Don Kennedy, who coached Regis basketball from 1933 through 1950, will be inducted into the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame on September 19th at the New York Athletic Club. Kennedy will be one of 8 inductees, including the 1972-73 New York Knicks championship team.

Distinguished by his lean build and pencil mustache, Don Kennedy was an involved member of the Regis faculty between 1929 to 1950. Born in Brooklyn on April 7, 1907, Kennedy earned a degree from the Savage School for physical education. Beginning his career at Regis as a calisthenics instructor, Kennedy quickly demonstrated his aptitude for leadership with a strong emphasis on teamwork.

As a small school on the Upper East Side, Regis was overlooked by most as a worthy athletic opponent until Coach Kennedy took the reins. After leaving his coaching position at Power Memorial in 1945 so that he could dedicate all of his focus on the Regis basketball program, the team quickly joined the ranks of the best in the nation. Under his guidance, Regis dominated numerous Jesuit Tournaments, and won the Eastern States Championship in Newport, Rhode Island in 1947 and 1948, as well as securing runner-up titles in 1944, 1946, and 1949. The 1948 team, ranked #1 in the country at that time, won the national schoolboy championship and is often regarded as the best high school team of its era. The team produced 37 straight wins between their 1947 and 1948 seasons, a rare feat.

Coach Kennedy's innovative defense that combines the rigid form of the man-to-man and the flexibility of the switching man-to-man, which he deemed "the Regis Zone" was paramount in his success and later became used throughout the country, made popular primarily by Notre Dame University. Another key aspect of his coach was his insistence on the flawless execution of fundamentals which he ingrained in all of his players. This emphasis gained him significant recognition, especially amongst the faculty as well as the student body. Father Charles Taylor, a friend and fellow faculty member of Kennedy, remarked "Don Kennedy was a real teacher. He wasn't just a coach, he was a teacher." Kennedy regarded this teacher-first approach as essential to success as a coach. Don's high esteem among the faculty was mirrored by the student body who demonstrated their repute for him as a coach and teacher, both on and off the court. Kennedy himself, when reflecting on his career in an interview in 1982, claimed that "no school ever had a more loyal student body than Regis did." It is clear that Don Kennedy was both a valued member of, and at the same time an icon within, the Regis community.

In 1950, Kennedy left Regis to become head coach at Saint Peter's College. During his tenure there, Kennedy became--and remains--the Peacocks' all-time winningest head coach after posting a 323-195 record from 1950 to 1972. His career highlights at Saint Peter's includes five appearances in the National Invitational Tournament (NIT). He coached eight 1,000-point scorers and 20 future Saint Peter's Athletic Hall of Fame players in his 22-year tenure.

Kennedy is also known for running Camp St. Regis, a summer camp he directed in East Hampton on Long Island, from 1944 to 1982.

An article published on September 18, 2013 on nj.com titled, "Don Kennedy's legacy at Saint Peter's University honored by NYC Basketball Hall of Fame" quotes a Regis Alumni News Magazine article from 2004 saluting Kennedy. In the article, Joe Breen '48 described Kennedy as a coach that loved golf, Tipperary, the triangle-and-two, and a Bombay martini. Breen said of Kennedy, "He made the bookish kids do pushups and chinups and box each other in the bandbox gym, much to their chagrin and occasional bloody nose. Against all odds, he turned less than athletic, skinny Irish kids into a proud, unafraid team that wouldn't be beat." Such methods aren't advisable now, but Breen added that every Regis player on the 1943 and 1948 teams showed up for Kennedy's 90th birthday in 1997 for one reason: "We loved him," he wrote. "He made us better."

Kennedy passed away at the age of 97 on October 26, 2004. In an undated interview prior to his death, Kennedy stated, "I never had as much pleasure in coaching anywhere as I did at Regis, because they were bright boys, and they were bright basketball players. You told them things once and they got it. And if they didn't, they had sense enough to take whatever I'd hand out if they didn't do the right thing. And they were marvelously disciplined—and I know that no coach ever had a better teaching and coaching situation than I had at Regis."

A look back at Kennedy's career following his death was published in the November 4, 2004 New York Times, titled Don Kennedy, Who Turned St. Peter's Team Into Contender, Dies at 97. "Coaching at Regis," Kennedy said, "was honestly the greatest experience of my life."

On Coaching at Power Memorial and Regis at the same time:
"That terminated in '45 because they wanted me to drop Regis and to coach all their sports... I didn't particularly care for it. I felt better about Regis. It was a more secure job. I had been teaching there at that for 14 or 15 years."

On teaching Phys Ed at Regis:
"When I started Regis, this is funny, they called the Phys Ed course calisthenics. And then I talked them into naming it physical training."

On coaching as a teacher:
"I remember very vividly Father Charles Taylor coming in and watching the team, and then he watched me coach for a while. Then he made the remark to several people that 'Don Kennedy is a real teacher. He isn't just a coach, he is a teacher,' which I think is the answer to coaching. You have to be a teacher to be a coach, unless you're the type of coach who can just manage the great material that comes your way."

On fundamentals:
"I was always known as a fundamentalist, a perfectionist... I thought it was rather silly to try to teach some complicated pattern or set of plays if the boys didn't know their fundamentals... and, of course, any boy that ever played for me knows that the main stress was on teamwork."

On defensive strategy:
"In those days I was sort of an innovator. I invented a defense which eventually became one of the major defenses in the country, called the pick-up zone. I didn't call it that. A the time it was called the Regis Zone. It was a combination of man-to-man zone and switching man-to-man which was eventually made popular by the coach of Notre Dame."

On the Regis student body:
"Maybe the outstanding memory is the fact that no school ever had a more loyal student body than Regis. If we played anywhere, we traveled to Tottenville. The student body--one game I remember there, only eight kids did not show up way out in Tottenville."

On coaching at Regis:
"I thought that I had never had as much pleasure in coaching anywhere as I did at Regis, because they were bright boys, and they were bright basketball players. You told them things once and they got it. And if they didn't, they had sense enough to take whatever I'd hand out if they didn't do the right thing. And they were marvelously disciplined—and I know that no coach ever had a better teaching and coaching situation than I had at Regis. It was honestly the greatest experience of my life--coaching at Regis."


Above: Photos of Coach Kennedy published in Regis yearbooks from the 1940's


Above: Coach Kennedy with the famed 1948 Regis basketball team

Text and photographs for this news story were generously researched and compiled by Matt D'Ariano '12 and Jim Rowen '12.