game in a 10-year career that also included stints with the New York Knicks, Baltimore Bullets, Syracuse Nationals and Rochester Royals. He won titles with the Bullets (1948) and Nationals (1955) and reached the finals three times with the Knicks (1951-53).
	 
And now his granddaughter is keeping his name alive.
	 
“I’ve got to follow that tradition,” the Dowling guard said. “It’s really cool. It’s nice to look up to that and try to follow in his footsteps.”
	 
Connie never saw her grandfather play, in fact never met him because he died on April 15, 1989, three years before she was born.
	 
Instead the versatile 5-foot-10 freshman has been introduced to her grandfather through tapes, books and visited a display at the Basketball Hall of Fame that included her grandfather’s memorabilia.
	 
But her biggest thrill was playing in an AAU event at Forest Hills last year.
	 
“I told her that the last time a Connie Simmons played on this court it was something special and she wound up having 30 points that game,” Connie’s father, Neil, said. “She kept the name going.”
	 
“It was one of the best games I’ve ever had,” Connie added. “It was exciting.”

dowling college Connie Simmons is an old-fashioned basketball player, much like her grandfather of the same name,

Like her grandfather, Connie has won a championship, leading Syosset HS to the Class AA Section 8 title last year. She scored 1,145 points in her high school career, living in the same house her grandfather bought when he was traded to the Knicks in 1949.
	 
According to Neil, a coach with the Long Island Lightning, Connie has some of her grandfather’s attributes.
	 
“She gives 110 percent, she’s tough and doesn’t back down, she creates for herself and her teammates,” he said. “She likes old school basketball.”
	 
Dowling coach Joe Pellicane knows a thing or two about old school basketball. He grew up playing in the parks of Brooklyn where “if you lost, you sat for two hours to get back in the game.”
	 
“Connie is one of those kids – she’s tough, she’s smart, she’s a basketball player,” said Pellicane, who played for Frank Layden at Dowling. “For me, being an old school guy, that’s the highest compliment I can give you.”
	 
Simmons is enjoying a stellar freshman year with the Golden Lions. She is averaging eight points and 4.4 rebounds per game, starting 11 of the 19 games she has played. She has aspirations of following in her father’s footsteps, playing professionally and keeping the Connie Simmons name alive.
	 
“I fit into his style of basketball,” Connie said. “I’m not the quickest, the strongest or the tallest, but I know how to play the game.”
	 
She should, it’s in her blood.
	 
dbutler@nypost.com

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The Butler Did It

February 06, 2010 , ι DYLAN BUTLER

They learn to hate that other school on Francis Lewis Boulevard. The rides on the Q76 bus are contentious, the Twitter and Facebook trash talking is at an all-time high. The annual Battle of the... Read on

They learn to hate that other school on Francis Lewis Boulevard. The rides on the Q76 bus are contentious, the Twitter and Facebook trash talking is at an all-time high.
	 
The annual Battle of the Boulevard games, no matter what the sport, are the most highly anticipated of the year and usually draw large crowds.
	 
But on Friday, archrivals St. Francis Prep and Holy Cross put the animosity aside for one night to raise money for the Haitian relief effort.
	 
“I think it’s for the greater good,” Holy Cross student body president Rob Goger said. “But I still don’t like Prep.”
	 
That’s fine, because Shannan Ferry doesn’t much like Holy Cross, either. But she came up with the idea to use the big game as a perfect venue to raise money for a tragedy that has hit home for many students at both schools.
	 
“We are rival schools, but I think the fact we’re coming together for this cause is a great thing,” she said. “No matter who wins we’re doing something that’s really good.”
	 
Ferry said the idea came to her about a month ago. On Monday Goger entered enemy territory to brainstorm with Ferry.
	 
“I had a few classmates who lost family members, cousins, uncles, aunts,” he said. “It’s really sad so that’s why I really wanted to do my best and do right by my classmates and the hardships they’ve had to face.”

Philip HallSt. Francis Prep student Shannan Ferry and Holy Cross student Robert Goger joined forces to raise money for Haiti.

Together they came up with several ideas, including selling popcorn, pretzels and soda at the game, a couple of 50/50 raffles with one winner becoming a principal for the day at their respective school, while others won “Battle of the Boulevard 2010” sweatshirts. The meeting was so productive and the ideas overflowed so much that St. Francis Prep officials actually had to rein them in.
	 
“We were going to do a couple of other things, but we had time limits with the game,” Ferry said.
	 
“We wanted to do a halfcourt shot,” added Goger.
	 
On Friday, St. Francis Prep students forked over $3 to participate in a dress down day, which allowed them to toss aside their uniforms for that day. That alone raised more than $12,000. Even before one raffle was sold Friday night, the schools combined to raise $14,000.
	 
Before the game, Emir Fils-Aime, a senior and a student organizer of relief collections at St. Francis Prep, spoke to the massive crowd.
	 
