Dear Editor:
“Quality involves living the message of the possibility of perfection and infinite improvement, living it day in and day out decade by decade.” Because I have been in a position to witness the realization of this quality, I was not at all surprised to hear from Mr. Jim Ring, John F. Kennedy High School’s basketball coach in Paterson, about the recent achievement of my former colleague, Ed Stinson.
Mr. Stinson, Hoboken’s football coach, has been selected as the recipient of the Distinguished High School Coach Award sponsored by the prestigious Frank McGuire Foundation. Mr. Stinson will be honored at the New York Athletic Club on Thursday, November 6.
Because of the consistently high caliber of Mr. Stinson’s football program, many student athletes secured 4-year scholarship to established universities. Not only did they play well, but they graduated with degrees. Students’ decisions to withstand the siren call of just playing ball and rejecting academic responsibility gives testimony to the rigorous, disciplined training they had received when they played for their local team. These decisions and accomplishments were not the result of mere happenstance; they came as a result of participation in a system based on hard-earned and deserved merit. If Hoboken High School’s football teams over the past 25 years had been rated on an SAT scale, they would have scored in the 1400’s; without a doubt, based on their performance caliber. This kind of quality that Mr. Stinson’s coaching leadership inspired “day in and day out, decade by decade.”
I am not surprised by the scope of Ed’s accomplishment, nor am I doubtful about the score of his tenacious will and his athletic skill. Ed’s father, Joe Stinson’s, had coached me in baseball for three years; the source was clear. Also, I myself had the pleasure of playing baseball with Ed in Little League, the Babe Ruth League and Hoboken High School. Later I cheered him on as he lettered in all three impact sports in high school. If there were a Mahjongg Team, Stinson would have lettered and been captain as well. Ed’s distinctive abilities and his intense drive extend beyond the ball field. He does, in many ways, personify “the message of the possibility of perfection and infinite improvement.”
The Red Wing Class of ’65 and the Jersey City State College Class of ’69 should be honored to have one of our own selected for this prestigious award. While he is one of us, Ed Stinson achieved a record that stands alone as a benchmark towards which others can strive.
Dennis Sevano