Basketball Powerhouse
Power Memorial started a basketball program in the late 1930s, winning All-City championships in 1937 and 1941; and the Metropolitan Championship in 1942. Over its history, it won a total of eight New York City Catholic High Athletic Association (CHSAA) championships.
In 1961 6 ft 10 in (2.08 m) freshman Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor (later Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) joined the basketball team. Alcindor led the team to 27 consecutive victories and the 1963 CHSAA championship. The winning streak continued as the team went undefeated and won the CHSAA in 1964. The streak finally ended at 71 games on January 30, 1965 when DeMatha High School of Hyattsville, Maryland defeated Power, 46-43. That was one of only 6 losses in Alcindor's high school career (96–6). The 1963-64 team was named "The #1 High School Team of The Century" by National Sports Writers and was inducted into the CHSAA Hall of Fame as the team of the century.
Power Memorial continued to be known as a basketball powerhouse, although it never repeated the total dominance of the early 1960s. All-Americans Len Elmore, Ed Searcy and Jap Trimble were on the 1970 team that won the CHSAA and was named "Number 1 Team in the Country". Mario Elie played and Chris Mullin also played at Power in the late 1970s, although Mullin later transferred to Xaverian High School.
The Power Memorial basketball teams were coached by:
- Jack Donohue – Varsity Head Coach 1959-1965 (went on to coach the Canadian National Basketball Team)
- Dick Percudani - Junior Varsity Coach & Assistant Varsity Coach 1959-1965
- Jack Kuhnert – Varsity Head Coach 1965-1970
- Brendan Malone - Junior Varsity Coach 1967-1969 & Varsity Coach 1970-1976
- Andre Anselme
- James Raysor led the freshmen team to and won the City Championship
- Steve Donohue-Player and last Varsity Head Coach
Read more about this topic: Power Memorial Academy, Athletics
Famous quotes containing the word basketball:
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)