Top 100 Irish America's Finest In Sport "What we talk about is great effort outstanding preparat

To the victor come the spoils, they say, and going from a one-year last-chance-saloon contract signed at the start of the season, Coughlin can expect a multi-year contract with a serious pay hike when the celebrations die down.

"Every team is beatable, you never know," said Coughlin after his team's improbable win. "The right moment, the right time, every team is beatable." What he failed to mention was that to accomplish that, you need the the right mentality and the right coach. Way to go, Tom.

Jack Curran

For fifty years Jack Curran has coached basketball and baseball at Archbishop Molloy High School in Queens, New York. In that time he has coached and mentored thousands of kids in the local community. And not without success either.

Curran and Archbishop Molloy have won the double - the New York City basketball and baseball title in the same year - four times. No other school has even done it once. In fact, with five basketball titles and 17 baseball titles, the Molloy trophy cabinet is pretty full. In terms of wins, in basketball Curran is around the 900 mark and in baseball he is hovering around 1,600.

But coaching was not his first calling. Curran was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers as a pitcher and ended up in the Philadelphia Phillies farm system in the early 50s before a back injury put an end to his playing career. After working as a recreations director, Spalding rep and building material salesman, Curran came across a newspaper ad for a coaching position at Archbishop Molloy. The rest, as they say. . .

During his time, six former Stanners (as the basketball players are named) have gone on to the NBA, but as Curran told The New York Times in an interview recently, "I've been told that the true measure of a coach is the quality of the people he has turned out long after they have left him. In that regard, I think I measure up pretty good."

Matt Cullen

Carolina Hurricanes center Matt Cullen comes from a family with ice hockey in its blood. Cullen's father was the hockey coach at Moorhead Senior High School (the Minnesota town where Matt grew up and the school he graduated from in 1995). One of his younger brothers, Mark, plays for the Detroit Red Wings and another, Joe, played for the Toronto RoadRunners.

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