The Player, the Coach, and the Camp Director

Sunday Punch by Vic Ziegel, NY Daily News Sports Editor

If the old warning is true, and that into each life a little Stanley Felsinger must fall, then Columbia’s Jack Rohan is going to ride out this existence in grand style.  Rohan spent 13 years as the Columbia basketball coach, three of them in the “Golden Age” of Felsinger.  When he walked away from the job in 1974, he had one Ivy League title and three seasons of more than 20 victories.

At the beginning of each season Rohan would invite his players into his office, one by one, and ask them “Tell me about yourself.  If you were playing in a close game, who would you want as the other four?  Who do you think is really tough when the pressure is on?”

His first time around as coach, the last question would have been simple: Felsinger.

Felsinger came out of Brooklyn’s Lincoln High (after turning down BTA-Brooklyn Talmudic Academy).  Graceful, he wasn’t.  But he was a terrific scorer, a gunner of the first order.  His specialty was the shot from somewhere behind the ear or off the hip.  Stanley, 6’1”, barely 16 when he began college, played his senior season at 19.  And he was tough.  If he had been older, a bit more mature, Rohan says, he might have been an NBA player.  “Nah,” says Felsinger, “I got the standard letter from the Knicks, but it never interested me.”

He owns Camp Monroe now and gets on the basketball court, once in a while, “to give the kids a thrill.”  Rohan wouldn’t doubt it.

There was a game against Fordham, the coach recalls, and Felsinger was in his own world.  “He would get this glazed look,” Rohan was saying the other day.  “I used to tell my assistants, ‘When Stanley gets that look, let me know, we’ll call a timeout.’”  He brought the team back to the bench and gave them a few pieces of advice, but Stanley was barely listening.

The look.  Steve Singer first saw it as a student sportswriter during the Felsinger era.  Years later, he wrote an article for the graduate magazine about Felsinger, subtitled, “Transcendence, ecstasy and going to the basket in postindustrial society.”  Singer was sitting behind the Columbia bench, a tie game, very few seconds left, listening to Rohan outline a play for Dave Newmark, the team’s 7-foot center.  Back on the court, Felsinger was dribbling the ball and looking in at Newmark.  The buzzer was a tick away from going off when Felsinger tore his eyes away from Newmark and calmly tossed in the winner.

Singer met Felsinger later that night.  Didn’t the coach design that last play for Newmark, he asked.  “Yeah,” he says Felsinger told him, “but I just didn’t want to take the chance.”

There was another game against Fordham, with Columbia down by a point, about a minute left.  Rohan was outlining a play and Stanley interrupted.  “Let’s hold it for the last shot, “he said.  That was nothing close to what Rohan had in mind.  “’We’re losing,’” he reminded Felsinger.  “Let’s get in front.  Let them worry about the last shot.”  But that was Stanley.  He played the game like Russian Roulette.  All or nothing.

Stanley listened that time and, with three Fordham players hanging all over him, hit a 23-footer to put Columbia ahead.  As it turned out, those were the last points scored.  After the win, Felsinger said this to his coach: “I still think we should have gone for the last shot.”  And Rohan answered, “Stanley, when you get a team of your own to coach, that’s when you can hold the ball.”

A year later, Rohan was asked to recommend a player to coach the high school team at Riverdale Country School.  He gave them Felsinger.  At the end of the season, Felsinger had his team playing for the HS Prep League championship.  The game was at the Columbia gym, and Rohan was watching from the balcony.  Well, it was the standard sweaty Stanley story.  Riverdale down a point, something more that a minute to go and Felsinger called a timeout to tell his kids they were holding the ball.  To take the last shot and win!

“Stanley, you dope,” Rohan remembered saying from the balcony, when he realized the strategy.  With almost no time left, one of the Riverdale kids had the ball in the corner and had to shoot completely off balance.  “It was an air ball by so much,” Rohan said, “all I could think was, ‘Stanley, G-d has punished you.’  But it was such an air ball, another of his players caught it, laid it up, the buzzer went off, the basket went in.  Stanley was a winner.”

They kept in touch.  When Rohan would write, he called his player turned camp owner, “Uncle Stanley.”  And many years later, the mention of Stanley would bring a smile to his face.  “I cared for him a lot.”  He was a player you could count on!