Decades of outstanding local sports moments in a P.C./B.B. thanks for the memories farewell
December 19, 2024 at 1:57 a.m.
It ain't over until it's over, and now it is. This is the final edition of Westmore News. And that means it is game over for local scholastic sports coverage here. That also means there will be no traditional thanks for the memories end of the year column. At least not in the traditional sense synonymous with a holiday season spiced with eggnog, chestnuts roasting on an open fire, Charlie Brown, Rudolph, "White Christmas" (whether or not nature cooperates) and auld lang syne.
But, whatever happens next, old acquaintances should never be forgotten. Nor should white or technicolor dreams. Hence this untraditional farewell thanks for the memories article about the most unforgettable local sports moments of the past decade. This remembrance of games past is based on my writing about sports hereabouts for more than a decade for Westmore News.
Right up until this moment when Westmore becomes no more.
What follows are my 10 most indelible moments of the past decade:
1. THE SADDEST MOMENT: Shamel Jones started for the Rams varsity basketball team as an eighth grader, left to play fast-paced prep school hoops in North Carolina and returned to Port Chester to wind down his high school career playing with the kids he grew up with. He quickly established himself as one of the best players in Section 1 and a sure thing to win a Division 1 college scholarship, maybe to UConn where his father had captained a national championship team. But then he went up for an errant pass in a meaningless game where he had already scored 20 points and landed awkwardly, his leg twisted grotesquely beneath him. He was carried off the court and sat on the bench, clenching a towel between his teeth to numb the pain, watching the lead disappear without him. So he asked the coach to put him back in, tried to explode towards the rim, but the lift wasn't there. He was fouled, hit the foul shots, but had to be carried off the court again. The Rams lost without him. And as he was carried into the locker room, his face showed he knew he was no longer the carefree wunderkind bound for hoop greatness. He underwent surgery for a torn ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) and more. And when he returned, he was never the same.
2. THE GLADDEST MOMENT: Dominican Republic transfer Guillermo (Memo) Zabala was having trouble translating his thoughts into English, so Rams basketball coach Manny Martinez was doing the translating during our first interview, and what Memo was essentially saying in Spanish was that he didn't know what he would do without basketball in his life. But he sure knew what to do with a basketball in his hands—he became the first Ram in Port Chester history to hit the 1,000 mark in career points scored, established the school single game scoring record with an incredible 60 points, made the All-Conference team, and graduated with a chance to play college ball for Arizona State.
3. THE GREATEST MOMENT: Wunderkind Kayleigh Heckel, arguably the greatest female basketball player in Port Chester history, stood out from the first moment as a precocious eighth grader who kept hitting long-range threes like they were layups during varsity tryouts. She didn't disappoint, averaging close to 30 points per game as a Lady Ram, making the All-Section team twice as the leading scorer in Section 1 and playing one of the most unforgettable Port Chester hoops games ever. It came in a tournament in Mamaroneck when she scored 53 points in an upset over Kennedy Catholic, including 10 points in the last two minutes, getting fouled with under 10 seconds to play on a long three with the Lady Rams trailing by a deuce.. Heckel hit the three pressure-packed foul shots, then stole the inbounds pass to ice the game. She transferred to Long Island Lutheran, the prep school powerhouse, to play a national schedule that would enhance her college athletic scholarship potential, became a high school All-America point guard, and is now playing ball for the nationally-ranked University of Southern California.
STEER for Student Athletes Chief Executive Officer Joe Durney received the Port Chester Youth Bureau award for distinguished community service earlier this month. He is flanked by a quartet of former great Ram and Lady Ram athletes who are paying it forward by working to help at risk students for STEER. They are, from left, Colin Taylor, Astrid Vargas, Jordan Lewis, and Myles Durney.Courtesy of Joe Durney
4. THE GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT: Rams soccer great Steven (Stevie Wonder) Hernandez scored a goal in his first varsity playoff game as an 8th grader, scored the winning goal in overtime for the Rams’ first ever Section 1 championship as a freshman and went on a scoring spree that led the Rams to their first ever regional championship only to come within one goal of winning the school's first ever state championship in any sport. They lost to the defending champion Long Island team 2-1 in the finals in Albany with Hernandez playing so hurt he could barely lift his right arm. He made the 2012 All-State Team, went on to become a small college All-America at American International University, had a fling in the pros and has returned to Port Chester as an assistant soccer coach under his legendary mentor John Cafaldo.
5. NEAR GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT: Ivan Garcia, the greatest lightweight wrestler in Rams history, made four consecutive All-State Teams as Port Chester's winningest wrestler ever and came within two points of winning the school's first state championship under head coach Joe “Fatch” Facciola, with Fatch a former All-Section light heavyweight champion and Ram triple threat athlete (football, baseball and wrestling). Garcia is now one of the star wrestlers at Binghamton University.
6. ALMOST GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT: Lady Rams head soccer coach Danny Alvarado won three consecutive Coach of the Year Awards, but COVID robbed his greatest team ever of the chance to become Sectional Champions because they never got a chance to play for the title due to the coronavirus sidelining them. But what a team that was because of three soccer academy standouts (Ashley Reyes, who was so good she played for the Colombia national team while still in high school; the high-scoring Andrea Flores and goalie Megan Sical). They blended seamlessly with All-Section defensive standout Kayla Saavedra to help make Port Chester virtually unbeatable until the virus knocked them out of postseason play. Reyes, Flores, Sical and Saavedra all went on to play college ball for, respectively, Buffalo, Pace, St. John's and Mercy.
