It's end of the coaching line for Manny Martinez after 34-year career at Port Chester and Blind Brook

In sports they say a game ain't over until it's over. In opera the appropriate saying is the stage action isn't over until the fat lady sings one last time. And the Broadway musical hit formula notes that the dramatically climactic 11 o'clock number signals the end is near.

All those images come into play to signify the end of the line for Port Chester and ex-Blind Brook multi-sport coaching great Manny Martinez.

Manny has informed Port Chester Athletic Director James Ryan that he will be stepping down from his primary role as Rams varsity basketball coach at the end of the school year.

His announcement ended a coaching career that has—at varying times—also included his role as Port Chester's head Lady Rams tennis and hoops coach and assistant soccer and Track & Field coach.

He also spent 17 years as the head coach of the Blind Brook Lady Trojans during a time when he turned around a losing culture there and built the team into a local power before he was unceremoniously and inexplicably let go by a former athletic director. But his immigrant drive led to his resurrecting his career by resuming coaching at Port Chester and rebuilding the longtime league doormat hoop Rams into a respectable playoff team.

His 34-year coaching career has included more dramatic ups and downs than a show biz curtain.

In that time, he has played many roles on the local stage starting as a scared immigrant kid whose family fled Castro's Cuba as political refugees. He couldn't speak a word of English at the start but became a gifted athlete who climbed out of the Westchester melting pot to become a respected educator who has spent 37 years teaching five subjects on the Port Chester High School level while mentoring under some of the greatest coaching names in local history on his way to becoming one of them himself.

The heady trip

It has been a heady trip that included Manny making his own high school varsity basketball debut playing against one of Port Chester's best teams ever and helping mold some of the area's top student-athletes.

That journey has navigated heartbreaking detours like losing his dream job in Blind Brook, seeing one of the best Ram basketball players ever lose his career by destroying his knee with an errant fall during a meaningless non-league game and identifying with a perhaps even more talented Ram player—a transfer from the Dominican Republic—having trouble learning to speak English while letting his court play speak for him as Manny once did back in the day.

All that and more led up to the moment when Manny told his AD that he would be stepping down as a coach at the end of a year in which his rebounding Rams made the playoffs and won more games than they had won in the previous decade.

That gave Manny a career basketball coaching record that saw his teams win 225 games and seven league championships.

But the passion for the game that made Manny one of the great local coaches also was so time-consuming that it left him with the feeling that his familial time was running out and that led to his walking away from his Ramily coaching job because he wants to spend more time with his family.

It was a tough decision to make. And it didn't come easily. But what got Manny, 62, to make that decision creates an intriguing story about the man he is and the coach he was.

Fleeing Cuba for U.S.

So, let's take it from the top to understand the history and mystery that has gone into Manny's coaching career.

A lot has happened to him from the time he was born in a small farming town called Los Palos (The Sticks), Cuba on the eve of the Bay of Pigs Invasion in April 1961. That was the name of the failed military landing operation on the southwestern coast of Cuba conducted by a group of Cuban exiles who opposed Fidel Castro's Cuban Revolution in a move that was covertly financed and directed by the U.S. government. The operation took place at the height of the Cold War, and its failure influenced relations between Cuba, the United States and the Soviet Union on the global stage. It was also the event that led Manny's staunch anti-Communist parents to flee Cuba with their family in 1968 during the "Freedom Flights" that allowed Cubans to be classified as political refugees in the U.S. That, in turn, led to a series of moves leading up to a turning point in Manny's development—losing himself in sports to the point where he made his varsity debut as a point guard for Saunders of Yonkers during the 1977-78 season in the old Port Chester High School gymnasium against the Rams’ eventual Section One Champions led by Tony Grier, Tony Foust and Lou Vincent.

"Once I became a teacher, I guess I was destined to work at Port Chester High School where I've dedicated my professional life for almost four decades now," Manny recalled.

But Manny being Manny remembered there were many, many miles to go from that varsity debut to where he is now, balding, bespectacled, heavy set, a 60ish teacher in a suit and an after school coach with a whistle, his deceptively mild appearance no indication of the trials and tribulations in the life he has led or his passion for the game.

