3/3/2009 - Kuntz Built SCCC Into Winner
Prior to Sussex County Community College’s men's basketball showdown with top-seeded Middlesex in the Region 19 Division III semifinals, Jerry Morelli and I were talking with SCCC AD John Kuntz.
Jerry and I have known John, one of the good guys in the world of Sussex County sports, for over 20 years, and when you get three guys together who have known each other that long, especially when it comes to sports, it doesn’t take very long for a game of “Remember When?” to break out.
You know the drill. When two or more guys get together the conversation will sooner or later drift to a stroll down Memory Lane and the old stories start to flow like a broken dam.
As we were chatting, we were reminiscing about the very modest start of SCCC’s fledgling athletic program back in the late 1980s when Kuntz started the men’s hoops program after a very successful run as the head basketball and baseball coach at Pope John.
Jerry told the story of how when he was at WSUS, he said on the air that SCCC should hire Kuntz as its first hoops coach and a week later it was announced at a press conference that indeed Kuntz had been hired.
We all laughed about the “juice” Jerry had and that he got Kuntz hired, when in fact, and Jerry knows this, Kuntz was hired due to his outstanding ability as a coach. Kuntz then embarked on a 20-plus year career in the unsung world of junior college athletics, helping the then-“school without walls” become a player in the Garden State Athletic Conference and Region 19 in all of the sports offered at College Hill.
Kuntz has received numerous honors over the years for his hard work in helping develop SCCC culminating with his induction to the Sussex County Sports Hall of Fame last November, a well-deserved honor.
There have been many people who helped put SCCC on the map both academically and athletically, but for my money none more important than former SCCC president William Connor and Kuntz. The pair tirelessly promoted the school as it left its trailers in the parking lot of Sussex Tech and moved into its present campus on College Hill, the former Don Bosco College.
Jerry, John and I laughed about the early days when Kuntz would drive around in a van picking up players hoping to have enough to play that night’s game. He found some good ones, too, but a lot of them came with some baggage, so to speak. But that didn’t matter to Kuntz. He was determined to build a program like the great Jack Martin had done down the road at the County College of Morris in Randolph.
We talked about former players like the high-scoring Gary Case, who was a few years removed from the game, only to come back to play for Kuntz. Kuntz also coached Al Blanchard, the former Sparta star and Spartans coach now at Mount Olive, as well as Billy Foley, the current girls head coach at Vernon.
And who could forget Mike Lipscomb? The “Lipper” played hoops and baseball and became Kuntz’s right-hand man and the school’s first Sports Information Director in addition to the many hats he wore while at the school. In fact, Lipscomb is still a dedicated SCCC fan and he called the Skylanders’ Region 19 final clash with Bergen Community with Foley for the school’s local cable television access channel.
Those early teams were fun to watch as the shot clock was never a factor. Kuntz had more gunners on those squads than an Air Force squadron. But slowly but surely, Kuntz was making progress. In the meantime, he also started the baseball program in 1989 and was named the school’s first AD.
Kuntz’s expanding duties eventually forced him to give up coaching as the school added men’s soccer in 1991, softball in 1992 and women’s soccer in 1994. But he laid a rock-solid foundation.
One of Kuntz’s former players, and one of the top players in SCCC history, Cornell Thomas, was named the Skylanders’ hoops coach five years ago, an illustration of what type of tradition Kuntz had formed at the school.
Thomas has deftly taken the baton from Kuntz and has run with it to the tune of guiding the Skylanders to their greatest season ever this year. SCCC went a school-record 20-10 and advanced to the Region 19 final for the first time ever after recording its biggest hoops win in school history, a wild 75-73 victory over defending region champ and nationally-ranked Middlesex.
The win over Middlesex served as a perfect example of what Kuntz wanted to accomplish when he started the program back in the summer of 1987. Although most of the players hail from outside the county, Alex Decker, a High Point grad, was terrific on defense and on the boards for the fourth-seeded Skylanders.
Freshman Deon Queen was the King of the Court as my broadcast partner Mike Casserly said as he hit a clutch jumper and two free throws to seal the win.
The postgame celebration was classic. The fans, the few diehards who made the trip to CCM for a 3 p.m. game on a Thursday, rushed the floor and Thomas in the heat of the moment ripped off his suit coat and flung it in celebration.
But my eyes were trained on Kuntz and in his usual laid-back manner he smiled and then hugged Thomas. You could tell he was bursting at the seams, but that is not Kuntz’s style to jump up and down. But you knew he was happy.
After the celebration calmed down, I asked Kuntz did he ever imagine a win like this when he first started recruiting players off playgrounds and summer leagues 22 years ago? He just smiled, and modestly shook his head, no, but you knew he had this game in his mind all the time.
Unfortunately, the Skylanders fell in the final 75-68 to Bergen, but that in no way takes anything away from this season. The Skylanders will return a great core of players, but will lose All-American forward Woodly Honore, a great player and student, who took a chance on SCCC and Thomas despite the Skylanders terrible record three years ago.
Honore told me after the game that he was proud of what the team and he had accomplished and that he hoped this was just the first of many appearances in the Region 19 final for SCCC.
And with Thomas, an energetic and charismatic coach and Kuntz protégé, the future looks bright for the Skylanders for years to come.
But the future promise of SCCC athletics may have never been if not for Kuntz. Congratulations, John, you deserve it. You have come along way from scouring dingy gyms in the summertime some two decades ago.
That’s it for now, see you on the sidelines.
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