FINAL WORDS Fifth in a series
As The Journal prepares to end publication Feb. 1, we take a final look back at important Hudson County issues, controversies and people.
Richie Glover, Jim Spanarkel, Bobby Hurley, all the Hurleys, Danan Hughes, Adrienne Goodson, Kenny Britt, Willie Banks. We can go on and on.
They were household names in Hudson County well before they starred on the national stage. If they were special in high school (and some even before that), the Jersey Journal Sports Department was on the story.
It was a time when the coverage Hudson County high school athletes received was the envy of coaches and schools in every other county. Two newspapers, The Journal and Hudson Dispatch, had beat writers for each sport. Athletes would take a county title over a state title any day of the week.
Here’s a look back at some of the most impactful athletes of our generation, the ones we covered and left an indelible memory; or whose skill and grace under pressure left us in awe.
A basketball player ahead of her time
It was the first time we ever said “She could play with the boys,” about a high school girls basketball player. Adrienne Goodson, who dominated at Bayonne High during the mid-1980s and then played professionally, could have started on a lot of high school boys basketball teams.
Her talent was unmatched in Hudson County and few in the state were even close to her level of shooting, ball-handling (she consistently easily dribbled through full-court presses) and rebounding.
There were no pro leagues when she graduated college, so she played overseas and then the American Basketball League then that was formed. She was 33 when the WNBA was formed in 1999, and was an All-Star during a seven-year career.
From Snyder to Nebraska, no one could slow him down
It’s safe to say that Jersey City’s Rich Glover is the most honored defensive football player in Hudson County history ― and to this day, the county benchmark for defensive greatness.
After a stellar career at Snyder High School, he was considered undersized at 6-foot and 230 pounds, Glover proved them wrong and became one of college football’s all-time greats at the University of Nebraska, a two-time All-America, key member of the school’s two consecutive national championships, winner of the Outland and Lombardi and third in the Heisman Trophy voting.
He was named to the NCAA’s All-Century Football Team and elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. His NFL career was cut short by injuries.
They played baseball at St. Anthony HS, too
From the time he was a Little Leaguer and star pitcher for Assumption All-Saints in the Hudson County CYO League, it was clear Willie Banks was a special player. At St. Anthony High School, he once struck out 19 batters in a seven-inning game.
He was No. 3 pick overall in the 1987 MLB draft (in which Ken Griffey Jr. was drafted No. 1), by the Minnesota Twins, and was a member of their 1991 World Series team. What always struck us was Willie’s composure, well beyond his years, under the pressure of the expectations of greatness.
And who wouldn’t have believed it with the ease in which he mowed down high school hitters.
As a major-leaguer, Banks found a groove in 1993, winning 11 games, and then was 8-6 with the Cubs in 1994 before injuring himself while stealing a base.
A Hoboken hardwood hero
If Goodson was No. 1, Angela Zampella was 1A.
One of the greatest female athletes to come out of Hoboken, Zampella was a tremendous basketball star at both St. Dominic Academy and St. Joseph’s University, where she made All-Atlantic 10 and all Big-5 every year of her career.
In 2000 she was an honorable mention All-American and went on to a long professional career overseas.
Who know, she could have had a baseball career, too. People still talk about how she lined a triple over the center fielder’s head in one game and excelled as a pitcher in the youth baseball leagues. She gave up baseball in her mid-teens to concentrate on basketball.
Forget Philly, ‘Rocky’ is a Bayonne story
Not many people are honored with a statue while they are still alive, but Chuck Wepner has one in a public park in his hometown of Bayonne.
And as everyone in Hudson County knows, his career didn’t end with his last fight. You could argue that’s when it really started.
A young Sylvester Stallone was in the crowd when the Bayonne fighter went 15 rounds with heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali March 24, 1975. The rest is history. An inspired Stallone based the first “Rocky” movie on Wepner, even if it took years for him to admit it.
Wepner was never knocked down during his professional boxing career and if you want to know how tough he was, ask anyone who played in the Bayonne recreational basketball leagues what would happen to anyone who tried to drive to the basket if Wepner was standing under it.
He wasn’t a player, but he sure made sports more interesting
If there was one person who dominated the Hudson County sports scene for three decades, it was Ed “The Faa” Ford. Coach. Referee. Newspaper columnist. Bar owner. Tobacco-chewer. MLB scout.
His “Faa’s Corner” weekly column, a full page of both diatribes and gushing tributes, was a must-read for close 30 years.
Most of all, he knew baseball and he shared it with players willing to learn. He was never a rich man, but he always had enough to buy spikes or sneakers, or a glove for any local athlete who couldn’t afford it. He was a legend.
Soccer gains its footing here, thanks to West Hudson trio
Sorry Cosmos fans, but soccer was not always a mainstream sport for the American fan. Three players from Kearny ― Tony Meola, John Harkes and Tab Ramos ― helped change all that.
Like Mike O’Koren and Spanarkel (more on that later), you couldn’t mention one of their names without the others. Meola, a goalie, and Harkes and Ramos, midfielders ― all who played in multiple World Cups ― were at the forefront of the surge in soccer popularity in the U.S. in the 1990s.