“Although we are usually divided by competition, tonight we unite,” he said. “We stand together as a Catholic community, we stand together as human beings called to care for those at their most vulnerable time of need. Tonight, we stand with the people of Haiti.”
	 
While it’s too early to tell how much was raised Friday night, judging by the overflow crowd in the gym of nearly 2,000 fans, the night was an overwhelming success. Even though she’ll graduate in June, Ferry would like to see this become an annual endeavor between the two schools separated by just 2.3 miles of Francis Lewis Boulevard.
	 
“This is the first year we really did something,” she said. “I think it is something we should do every year for a different cause because it’s just an open opportunity. It’s somewhere everyone is going to be, it’s the biggest game of the year. It just makes sense.”
	 
dbutler@nypost.com

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The Butler Did It

January 28, 2010 , ι DYLAN BUTLER

On Sunday, Adelphi University will host seven high school basketball games, several pitting Long Island teams against their New York City counterparts. The 12-hour hoops smorgasbord is known as the Salvo Invitational and includes CHSAA squads Holy Cross, Bishop Ford, Monsignor McClancy and Archbishop Molloy.
	 
But who was John Salvo?
	 
If you’ve attended a St. John’s game at Madison Square Garden or a high school basketball exposure camp in the last two decades, Salvo was that guy who somehow had Jim Calhoun and Jay Wright’s ear, who could recite a prospect’s stats verbatim and who, because of his size (he was about 6-foot-6, 285-pounds) and matching personality, was impossible to miss.
	 
“He knew everyone around the Garden, he knew every AAU coach, he knew every gambler,” said Tim Slavin, a longtime friend. “He had a bigger-than-life personality and we all miss him.”
	 
Salvo commanded attention everywhere he went, but it seemed his second home was Madison Square Garden, especially when his beloved Johnnies were on the court.
	 
“He was like the mayor of the place,” Slavin said. “Every usher knew him, every vendor knew him.”
	 
There was one newbie vendor who certainly wouldn’t forget Salvo, who died last March of a heart attack after a sudden sickness at the age of 56. .
	 
“There was a new cotton candy guy coming down to the area and John was getting annoyed because he kept walking in front of him so he asked him, 'How much to buy the whole thing and have you not come back for the rest of the night?'” Slavin recalled. “The guy said $150 and John gave him the $150 and he said never come back again.”
	 
Salvo and Slavin also made the trip to Cameron Indoor Stadium in 2000 to watch St. John’s shock then-No. 2 Duke.
	 
“The 15 or so St. John’s fans stormed Cameron and John leads me into the Duke locker room,” said Slavin, CEO of software company InvestLink. “It was so embarrassing. Coach Krzyzewski looks at him and nods to him and lets him stay there. He was brazen like that, but not in a bad way.”
	 
Salvo’s day job was as a beer and liquor salesman, but his passion, perhaps even his true calling, was sports. He loved evaluating talent, loved schmoozing with coaches and his observations came from experience. He played for former Fordham and Stony Brook coach Nick Macarchuk at St. Thomas More in Connecticut.
	 
“I always encouraged him to hook on with a team or a professional organization because not only did he have an interest, he had a real intellect,” said Bob O’Connor, a 30-year friend of Salvo’s. “A lot of people mistook his grandiose nature and overlooked that he had a keen insight into evaluating talent because he played both football and basketball and talked about it at the highest level with people like Pete Carroll, Mike Bellotti at Oregon or Calhoun and [Lou] Carnesecca.”
	 
Salvo also equally loved USC football, often having Carroll’s ear. In fact before he commanded this paper’s back page and was known as “Sanchize,” Mark Sanchez was at Mission Viejo (Calif.) High School impressing Salvo.
	 
“He had a Topps-like card of Mark Sanchez when Mark Sanchez was in high school,” O’Connor said. “I’ve known about Mark Sanchez for about seven years. How does a guy from New York find out that kind of information about a high school quarterback in southern California unless he has a pension for that type of information?”
	 
Carnesecca attended Salvo’s funeral and even Carroll paid his respects in a touching tribute, delivering a bouquet of flowers and an autographed USC jersey, writing “Fight on—A Trojan forever, Pete Carroll.”
	 
“It was delivered as the limousines and hearse pulled up to the church and the Fed Ex driver was under strict orders to give it to no one but the immediate family,” O’Connor said. “That was one of those stories about Pete Carroll no one ever hears.”
	 
“We’re all convinced he’s very upset that Pete Carroll left USC,” Salvo’s sister JoAnn Carter added.
	 
While Slavin and O’Connor called Salvo a dear friend, to Carter’s three sons, “he was like crazy Uncle Buck,” Carter said.
	 
Slavin, O’Connor and Carter will all be at Adelphi Sunday and if Salvo was still alive, it’s a good bet he’d be there, too, holding court in the VIP area.
	 
“He wasn’t just a Damon Runyon-esque character,” O’Connor said. “He invented his own style and because of his personality and stature he could not be ignored.”
	 
Salvo Invitational schedule
	 
Bishop Ford girls vs. St. Mary's (Manhasset) -- 9:15 a.m.
	 