"Our family first flew from Cuba to Miami where we stayed at the legendary Liberty House in downtown Miami and then we flew from there to New York City where we stayed in our uncle's apartment on 75th and Columbus Avenue in Manhattan," Manny remembered like it all happened yesterday. "After my parents were unable to find proper housing for a family of six in Manhattan, we settled in Southwest Yonkers where I grew up playing a variety of sports on the streets and schoolyards of Riverdale and Hawthorne avenues. The toughest part of my early childhood was that first year because I didn't know how to speak any English and there were few Spanish speaking kids in the neighborhood. I recall vividly crying myself to sleep asking myself why my family had to leave my native homeland and leave everything behind. Within a year, however, I spoke English fluently and started making lots of friends from all sorts of ethnic backgrounds. Yonkers was a melting pot of cultures and languages in the 1970's. My neighborhood childhood friends introduced me to the Lud-Dale Boys & Girls Club on Riverdale Avenue where I learned how to play football, basketball, and baseball. The coaching staff and volunteers that worked at the Lud-Dale Club were very supportive of all of us. My friends at St. Peter's Catholic School hooked me onto playing with them for as many teams as possible. I played on the Lud-Dale travel teams. My biggest influences were Yonkers legendary basketball players Alvin Jessamy, who played basketball professionally in Europe; Charlie Criss, who played in the NBA; Bernard Toone, who played at Marquette and in the NBA; and Mike Linden who played basketball for Cal State Fullerton and led the Titans to the 1978 NCAA Elite Eight."

But education came first, including a college degree that eventually enabled him to teach five Port Chester HS courses: ESL, AP Environmental Science, Human Anatomy, Bilingual Living Environment Regents and mainstream Living Environment Regents.

Price of the ticket

After majoring in biology at Mercy College in Dobbs Ferry, he became an elementary teacher in Yonkers in 1986 and then was recruited by the Port Chester Public Schools in the Summer of 1989, Manny recalled. "Dr. Harry Mix and Dr. Charles Coletti hired me after interviewing with Principal Joan Butler in June 1989. My ties to Port Chester were intertwined with family and high school sports. Growing up in the 1970's, I had family members who were part of the vibrant Cuban American community that settled in the village in the 60's and 70's. My sophomore year at Saunders High School saw our varsity baseball team get defeated by a Port Chester baseball team that featured Alfie and Tony Foust. My first varsity basketball game during the 1977-78 season took place at Port Chester High School versus the eventual Section One Champions led by Tony Grier, Tony Foust, and Lou Vincent. Once I became a teacher, I guess I was destined to work at Port Chester High School where I've dedicated my professional life for the past 34 years. Early on at Port Chester, I was mentored by legendary coaches like Dick Tewey and Jeff Charney.”

Their influence led to Manny landing his first varsity basketball job coaching the Port Chester girls for three years (1994-1996). He was married by then to his high school sweetheart Maria (now a teaching assistant in the Brewster School District), theirs a marriage of 42 years now which includes four grown children (three girls, all educators, and a son, an electrician, all outstanding athletes and all products of the Arlington school system where they grew up in LaGrangeville in a home Manny and Maria built on three acres in 2001). The years went rushing by.

"I took a few years off (from coaching the Lady Rams) to coach my daughters’ CYO and AAU teams," he remembers. But then the urge returned to start coaching high school basketball, Manny remembered. Charney helped him land the job he would go on to hold for 17 years as coach of the Blind Book Lady Trojans. Manny's girls’ basketball teams made 10 trips to the Final 4's played at the Westchester County Center and in 2007, they won the Section One and Regional championships on their way to the New York State Final 4 in Troy.

The best Lady Trojans

Without hesitation, Manny named the best of his Blind Brook past: Yasmine Harik (2005) was the best player he ever coached at Blind Brook. Yasmine still holds the record with over 1,600 points scored and was captain of the Amherst College women's team that made the D-3 Sweet 16 in 2008. In 2005, Yasmine teamed up with Blair Fisher (2005) to lead Blind Brook to the 2005 Finals of the Section One championships. He had other great players like Samantha Trager (2002) who played at Muhlenberg in Pennsylvania, Karlyn Adler (2007) played at Colby College, and Allie Silfen (2013) played at Bowdoin College. He loved coaching all the girls at Blind Brook, but his four favorite players were Janine Bucci (2004), Ruthie Brown (2006), Lea Saliba (2013) and Shannon Reddy (2014). Bucci was as tough as nails, Brown was the best defender and toughest player he ever coached, Saliba would run through a wall for him and Reddy had the highest basketball IQ on the floor.

“Those core four girls made us a team to be reckoned with year after year,” he said.

