ATHL E TICS
At the Prep, coaches pass athletic lessons
down through generations. Deane ’88
played football for the Prep for Bruce Bott
’59, who taught him the importance of
team unity. So Deane sought to foster
such closeness on the city championship
baseball team he coached last year. “You
could just see it, everybody knew their
roles, the guys were all friends, their
families went out to dinner with each
other,” says Deane. “The dugout was
a fun place to be, and it played its way
onto the field. That was one thing I always
remember from Mr. Bott, he was big on
the team getting along.”
While Prep athletes chase down city titles,
they continue to develop their character
off the field. Many bring the Prep’s spirit of
service to their college campuses. Lundy,
who volunteered at a senior assisted
living home in Yonkers for his Prep service
project, is part of a Princeton athletic
department program in which student-
athletes read to local children. Cunniffe
coached Little League when he was still
starring for the Georgetown football team.
“It does all stem,” says Cunniffe, “from
‘men for others.’”
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
John Holland grew up in Co-Op City, in
the Bronx; reaching the NBA was his
dream. Under former Prep hoops coach
Kevin Pigott, Holland learned skill sets
-- especially moving without the ball
on offense -- that contributed to his
outstanding career at Boston University
and nine seasons as a professional,
which has included stops in France, Spain,
Turkey, Puerto Rico, Israel, the G-League
in the U.S, the Boston Celtics during
the 2016 playoffs, and the Cleveland
Cavaliers during the 2018 and 2019
seasons. “I just learned to play a different
style of basketball,” says Holland, who
before entering college completed a post-
graduate year at St. Benedict’s Prep in
Newark, NJ. “You had to think and do a lot
of things that helped me on another level.
I don’t think I would be the player I am
without that experience.”
As Holland listened to the national
anthem while with the Celtics in the
2016 playoffs, the enormity of his
accomplishment hit him. “It was really
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crazy, like wow, who would have thought
this kid from Co-Op City, from Fordham
Prep, could be standing here right now?,”
says Holland. “At Fordham Prep, I learned
to believe in myself and trust in myself,
through all obstacles and not so great
odds since nobody from Fordham Prep
had ever made the NBA. I can do it. The
Prep gave me discipline and forced me to
focus, and that’s something you have to
do almost every day in college, on almost
every level. Fordham Prep gave me the
basics.”
While Holland and countless Prep
athletes have certainly learned from
faculty and coaches, they can sometimes
teach the teachers. In 2002, Holland
was a freshman in Kevin Gilligan ’83’s
English honors class; Gilligan was also
the assistant freshman basketball coach
at the time. He had grown frustrated with
his pupil. Gilligan thought Holland wasn’t
hitting the books hard enough. He also,
in Gilligan’s opinion, went for too many
steals on the court.
At one point, Gilligan confronted Holland
about his academic habits. Holland told
Gilligan he wasn’t too worried about it,
since he was headed to the NBA. “John,
if you make the NBA,” Gilligan responded,
holding Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle in
the air, “I will eat this book.”
A few years ago. Gilligan was enjoying lunch
in the faculty lounge, when he was told he
had a visitor. Gilligan arrived downstairs,
where a smiling Holland greeted him. “So
should I start eating the book?” Gilligan
asked. Holland laughed and admitted he
should have been working harder. Gilligan,
however, felt he was more in the wrong.
“It was a failure of imagination on my
part,” Gilligan says now. “I learned, as a
teacher, not to be a dream killer. Anything
is possible.”
Especially when you suit up in maroon.
Gregory ’94 is the senior sports
correspondent at TIME, where he has
written more than 15 cover stories, and
adjunct professor at Columbia Journalism
School. He played basketball at Fordham
Prep and at Princeton, where he was a
member of a nationally-ranked team that
won two NCAA Tournament games.
Ryan Meara ’09
“At Fordham Prep, I learned
to believe in myself and
trust in myself, through all
obstacles and not so great
odds since nobody from
Fordham Prep had ever
made the NBA. I can do it.
The Prep gave me discipline
and forced me to focus,
and that’s something you
have to do almost every day
in college, on almost every
level. Fordham Prep gave
me the basics.”
The older I get, the more thankful I am
that I went to Fordham Prep. As much as
I enjoyed it while I was there, I feel like I
didn’t truly appreciate what I learned in high
school until years later. Obviously there
was a lot of valuable information learned
in the classrooms but I found that I learned
a lot of important life lessons through
playing sports. Being a part of a team has
so many parallels to life. You learn how to
deal with success and failure. You learn
the importance of being a good teammate.
You learn how if you want to succeed you
have to really dedicate yourself to work
hard and improve. The list goes on and on.
Luckily on the soccer team we had Coach
Mac who stressed all of this.
There’s no doubt in my mind Fordham
has played a huge part in getting me to
where I am today. Both on and off the field
I benefitted greatly from what I learned
at the Prep. My first ever soccer practice
freshman year I remember Coach Mac
seeing something in me that I didn’t even
see in myself. From that day on for the next
four years he pushed and pushed me to
make sure I was the best version of myself.
He made it so that when I graduated and
moved on to Fordham University, I felt more
than prepared to step in right away and
contribute to the team. The soccer program
has been incredibly successful in the last
20-30 years and it is all thanks to the
hard work and dedication of Coach Mac.
In my time playing for him we had a very
good team and were favorites a lot. He had
such a humble, hard working approach to
training and games that he never allowed
us to get too far ahead of ourselves or
become over confident. He always stressed
that our goal is to just get better everyday
and if we did that we’d be in good shape.
And he was right. We went on to win a city
title and make two state finals.
As much as Mac helped me on the field
develop into a better player, i think I
learned more from his approach to the
game. His love of soccer is contagious
and the way he made us practice with the
goal of just getting slightly better each
day is how I approach my career now. No
matter how my season is going, each day I
try to show up to practice and my mindset
is to simply end the day a better player.
There’s no secret recipe to improve other
than hard work. No matter what it is in life
that you have passion for, if you dedicate
yourself to it and approach it in a hard
working, humble manner I think you’ll be
surprised how far you can get.
“No matter how my
season is going, each
day I try to show up to
practice and my mindset
is to simply end the day
a better player.”
SPRING 2020
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