Former Amityville basketball coach Jack Agostino honored for 27-year career
Jack Agostino, center, is surrounded by his past players at the Amityville Alumni Event celebrating the achievements of the basketball program and honoring Jack Agostino for his contributions to the sport. This was held in the new high school gymnasium on Saturday, April 9, 2022 Credit: Peter Frutkoff
When Jack Agostino walked into the new Fred Williams Memorial Gym at Amityville High School on Saturday afternoon, the New York State Basketball Hall of Fame former head coach of the program was showered in appreciation. But like during his 27 years at the helm at Amityville, Agostino was more concerned with highlighting others.
Agostino, who had 474 wins, 15 league titles, 10 Suffolk titles, eight Long Island championships and four state titles at Amityville, was honored during an energetic, all-day alumni basketball event at Amityville High School on Saturday.
“It’s just a culmination of how many lives you touched without even knowing,” Agostino, 59, said. “And it’s just amazing how many people don’t even realize what this has done for me. I’m so happy to be able to celebrate this but what they’ve done for me is way more than I have for them, honestly.”
Agostino, who coached at Amityville from 1987-2014, presided over 13 straight league titles, six straight Suffolk titles and four straight state Class B titles (2000-2003). But his impact off the court stuck with his players the most.
“He challenged us, he challenged us to be great,” said Mark Johnson, Class of 2005. “He earned our trust because he wasn’t just there to win games. He really cared.”
Former players Tristan Smith and Johnson organized Saturday’s event, which broke alumni spanning four decades into four teams playing two games each. They also had a three-point contest, awarded a scholarship and had MCs and DJs throughout the day.
“Amityville is family and it doesn’t matter if you graduated today or 40 years ago,” said Jason Fraser, Class of 2002 and one of the greatest high school players in Long Island history. “When you see each other, there’s this instant connection and that’s authentic.”
Mike James, Class of 1993, played 13 seasons in the NBA and participated in Saturday’s event. James said nothing came easy playing in Amityville, whether it was in school or the playgrounds – and that helped make so many student-athletes special.
“There are so many great players that come out of this town because we all have this arrogance and cockiness,” James said. “And the beautiful part is we’ll have a generation behind us with the same arrogance and cockiness because the first thing you learn as an Amityville basketball player is toughness, arrogance, cockiness and playing with a chip on your shoulder.”
James was also in awe of seeing Amityville’s new gymnasium compared to his high school gym.
“I remember a medal rod being down the middle of our basketball court,” James said. “And now you have a game like this in this beautiful gym where you bring back so many different classes of people and there’s so much good energy and people that haven’t seen each other in years.”
Smith said a motivating factor for putting the alumni event together was to showcase the transcendent Amityville talent from multiple generations. He called it “historic” to put an alumni event together involving four decades and Smith wanted to make sure Agostino was there for the moment, as he coached nearly every kid on the court.
“He was not just a coach, he was a father figure to us,” Smith said. “He extended himself out far beyond basketball and he was impactful to the community. He helped shape us to be dignified grown men and this is our opportunity to say thank you.”
“It brings chills down my spine right now,” Agostino said. “I’m just so overwhelmed. You can’t imagine how this story unfolded. I could have never imagined it.”