Monsignor McClancy vs. St. Anthony's (L.I.) -- 11 a.m.
	 
Garden City vs. Westhampton -- 12:30 p.m.
	 
West Hempstead vs. Carey -- 2 p.m.
	 
Archbishop Molloy vs. St. Mary's (Manhasset) -- 4 p.m.
	 
Holy Cross vs. Chaminade -- 5:45 p.m.
	 
Bishop Ford vs. Kellenberg -- 7:30 p.m.
	 
dbutler@nypost.com

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The Butler Did It

January 21, 2010 , ι DYLAN BUTLER

Tom Murray doesn’t need to look at a calendar to know where he’ll be the last weekend of March. That’s because for about as long as he can remember, the Hall of Fame basketball coach has made the... Read on

Tom Murray doesn’t need to look at a calendar to know where he’ll be the last weekend of March.
	 
That’s because for about as long as he can remember, the Hall of Fame basketball coach has made the nearly 3-1/2 hour trek up the New York Thruway to Glens Falls, N.Y., the site of the New York State Federation basketball tournament since 1981.
	 
The tournament is the end of the high school basketball season, New York’s tournament of champions, pitting the winners of the CHSAA, PSAL, NYPHSAA and the NYSAISAA to crown a single champion in each class level for boys and girls.
	 
But this year’s trip for Murray will be the last, at least for four years. That’s because the New York State Federation committee voted Wednesday to move the tournament to Albany in 2011.
	 
“It’s so tough because the people of Glens Falls do everything, they put on a beautiful program, but they just couldn’t get people in the seats,” said Murray, the CHSAA state vice-president. “Mrs. Murray really likes to go up there and shop. I hear there are some nice stores in Albany, too.”
	 
The news is stunning, if only because Glens Falls was the only location the tournament has ever seen. Teams every year talk about making the trip to Glens Falls, like it is a magical, mystical location. Most of the players have never been there, but they know its where the state Federation tournament is played and that’s where they want to be.
	 
So from a historical perspective, it’s sad that the best teams in the state won’t convene at the Glens Falls Civic Center in late March.
	 
But as much as the players talk about their desire to get to Glens Falls, when they finally arrive it’s not quite what they expected. It’s kind of like in the Wizard of Oz when Dorothy, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion finally get to Oz and meet the Wizard, who they learn was just that guy behind the curtain.
	 
The Glens Falls Civic Center, while it has seen its better days, was a perfectly-sized venue for the tournament. However, unless a local team was featured – and that was a rarity recently – few of the nearly 5,000 seats were filled.
	 
A few years ago, Christ the King and Murry Bergtraum met as the top two girls teams in the country and attendance was sparse. The same teams played at Madison Square Garden as part of the Nike Super Six and drew a much larger crowd.

Damion ReidShane Southwell played in front of a b unch of empty seats in last year's New York State Federation tournament.

In fact, in each of his four years, Lance Stephenson won the PSAL championship under the bright lights of Madison Square Garden and then played in relatively anonymity in Glens Falls.
	 
So what’s so special about Albany?
	 
“It’s the capital of New York for one, the arena is beautiful, it’s a large population area,” Murray said. “They have a high school league and will support their own teams, but maybe if we bring the product to them they’ll support it.”
	 
The tournament will be played at the Times Union Center, which has hosted NCAA and MAAC tournament games in recent years. The upper sections of the arena will be curtained off, much like Seton Hall games at the Prudential Center, giving the 16,500-seat arena the intimate feel of a 6,000-seat venue.
	 
Albany is also more accessible to hoops fans, especially those living downstate.
	 
“Albany is pretty direct from New York City,” Murray said. “If people want to go up, there’s an Amtrak Station which is five minutes from the arena.”
	 
The committee also entertained bids from Binghamton, which runs the highly successful STOP-DWI Holiday Classic, and Long Island, which proposed the tournament be played at C.W. Post.
	 
“It’s just that the facility didn’t match up to the facilities of the other places, especially when you start talking Times Union Center,” Murray said.
	 
While I embrace change, I’ll miss plenty about Glens Falls – staying at the Queensbury, late-night dinners at the Bullpen Tavern with my fellow scribes, reading the comprehensive tournament coverage by the Glens Falls Post-Star and, of course, watching some quality basketball.
	 
That said, anyone know a tavern with some good food open late in Albany?
	 
dbutler@nypost.com

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DYLAN BUTLER Dylan is an award-winning reporter/columnist who has covered New York City high school sports for more than a decade. After graduating from St. John’s University (he prefers Redmen to Red Storm), the Queens native worked for the TimesLedger Newspapers, serving as Sports Editor for the chain of 13 weekly newspapers in the Community News Group. An avid soccer fan, Dylan has covered the sport on all levels, from high school to international soccer. Dylan co-founded FiveBoroSports.com, a popular web site dedicated to daily coverage of New York City high school and college athletics. He also covered the Yankees, Jets and Devils for SNY.tv.

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