Stepinac’s Hardwood Club

June

Stepinac High School will honor several former basketball standouts at tonight’s second annual Hardwood Club dinner.

St. John’s assistant basketball coach Fred Quartlebaum, a 1985 grad, Colenel Art White (‘68), Frank Henderson (‘81), former coach Tom Carney and 1951 Catholic State championship team will be inducted into the club at the ceremony, which will be held in the school gym at 6:30 p.m.

Quartlebaum, a Hastings native, played at Fordham University and was an assistant at North Carolina, Notre Dame, Iowa State and three other Division I schools.

White is regarded as one of the top players ever from the area. The White Plains native played at Georgetown and was a third-round draft pick by the Milwaukee Bucks.

Henderson, also of White Plains, played at Stepinac and compiled 132 wins in eight seasons as coach. Carney was the school’s second coach, serving from 1965-72.

The 1951 team featured three future Division I players in John Ritch (Providence), Dick Wise (Notre Dame and Alabama) and Dick McDine (St. John’s and Iona).

The dinner is open to the public. Tickets are $60.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 9:30 pm by Kevin Devaney Jr..
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2 Responses to “Stepinac’s Hardwood Club”

info: June 17th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
The dinner is (tomorrow) Thursday night – June 18th!

hoops fan you must be attending this event!
Stepinac98 June 19th, 2009 at 9:39 am
What a night at Stepinac! Had to be 120 or more people there. The gymnasium looked great and all the honorees were very impressive. Aside from all the great friendships, from a basketball standpoint there were some impressive basketball resumes in attendance;

-Inductee Fred Quartlebaum ‘85 is the current asst at St Johns, formerly asst at UNC (he recruited Sean May, Felton and the others from that UNC championship team) and Notre Dame, among others. He played his college ball at Fordham Univ.

Inductee Art White ‘68 was a star at Georgetown and a 3rd round NBA pick. Art actually outscored Pistol Pete Maravich at MSG in a nationally televised NIT game. A lot of guys still talk about that game around Westchester, not to mention his 37 points including a buzzer beater to top White Plains in 1968 in front of a packed Stepinac gym. For anyone who knew him and hasn’t seen him in years Art has to be close to 60, but could pass for 38-40 and looks like he can still play! Very impressive gentleman who gave a great speech. Obama’s National Security Advisor, Gen. Jim Jones, sent a surprise letter to be read on Art’s behalf which had the crowd rolling in laughter.

~~Marty Conlon ‘86 was a 10 year NBA veteran and star at Providence~~ was inducted two years ago. Marty is now the director of International basketball for the NBA.

-Tim O’Toole ‘82 a member of the first induction class iss one of the great speakers you’ll ever hear. Tim was head coach and a standout player at Fairfield and also asst at Duke (he recruited Elton Brand to Duke), Syracuse, Seton Hall and Fordham.

-Tim Cohane ‘60 was inducted two years ago as part of Stepinac’s 1960 CHSAA Championship team and later was head coach several places including Dartmouth and Buffalo as well as asst at Boston College. He also found time to co-found Cohane Rafferty Securities.

-John Ritch ‘53 was inducted as a member of the 1951 Catholic State Championship team and went on to star at Providence College and is still high in PC’s record books for all-time rebounding. Two of the other inductees from the 1951 championship team, George Prince ‘51 and Don Pizzutello ‘51 were also in attendance and both gentlemen have distinguished themselves with long, successful careers in the finance.

-Inductee Frank Henderson ‘81 drew a huge crowd of friends, former players, coaches and teammates. Henderson coached Stepinac to two Class B CHSAA championships and also was an outstanding player at Stepinac and Bentley College. Coach Henderson had an oustanding 132-65 record at Stepinac and coached three guys who later played professional basketball overseas (Chris Watson ‘93, Llewellyn Cole ‘94 and David Conlon ‘91) as well as over 11 guys who played DI basketball.

Inductee Coach Tom Carney who passed away years ago had another huge crowd of family, friends, former players, opposing coaches, referees, etc. Coach Carney was praised by all the speakers and also had an impressive coaching record at Stepinac. Mr. Carney coached two NBA draft picks (Art White ‘68 and Brian Hammel ‘71), made the tough CHSAA playoffs in 6 of 7 years coaching advancing to the QF’s twice against the likes of Power Memorial, LaSalle, Rice, Archbishop Molloy, Hayes, Bishop Loughlin, etc, etc. Two great notes about Coach Carney’s coaching record is that he enjoyed a 3 year winning streak over Mt Vernon from Art White’s 1968 team through 1970 and also Coach Carney impressively had a winning records over all of Stepinac’s main rivals White Plains, Mt Vernon, Iona Prep, New Rochelle and Mount how many coaching can say that about all those schools? Coach Carney also coached at least 9 guys who later played DI basketball.

-Some of the other former Stepinac greats in attendance, several of which went on to play college basketball, were Rico Dos Anjos ‘59 (LIU), Brian McAuley ‘59, Mike Ansbro ‘60 (Iona), Tom Purcell ‘67 (Fairfield), Lou Noschese ‘68, Bryan Lynch ‘72, David Conlon ‘91 (Vermont), Kevin O’Keeffe ‘91 (Manhattan), Kyle Walsh ‘98 (Fairfield) and Brendan Burke ‘00 (NYU), among many others. Not to mention a decent football player Bob Hyland ‘63 who was in attendance.

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