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The Documentary: The Miracle of St. Anthony's

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24/02/2019 GMT

The Miracle of St. Anthony's

BBC World Service - The Documentary, The Miracle of St. Anthony's

How an impoverished school achieved amazing success on and off the basketball court

How an impoverished school achieved amazing success on and off the basketball court.

In the late 1960s, parole officer Bob Hurley became basketball coach at St Anthony’s High School in Jersey City, New Jersey. In the years that followed, as the city got poorer and its streets more dangerous, Hurley’s infamously exacting coaching style turned class after class of young men into championship material and put St Anthony’s—a school that didn’t even have its own gym—on the basketball map, winning multiple state championships and hundreds of games.

But the success was not just on the court, facing the harrowing effects of the crack and Aids epidemics, Hurley and his wife Christine, plus a host of dedicated nuns, priests, teachers and parents, kept St Anthony’s kids off the streets and made them not only into star athletes, but successful students who, years later, are still giving back to the community that raised them.

St. Anthony’s alumnus, former NBA basketball player and one-time Democratic Party politician Terry Dehere tells the story of this very special high school with help from several generations of St. Anthony’s players and supporters.

Presenter: Terry Dehere
Producer: Ned Carter Miles

(Photo: Head coach Bob Hurley of the St. Anthony Friars with a Friars player Credit: Elsa/Getty Images)

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