Pat Longo said that she couldn’t describe the mood in the Holy Family Academy gymnasium on the afternoon of Jan. 11, soon after the school’s administration announced to the students that the all-girl Bayonne Roman Catholic high school would permanently close its doors in June, 2009.
“The girls were devastated,” said Longo, the long-time HFA head basketball coach. “Everyone was crying. I thought I was at a wake, a tragic wake of someone young who died suddenly.”
“Everyone was crying,” senior Danielle Dundas said. “It hurt us bad. It was a bad day for everyone. We were all so upset. Once it really hit us, we couldn’t believe it.”
Longo didn’t know what to do, because her basketball team had a game scheduled that day to face Union Hill. “I told them that they had to take their feelings out on to the floor,” Longo said.
“It was really hard, because we had a game that day,” said senior Caitlin Veverka. “But after we got the news, we decided we all were going to stick together. We grew stronger.”
“We were all in a really bad mood,” said fellow senior Grace Keller. “But we just decided that we were going to make something good out of it.”
The litany of events that have transpired since that fateful day border on the miraculous.
The Falcons defeated Union Hill on the same day that the school’s administration announced to the student body about the imminent closure. Soon after, they defeated two Jersey City public schools – Snyder, then Lincoln.
In that time span, Keller became a 1,000-point scorer, joining teammate Dundas as the school’s first pair of 1,000-point scorers in over a decade.
Another milestone
The 62-48 win over Lincoln marked the 500th career win for Longo as head coach, becoming only the 14th coach in New Jersey girls’ basketball history to reach the milestone, only the fourth ever from Hudson County and the first female coach from Hudson County to achieve 500 victories in girls’ basketball.
It gets better. The Falcons then went on to defeat Memorial, North Bergen (the defending HCIAA champion) and Ferris, giving them six straight HCIAA Coviello wins – all against public schools. It’s the longest win streak enjoyed by the school in over a decade.
More incredibly, all six straight victories have come since the emotional announcement. The Falcons have not lost a game since the official word came down that HFA was going to close next year.
“I don’t know what it is,” said Longo, who last year was inducted into the Hudson County Sports Hall of Fame and coaches both the boys’ and girls’ volleyball teams at Bayonne High School. “I don’t know what to say. I truly feel that the spirit of The Holy Family is with us. We beat some teams that we never beat before.”
“I can’t figure it out,” said Keller, who scored a season-high 34 points in the Falcons’ huge win over defending county champ North Bergen. “When we beat Lincoln, it was the first time we ever beat Lincoln and we’ve just kept it going ever since.”
Keller, Dundas and Veverka are three of the school’s top athletes. They all play three sports (soccer, basketball and softball) and have enjoyed their fair share of success in all three.
“They are the nucleus of this team,” Longo said. “They set the tone. The rest of the team is young. They are three incredibly athletic seniors.”
While the soccer and softball programs have done well at HFA over the recent years, the school’s most identifiable sport has been basketball.
The school has had only two head coaches – and both are Hudson County Hall of Famers. Maureen Wendelken was a fixture at Holy Family for 16 years, including when Longo was a student and athlete at the school in the 1960s.
When Wendelken moved on to become the legendary coach at Montclair State College in the 1970s, she turned the program over to Longo, who has remained at her alma mater ever since. Wendelken actually tried to coach both teams simultaneously for a while, but the national success of Montclair State (with its superstar player Carol Blazejowski) forced Wendelken to step aside in favor of Longo in 1979.
“Maureen was there for 16 years and you can look at all the accomplishments we had,” Longo said. “I felt when I succeeded Maureen, I was replacing a legend. It was motivation for me to keep it going, but she set the tone for me. I always admired her and took her philosophy.”
Over the years, it was basketball that put HFA on the map, with such prominent alumnae as Pat Colasurdo Mayo, who went from HFA to Montclair State and was later the first selection overall in the old Women’s Basketball League (WBL) draft in 1979 by the San Francisco Pioneers.
Maybe it’s only fitting that it is basketball which has brought back some pride and glory to the tiny school on Avenue A that is unfortunately reaching the end of the line.
“It’s really wild,” Dundas said. “I don’t even know how you can explain all that has happened. We had a rough year last year and now this year, this kind of woke us up.”
“There’s been a lot of school spirit since the announcement,” Longo said. “I used a quote that women are a lot like a teabag, than you never know its strength until it’s dipped into hot water.”
Save our school
There have been rallies at the school. Hundreds of posters imploring anyone and everyone to save the school are plastered all over the school’s walls. It was Dundas and Keller who initiated the poster campaign.
“Grace and I put the posters on the walls of the gym,” Dundas said. “We were told it was too much of a distraction for games, so we put them on the walls of the school to let everyone know how we feel.”
Dundas has taken it one step further. She organized a fundraising T-shirt drive, with “Save Holy Family,” on the front and part of the school’s alma mater, “Fight for her, guard her honor,” emblazoned on the back.
In fact, that has become the unofficial motto, once the announcement was made. These kids were going to fight for their school and guard HFA’s honor.
“We’ve sold about $2,500 worth of T-shirts and all of the proceeds are going to help the school,” said Dundas, who is also the president of the school’s Student Council. “We’ve had bake sales and penny sales, with all the money going to the school. We’re doing whatever we can. We want to let everyone know that we don’t want the school to close.
Added Dundas, “My sister [Gabrielle] is a sophomore. She wants to stay. There are so many others who want to stay.”
“It’s emotional to think about like what the freshmen and sophomores are going to do,” Longo said. “The seniors, they will have graduated and the juniors will be the last class and I anticipate they’ll still be here. But the parents of the freshmen and sophomores may look to put their children in another school.”
Longo said that there has been some talk from parents and alumni to see what type of major fundraising that could be done to keep the doors open.
“It’s not just money,” Longo said. “It’s the numbers of students enrolling. I hear that there are some people who are looking to see if someone can step up and save the school. They’ve even written to Oprah [Winfrey] and Ellen [Degeneres] to see if they can help.”
The team
Right now, the basketball team is doing its part in helping promote school spirit, camaraderie and togetherness. The Falcons currently own a 10-4 record overall and courtesy of the six-game win streak in the league have a 7-2 mark inside the HCIAA Coviello.
“Although the basketball team had some trouble in the past, we decided that we would come together this year,” said Veverka, who has been nursing a knee injury over the last week. “We’re a scruffy little team that puts up a good fight. Everyone knows that about us. Well, maybe we’re a scruffy little school that’s going to put up a good fight as well. I’m trying to think of this rationally, but it’s hard to believe. We just know that this school means everything to us. No one wants to see it close.”
“I think this just all brought us closer together,” Dundas said. “We still don’t know what’s going to happen, but we’re making the most of it.”
As it stands now, the Falcons are sitting pretty for the HCIAA Coviello playoffs, trailing only local rivals Marist and Bayonne in the league standings. The 10 wins also clinched a berth in the NJSIAA Parochial B state playoffs.
But it’s been a run of epic proportions, with the star player reaching a milestone and the coach attaining one as well. The little team that was given a death knell is trying desperately to seek a stay in the school’s execution.
“How could all of this happen?” Longo asked. “I’m just thrilled for the kids. Maybe something good can come from all of this.”
As long as the girls from Holy Family can continue to fight for her and guard her honor, anything is possible.
Jim Hague can be reached via e-mail at either OGSMAR@aol.com or jhague@hudsonreporter.com