CABRINI ATHLETICS HALL OF FAME

In 2006, Cabrini College established an Athletic Hall of Fame for the purpose of recognizing individuals who have contributed to the success and growth of the athletic program. Our purpose is to recognize and honor individuals who have performed with distinction and/or have been instrumental in the overall development and success of Cabrini Athletics.

Class of 2006
DOROTHY CROWLEY
Coach, Athletics Director

The par 3 hole was only 147 yards away but beyond the range of Dorothy Crowley’s 81-year-old eyesight. She took aim at the hazy rumor of a flag and let fly.

"All of a sudden, the three men with me were jumping up and down," she recalled. "I said, ‘What’s happened?’ They said, ‘You’ve got an ace!’

"My first hole-in-one. And the funniest thing is, I couldn’t see the hole."
That was two years ago near her home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. At 83 Dorothy Crowley still plays golf and tennis.

More than six decades ago, Crowley dedicated her life to the novel concept that women could develop their athletic skills and never find themselves stuck at home while the men went out to play. At 16 she spent a summer touring the Northeast with an all-star softball team that took on local all-male squads and played one memorable game in Madison Square Garden.

The Queens native attended the Savage School for Physical Education for three years, until the Manhattan school merged with hated archrival NYU. Unable to stomach the idea of an NYU degree, she graduated instead from Columbia in 1943 and went on to coach high school basketball. One year she led tiny Cabrini High School to the city Catholic-school title game.

When the principal, Sister Ursula Infante, decided to open a college near Philadelphia, it took some doing to pry Crowley away from New York. But in 1957 she signed on as Cabrini’s first "physical education director."

Crowley organized and coached the basketball, field hockey and softball teams, taught classes in golf, tennis, archery and badminton, and established the first athletic field and fieldhouse.

"At first we had to invent places to play," she recalled. "We had to be careful where we set up the archery equipment on campus, or we’d wind up with moving targets."

After four years, Crowley moved back to New York and spent many years as assistant principal at John Adams High in Queens before retiring in 1979.

For Dorothy Crowley, "retiring" meant traveling the world, snorkeling in Australia and The Philippines, and getting together with former Cabrini students – now grandmothers – when they come down to Florida.

"It’s such a joy seeing them," she declared. "And it’s always good to have someone younger to play golf with. Someone who can see."
 

JOLYON GIRARD, Ph.D.
Coach, Athletics Director
 
On Dec. 5, 1974, as Jolyon Girard, Ph. D., prepared to coach the first men’s varsity game in Cabrini history, Sister Ursula Infante called him aside.

"As you know, I was opposed to men on campus," the College’s founding president said sternly. "But as long as we’re going to have them…don’t lose!"

In six years as head coach, Girard rarely did. He went 98-33 from 1974 to ’80, leaving a trail of ever-improving win-loss records (10-4, 14-5, 14-7, 19-7, 20-5 and 21-5).

He also went 52-12 in men’s softball, long-since defunct as a collegiate sport. He laughingly calls himself the winningest college coach in men’s softball history. He just may be right.

Girard, who arrived at Cabrini in 1973, founded the men’s athletic program and served as men’s athletic director until 1980, when he refocused his attention on his day job as professor of history and political science. He chaired the department from 1982 to 2000 and won a Lindback Award for teaching.

Girard grew up in Hazleton, Pa., and spent his teenage years in Germany, where his father held a key post with the Red Cross. He played basketball for the Stuttgart Stallions, a team of American high-schoolers, and later at Washington & Lee University.

Shortly after he came to Cabrini, a ragtag team of students signed up to play in the Eastern intramural league. They lost every game. "They thought that because I played basketball," he recalled, "that maybe I could do something with the team the next year."

He did. To Eastern’s embarrassment, Girard coached the club team to the 1973-74 intramural title.

"I called up the next year to see about the intramural schedule," he remembered, "and they didn’t want us back. We had a team already assembled, and we had to play somebody. So I called around and put together a schedule."

The rest is history. While the basketball team evolved into a national power, Girard founded men’s teams in soccer, tennis, cross country and, of course, softball. The budget never exceeded $7,000.
 

HELEN GOODWIN
Coach, Athletics Director

In the summer of 1961, the new chair of Cabrini’s Physical Education Department set about taking inventory.

"We had some hockey sticks, some bows and arrows, some badminton nets," Helen Goodwin recalled. "Funny, I don’t remember any balls. For years kids would ask me, ‘Can I play with the basketball?’ Actually, I think we had four.

"I put a sign up in the gym the first day of school: HOCKEY PRACTICE, 4 P.M. Not a single solitary soul showed up. I asked where everybody was. They said, ‘They’re all student-teaching.’"

Somehow Goodwin, a 1952 Penn State graduate, kept the existing programs alive while adding other sports. And, of course, coaching every one. Her budget: $650.

"Equipment, uniforms – I bought half the stuff with my own money," she remembered. "I used to go around the lunchroom on game day saying ‘I need a goalie.’ Eventually someone would go, ‘Oh, I’ll do it.’ Or I’d go around telling kids, ‘Rosemont needs a tennis match. Who wants to play?’"

Meanwhile she had three small children (5, 4 and 2) eager to play when she got home. Her husband urged her to turn down the job, but she’d fallen in love with the campus at first sight. "Hank," she said, "I don’t care what you say. I’m taking it."

Goodwin, who’s lived in the same West Chester house for 47 years, stayed on at Cabrini as either head of the physical education department, athletic director or women’s AD until her retirement in 1993. The campus lured her to Cabrini, and her warm relationships with the students kept her here.

"I loved every minute of it," she declared. "The best thing about Cabrini was the students, and I’m proudest of having known 10,000 of them.

One time I lost my temper at halftime, and they said, ‘Finally! We’ve been waiting four years for you to get mad at us.’"