“My greatest team was the 2007 team that was led by Karly Adler and Sabrina Stockel (2007). That team made it to the New York State Class C Final 4 and won our only Gold Ball and Regional Championship. Sabrina Stockel was a great clutch player for us that 2007 year, having scored 23 points in the semi-finals versus Hamilton and 17 points in the State Final 4 versus Bloomfield.”

He is most proud of his players at Blind Brook because each of them has gone on to be a great success in life. “I would like to think that they all learned from me how to be passionate and competitive in whatever they do in life," he said.

They also learned how to never give up. Because Martinez didn't. Blind Brook broke his heart by letting him go despite widespread support from his teams, past and present, their parents, and many community activists, coaches and officials.

"Once I was unceremoniously let go after 17 years as the head varsity coach (by then Athletic Director D.J. Goldman), I took a year off and then applied for the Port Chester boys’ basketball job," Manny recalled. The previous years, the Rams boys’ basketball teams had hardly won any games despite having some decent talent. One coach nearly had two heart attacks (one of his players was arrested for burglary just before a game the Rams needed to win to make the playoffs, and another was declared academically ineligible) and the last coach resigned following a stint that only produced a few wins.

Manny was on his way to turning around the program when tragedy struck. Shamel Jones, one of the best players in Port Chester history, an ultra-competitive Division 1 college scholarship caliber athlete, went up for an errant pass, landed awkwardly, his leg twisting at a grotesque angle, had to be carried off the court, underwent surgery, and was lost for the season, ending the Rams’ playoff hopes. He never was quite the same player. Manny helped carry him off the court that fated day against Palisade Prep. He still doesn't like to talk about that day because it ended Jones’ career. But he doesn't allow himself to dwell on what could have been.

"Coaching Rams varsity basketball at Port Chester is not for the faint of heart," he said. "There's a lot of factors behind the scenes that make the job one of the toughest in the state."

Manny's top Rams

"While I am grateful for the five years that I was able to coach our boys, I would not recommend it to anyone I know," Manny said. "I love coaching the boys, but the talent level is not what it needs to be to compete at the highest level in the section. I have had several awesome young men like Shamel Jones, Marlwyn Tejada, Chris Penella, Joan Mora, Luis Santana, Kenny Borrome, Will McAllister, Matt DelCid, Mike DeCrescenzo and Alec Pineda. This past year, I was blessed with the opportunity to coach Dominican Republic transfer student Guillermo (Memo) Zabala, perhaps the best all-around player I have seen play at Port Chester in the past decade (and the player Manny most identifies with because he understands Memo's frustration at the difficulty of learning to speak English to the point where he cried himself to sleep at night as Manny once did as an immigrant himself). Despite the pandemic, my team continued to stay focused and improved each year. This past season we finished with seven wins, the most wins in the last decade. Zabala and Pineda teamed up to score close to 800 points combined this past season, but the team fizzled versus the better AA teams. Despite our lopsided loss at Mamaroneck in the first round of the playoffs, I was very proud of my team and our basketball program."

What Ramily needs

"In order for Port Chester basketball to change and become a perennial powerhouse like they were in the 70's and 80's, there needs to be more parental involvement and player development at the younger ages," Manny said. "Both boys and girls have to start playing competitive basketball at an early age.”

Parents need to invest time and money in their child's passion for basketball, he added. “At Blind Brook, I had a supportive parental program in place as soon as I got the job and maintained the program excellence by implementing an AAU basketball program that fed the high school teams year after year. It's not rocket science."

He will save time by not coaching anymore, but he hasn't yet decided when he will quit teaching.

"My plans are to continue to work as a teacher at Port Chester High School for as long as I am still an effective teacher,” he said. “It might be one year or five more years. It's hard to say. I will let my students let me know when the right time will be to retire, but I can tell you that it will be soon. I want to enjoy my family, my wife, my kids, and especially my grandkids. They mean the world to me. I have worked very hard to get to where I am at this point in my life. Hitting the gym, staying fit, and working around my three acres will keep me busy. My legacy will not just be all the wins or league championships that my teams won throughout my career but instead the thousands of lives that I helped cultivate into just being good citizens. Maybe I'll help coach AAU basketball teams that need my help or do some much needed traveling with my wife. Maybe…”

His voice trails off. Because there are a lot of possibilities. And it ain't over until it's over. He still has many Manny miles to go.