7. THE GREATEST ACHIEVERS: Blind Brook's girls’ volleyball team did what no other team in school history had ever done before—this year they won their second sectional title in the past three years and then the Lady Trojans went on to win the school's first ever regional and state titles ever. An unprecedented three Lady Trojans—senior school assist record-breaker Fernanda Julian and the high-scoring Rosenfeld twins (juniors Ella and Oriah)—made the All-State Team, the Lady Trojans racked up 17 postseason All-Star awards and head coach Gina Carlone was named Coach of the Year. And Trojans soccer ace Nico Palacios was also named to the All-State soccer team.
8. THE GREATEST BASEBALLERS: Blind Brook's ace pitcher/shortstop Andrew Rogovic set a Blind Brook record by striking out 19 of 21 batters in a playoff game, throwing 90 miles per hour heat on his way to being named Player of the Year, making all kinds of postseason All-Star teams and leading Section 1 in strikeouts enroute to an athletic scholarship to Northeastern while being on the pro scouts radar. And just when you were thinking nobody would ever match that feat locally, Rams Dominican Republic transfer Jordany German struck out 19 batters last season on his way to making the All-Section Team with his senior year yet to come and head coach Sean Burke banking on him to help win a league championship after Burke led the Rams to their first league title in 25 years two seasons ago.
9. THE GREATEST SISTER ACT: Slugging centerfielders Brooklyn and Madison Ostrowski will go down as two of the greatest female athletes in Port Chester history. Both hit over .500 in helping head coach Jeanine Maiolini turn around a losing Lady Rams softball culture. Both helped Danny Davis make Lady Rams hoops respectable. Both are now playing college ball for Villanova on athletic scholarships. And kid bro Tyrus (named after baseball's legendary Ty Cobb), now playing prep school ball in Greenwich, could well follow in their footsteps. And so could Blind Brook's Rosenfelds because they have their own trifecta going with the twins (Oriah and Ella) and kid sister Annabel, an 8th grader, all coming back next year for another volleyball state title run while also excelling in sports ranging from basketball to Track & Field.
10. THE GREATEST PICTURE: In what seemed like a pre-ordained farewell, one of the last photos to cross my desk was a picture worth 1,000 words. It showed STEER for Student Athletes Chief Executive Officer Joe Durney receiving the Port Chester Youth Bureau award for distinguished community service flanked by a quartet of former great Ram and Lady Ram athletes who are paying it forward by now working to help at risk students for STEER. And what makes that pix so special is that Durney was the Port Chester athletic director when this writer first started covering sports for Westmore and each of the athletes pictured—Colin Taylor, Astrid Vargas, Jordan Lewis and Myles Durney—played leading roles in various sports stories back in the day. Taylor, the ex- Rams quarterback, broke the longstanding school record in the long jump and ran the 100 meters in 10 seconds flat. Vargas, one of the Lady Rams’ first swim team captains, wrote the fundraising grant with Joe Durney's assistance that helped start the first Lady Rams swim team. Lewis was one of the Rams’ all-time great running backs and T&F stars. And Myles Durney was a Rams ace pitcher/first baseman.
Just as Joe Durney helped me in my sports coverage over the years, so too did Blind Brook's AD Kimberly Saxton who cut through all the Section 1 bureaucratic red tape to help resurrect the Trojans’ football team from the dead. Her hard work made this year's football merger with Edgemont possible so the boys would have a chance to play again after a year spent out of the game when the sport ended due to a lack of players coming out for the team. That meant trying to play a varsity schedule with limited numbers would be unsafe. Hence the need for a merged team. Which Saxton made happen. With lots of hard work. And despite Section 1 obstacles to the merger. James Ryan, Durney's P.C. AD successor, also made sports coverage easier while blazing new trails of his own by starting new Port Chester lacrosse and boys’ volleyball teams.
The long goodbye
So a lot has happened in local sports over the last decade or so, and there's lots more that could be written. But the end is near, and you get the idea that Port Chester and Blind Brook have had great student-athletes that this writer has had the privilege of writing positive stories about in that time.
And regrets, there are more than a few. Because now this writer will not be able to write about whether freshman lightweight wrestling phenom Laila Builes, who has already won international judo championships, will become Port Chester's first ever state champion. Or whether the Rams football profile in courage John Pauletti, the next level senior fullback who kept on playing both ways despite a mysterious heart ailment and was chosen by coaches as the outstanding offensive player in the Hudson Valley Independent Football League, will wind up playing college ball on a Division 1 or 3 level.
That is an intentionally long and complex sentence. But is indicative of how much more I would like to write here. But it is best to simply say thanks for the memories going back more than a decade. Because writing for Westmore News has been a fountain of youth for me, giving me the opportunity to write stories the way I wish they had been written when I was a high school student-athlete on my way to a Division 1 college athletic scholarship, wondering what was to come. And now I still am wondering what is to come umpteen years later. Because there is always the long shot chance of a Hail Mary buzzer beater and maybe somebody(s) will step forward to keep a weekly community newspaper alive in Port Chester and Rye Brook. Whatever happens, though, now is the ciao time to say so long, it's been good to know you. And best wishes to you, yours and the entire Westmore team for a Merry Christmas, meaningful Hanukkah and a happy new year.
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