McGUIRE FOUNDATION
Coach Petrie Is Feted
By Jack Graves
On the eve of his 50th year in coaching, Ed Petrie was among four high school coaches honored by the Frank McGuire Foundation last week at a reception and awards dinner at the New York
 It was the first time Ed Petrie and Tom Collins had seen each other since the state championship game East Hampton and Albertus Magnus played at the Nassau Coliseum 29 years ago. Petrie’s team won, in overtime.
Jack Graves
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Athletic Club in New York City.
The state’s winningest public high school boys basketball coach and his wife, Nancy, made the trip to the city on a chartered Hampton Jitney with an entourage that included a number of his former players from Pierson High School in Sag Harbor and East Hampton — a group that spanned four decades — and other well-wishers, among them Jim Stewart, East Hampton’s boys soccer and wrestling coach, a longtime admirer of the honoree who helped raise money for the foundation’s journal, and who intends to “continue to be involved.”
“As long as I was able to walk, I was going,” said Bob Vishno, the first person Petrie met when he came to Sag Harbor from Hamden, Conn. in 1958.
“Ed Petrie is one of those guys who come along only once in a while, who has instilled in his players the persistence, dedication, and sense of loyalty that he has always had,” Vishno said. “I’ve always been impressed by the loyalty he showed to his coaches, to Jack Hasley at Rye Neck High School — he would stop by to see him every time he went back to Westchester — and to Honey Russell at Seton Hall. Ed gets that same kind of loyalty from his players, which is very rewarding.”
Vinnie DeCerbo, who coached at Southampton College — thanks, he said, to Petrie’s advocacy — and at Patchogue High School, and who made the trip despite having suffered a stroke recently, said, “When I coached at Patchogue, we played Ed’s team. He had a great team that year, the one with Howard Wood on it and the Petrie kids. We got blown out — we had no way to stop East Hampton. They were well coached, they played good defense. . . . I’ve always loved to go to Ed’s games. It’s like he’s putting on a clinic. That son of his . . . grandson, rather . . . if his attitude is good, I think a Division I school will want him. He’s the best point guard to come out of Suffolk County.”
Paul Babcock, who played for “The Mighty, Mighty Whalers” in Petrie’s early coaching days in Sag Harbor, said, “I was one of Ed’s ball boys, when I was in eighth grade. I’d walk home with him. . . . On his first championship team, in ’61, we fed the big guys, George Widunas and Tom Bubka, like there was no tomorrow, always keeping the ball moving. If they were covered, we had ‘T’ shots, short-range jump shots. We were tenacious on defense, like a pack of Jack Russells! Myself, Jack Youngs, and Bob Jacobs.”
“The big thing about him as a coach,” Babcock said in answer to a question, “was his ability to size up another team. He was always prepared. He’d say, ‘This guy can only go to his right, don’t worry about that guy, we’re going to double-team this guy. . . .’ We’d box out under the boards, take good-percentage shots, and then the Jack Russells, the ferrets would go to work.”
“. . . . He taught small guys how to compete with big guys. He taught you the importance of doing your homework, the importance of being prepared, how to assess a situation, to know who you were and who your opponent was, and that you should play with purpose . . . all the things, really, that you need to increase your chances of being successful in life. That’s why everyone who has played for him has so much respect for him. He didn’t just throw out the ball and say, ‘Go play.’ For all the guys from Sag Harbor, to a man, it’s ‘Coach Petrie.’ He’s a respected man.”
And, Babcock added, “In the ultimate competition, in Southeast Asia, where I was constantly assessing myself and others, what I learned from Coach Petrie saved my life, and saved others’ lives. I’m glad I had his teaching, glad for the lessons learned. They were very, very, very valuable lessons.”
With Petrie on the dais that night was Bill McKee, his assistant coach for the past 18 years, who said no other evidence as to his mentor’s ability need be cited than the fact that he transformed the football team’s center, Billy Barbour, into the point guard of a state-championship basketball team. “He’s always put his players in a situation where they could win.”