All three, who starred in high school in the 1980s, have stayed in the game after their playing days, helping to continue building the sport.
Fists of fury and a love for Jersey City
Canadian by birth, Arturo Gatti was Hudson County by choice. The world champion boxer, who died under mysterious circumstances in 2009, made Jersey City home during his 16-year career. His unrelenting style of slugging it out made boxing fans out of people who otherwise never cared for the sport.
His fights were must-watch events and two of his matches against Mickey Ward earned the Fight of the Year titles. He won world titles in the junior lightweight and super lightweight divisions and his 40-9 record included losses to Floyd Mayweather and Oscar Dela Hoya, two of the greatest of all-time.
No matter how hard we tried, we could never convince then-Jersey Journal boxing writer Wayne Witkowski to get into the ring with Gatti for a George Plimpton-esque first-person story.
It’s Maria, not Mario – and she made history
The first time her photo appeared in The Jersey Journal, the caption referred to Maria Pepe as “Mario.” Maybe it was because the JJ photographer couldn’t believe it was a girl in a Hoboken Little League uniform.
That was 1972, and the three games she played helped alter the course of Little League history. She was kicked off the team when Little League HQ threatened to revoke Hoboken’s charter because girls weren’t allowed to play.
Her court victory the following year (technically it was the New Jersey National Organization of Women that brought the lawsuit) led to Little League establishing softball divisions. Her ability also changed a lot of minds about the “fragility” of girls and led to more female participation.
When we wrote a 25th anniversary report in 1997, Little League officials scoffed at the idea of honoring her, but 10 years later they did just that at the LL World Series. And other tributes followed. We like to think we our anniversary piece had a little (OK, a lot) to do with that.
The first family of Hudson County sports
We could write this entire column on what the Hurley family and the St. Anthony High School basketball program meant to the county before the school closed in 2017. But we’ll contain ourselves.
The Journal had a front row seat as the program went from best in the county to best in the state to best in the country in 1989. The Friars were an overnight sensation years in the making. And it wasn’t difficult for the rest of the country to fall in love with them ― the gritty, working-class poor kids who didn’t even have a gym to call their own.
The coach and the stars ― the Hurleys, Jerry Walker, Terry Dehere, David Rivers (the first freshman to start for Notre Dame), Rodrick Rhodes ― were Jersey City through and through. And the rivalries were incredible, whether it was Ferris High School (Tom Favia never stopped bragging that his career record against St. Anthony was 5-4), Elizabeth or St. Nicholas Tolentine in the Bronx.
St. Anthony was named the nation’s No. 1 team more than once. It won multiple state Tournament of Champions titles. A book and a documentary followed. Coach Bob Hurley got elected to the Naismith Hall of Fame, and his kids, Bobby and Danny, may get there too.
A man among boys on the Secaucus diamond
At 6-foot-5 and 240 pounds, Mark Lukasiewicz towered over both his Secaucus High School baseball teammates and his competition. And he dominated. Think 1990s high school version of 2014 World Series MVP Madison Bumgarner.
You didn’t know for sure, but that fastball certainly sounded like a strike. To be honest, every time you attended one of his games, you expected to see something you never saw before.
The college and pro scouts that attended his every game as a senior came away impressed with how well he could hit, too.
He was the 40th pick of the 1993 draft, by the Toronto Blue Jays, and made his Major League debut in 2001. He was 2-0 for Anaheim in 2002, when the Angels won the World Series.
O’Koren, Spanarkel and the hotbed of hoops
Rarely do you hear the name Spanarkel without the name O’Koren. The two Hudson Catholic stars ushered in a new golden age of basketball in the county. O’Koren went to North Carolina and Spanarkel went to Duke, both had NBA careers and have stuck around the game.
They, along with players like Jimmy Boylan and Rafael Addison, solidified Hudson County as the undisputed hotbed of basketball in the state.
Like the stars before them ― Webster, Heinsohn, Mahnken, Laurie and Brooks to name a few ― the exploits of O’Koren and Spanarkel were as well known to Hudson sports fans as any New York Knick star.
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There are so many more anecdotes and stories, like when Bayonne shot putter Kevin DiGiorgio had a throw at a state championship meet that went completely over the small curb/wall intended to stop the weighted ball. His reaction was simple: “Move back the wall.”
There were the triumphant stories of the 1988 Memorial High baseball team that was deemed No. 1 in the nation by USA Today; and the 2022 St. Peter’s University men’s basketball team that stunned the nation with its NCAA Tournament run; and North Bergen High’s Amanda Pace, who won a state championship in the relatively new sport of high school girls wrestling; and how then-high school all-American Kobe Bryant sat down with Coach Hurley after their game to ask how he could improve.
We were blessed to cover so many stars, athletes who went on to pro careers ― Kenny Britt, Frankie Winters, Danan Hughes, Walker Lee Ashley, Johnny Valentin, Ray Lucas and Joe Borowski.
Writing the Hudson County’s sports history and being the authors of every athlete’s scrap book was a responsibility we took seriously ― and an honor.