“The people who have played for Coach Petrie throughout the years, from the ’60s to the present day,” McKee added, “have always been inspired by his honesty, patience, and his modesty. What he’s taught them has helped them handle stressful situations.”
“Simply put, Coach Petrie’s team could not only beat yours, but the next day he could take your team and beat his.”
The 74-year-old honoree thanked the foundation, his high school and college coaches, the aforementioned Jack Hasley and Honey Russell, and all those who had made the long trip to the city on a weeknight, a group that included his sons, Mike and Ed (“great players, great sons,”), Ed’s wife, Mary, and their son, James, a stepdaughter, Karen McQuiston, and her husband, Kit.
The college game was “the biggest thing” in his day, not the professional game, Petrie said. “Our heroes then were the college coaches of the metropolitan area — Frank McGuire [of St. John’s], Nat Holman [of C.C.N.Y.], Clair Bee [of L.I.U.], Johnny Bock [of Fordham], Kenny Norton [of Manhattan], Howard Cann [of N.Y.U.], Honey Russell [of Seton Hall, Petrie’s alma mater], and Don Kennedy [of St. Peter’s]. New York was the cradle of college basketball.”
Sag Harbor had been a great place to start his basketball coaching career, he said. “The fans were very interested in their teams, and the kids were eager to play. Friendships I made then still remain.”
It was a great feeling, he said, “when former players call me, when they stay in touch. . . . I’ve received much more from my players than I have been able to give to them.”
When Petrie asked Vishno to stand up, his former assistant, who, after Petrie left for East Hampton, went on to win more than 100 contests in each of the three sports he coached — golf, boys basketball, and baseball — and became Pierson’s longtime athletic director, “salaamed,” bowing low, arms outspread.
Besides Vishno, those who stood up for the coach, aside from the aforementioned, included Tom Bubka, his assistant for 25 years, Bob Vacca, a Milwaukee Bucks draftee, who brought his father, Sal, with him, Howard Wood, who before playing professionally in Spain for a decade was drafted by the Utah Jazz, Kenny Wood, who still holds the state public high school scoring record with 2,613 points, Carl Johnson, Bridgehampton High School’s coach, who has won three state championships as a player and three as a coach, Scott Rubenstein, Terrell Dozier, John Haessler, John McGuirk, Mark McKee, and Zach Brenneman, the latter, who came with his parents, a member of Petrie’s present team.
While he had been inducted into other Halls of Fame, “This one goes right to the top,” said Petrie, “because of the man it’s named for, Frank McGuire.
. . . I spent two hours with him when I gave him and Al McGuire, Marquette’s coach, a ride back to the city from a basketball camp we’d been at in New Hampshire. I wish I’d had a recorder in the car. What a wonderful guy he was. Obviously, his players who started the Frank McGuire Foundation thought so too.”
‘The people who have played for Coach have always been inspired by his honesty, patience, and his modesty.’
— Bill Mckee
What he had really liked about the evening, Petrie said later, was the fact that it had given him a chance to renew acquaintances, dating back in some cases to his college years. So many people he’d played against and coached against were there. “It was wonderful,” he said.
Among the coaches he had known was Tom Collins, who coached the Albertus Magnus High School team that Petrie’s Bonackers defeated in overtime at the Nassau Coliseum to win the 1977 state championship.
Petrie said that Collins had told him that they thought East Hampton’s players were rich kids, whereas the Bonackers thought the Albertus Magnus players were country bumpkins. Neither one was right, Petrie said later.
When asked what Petrie would do with the $5,000 stipend that goes with the award, Bill McKee said, “He’s going to put it toward a new scoreboard in the gym.”
“The Ed Petrie scoreboard?”
“No, he won’t put his name on it. It will be the Frank McGuire Foundation scoreboard. That’s the way he is.”