Over time, her teams became more than respectable, going 11-1 in volleyball one year. But there’s a special place in her heart for the informal, play-it-by-ear years.

"In 1969 another school invited us over for a JV volleyball tournament," she recalled. "I rounded up the most athletic girls in my phys ed class and we won the thing playing ping-pong volleyball, just getting it over the net.

"The tournament director hated having to hand us the trophy. He said, ‘You didn’t set, you didn’t spike….’ And I said, ‘Yeah. And we won!’"
 

EILEEN HERBIG BERZANSKIS
Women's Basketball, Volleyball
Class of 1985

It’s been a year since she moved from Ventnor, N.J., to the Orlando area, and Eileen Herbig Berzanskis is still getting used to the surroundings.

Don’t get her wrong — there’s something to be said for living on a beautiful golf course in sunny Florida. But she can’t help looking around and wondering, Is this my life or The Discovery Channel?

"The alligators are everywhere," she declared. "They’ve eaten my husband’s golf balls. And the lizards are climbing the walls. And you should see the roadkill down here — big wild boars by the side of the road. It’s quite a different experience."

Berzanskis donned her pith helmet and moved to Florida so her husband and sons could golf year-round. "My two older boys play varsity in high school," she said, "and this gives them the opportunity to improve."

With enough improvement, their athletic careers might just measure up to Mom’s. Berzanskis was the first Cabrini woman to score 1,000 points in basketball, played a major role in its volleyball success and served as team captain in both sports.

In basketball, Berzanskis became the all-time leading scorer with 1,318 points. (She might still rule the roost if the three-pointer hadn’t emerged three months after her final game.) She was the complete package, leading the Cavs in scoring three times in four seasons while averaging 6.1 rebounds and 3.2 assists.

As a setter in volleyball, Berzanskis helped lead the Cavs to records of 14-4 (1982) and 16-5 (1984) — still the two best in team history.

When Berzanskis arrived from South Philly’s St. Maria Goretti High, the volleyball team had been successful in the just-for-fun era. Problem was, that era was about over. As women’s athletics grew more intense, in came an intense new coach in Gerry Szabo.

"All of a sudden we’d have six-hour practices," Berzanskis remembered. "My legs would be burning. But it was a great feeling being able to compete on a high level."

To help her sons compete academically, she home-schooled her two older boys until high school, and today she’s doing the same with 5-year-old John. She taught high school algebra and geometry for five years before starting a family.

"I loved playing and competing for Cabrini," said Berzanskis, who joins her family on the golf course. "I loved my relationships with friends and teammates. And I still enjoy playing sports and watching my children play."
 

GLEN JASKELEWICZ
Men's Soccer
Class of 1993
 

Records are made to be broken, goes the broken record.

Records were made to be broken. Then Glen Jaskelewicz rolled out the limited-edition titanium model.

From 1989 through ’92, Jaskelewicz forged a record that no other Cabrini player has scuffed, scratched or even sniffed. In 72 career games for the Cavaliers, he banged in a remarkable 80 goals.

Jaskelewicz put the Cavs’ all-time scoring record in his rear-view mirror as a sophomore, no less, and kept purring along for another two and a half years. In an era when few college players average a goal a game for even one season, a would-be successor would have to score in every game over four years to pry the record away.

In May 2005, almost 12 years to the day after graduation, Glen Jaskelewicz returned to Cabrini as head coach. His mission: Turn back the clock to the glory days of the ’90s, when the Cavaliers won six conference titles in 10 years.

The first came in 1990 in the old Eastern States Athletic Conference (ESAC), with Jaskelewicz scoring all three goals in the league championship game, a 3-2 win over Salisbury State (now Salisbury).

As a senior in 1992, Jaskelewicz became Cabrini’s first NCAA-era all-American in any sport. He drilled 23 goals that year in 19 games (still the single-season school mark) and broke a school record with goals in 10 straight games (his final 10) — another mark that has endured.

Jaskelewicz left school tied for sixth nationally in all-time goals in Division III, ninth in goals per game (1.11) and third in consecutive games with at least one goal. Thirteen years later, he’s still hanging with the lead pack: Tied for ninth in goals, 14th in goals per game and tied for 10th in consecutive games with a goal.

Jaskelewicz made all-conference every year (the first three ESAC, the last Pennsylvania Athletic Conference), earned team MVP honors three times (1989, ’90, ’92) and served as captain twice. He also holds the school mark for career goals on penalty kicks (17).

Jaskelewicz, the seventh head coach in Cabrini men’s soccer history, grew up in Warminster, Pa., and starred at Archbishop Wood High. A history and secondary education major at Cabrini, he’s taught social studies in area high schools since 1995. He lives in North Wales, Pa., with his wife Tracy and their 2-year-old son Kyle.
 


ALLEN JONES JR.
Men's Basketball
Class of 1987

He ran into an old Cabrini professor in Russia, a horde of giant mosquitoes in Spain, a fan riot in Bolivia, a series of unspeakably good times in Brazil.

His official statement on the night life of Rio: "I don’t want to incriminate myself."

Hurl a dart at a map of the world and chances are Allen Jones Jr. landed there first. He’s played basketball on every continent but Atlantis, and maybe there too. Hard to keep track when you’re on the road nine months a year.

For three glorious years, from 1988 to ’91, Jones was no mere globetrotter. He was a Globetrotter.

Not bad for a shooting guard from Philadelphia’s Dobbins Tech who settled for second-team All-Public League in basketball.

All Jones did from 1983 to ’87 was take Cabrini from upstart wannabe to national NAIA power, soon to be NCAA Division III power. After a year on the bench, he led the Cavaliers to three straight NAIA District 19 titles and three straight berths in the 32-team national tournament in Kansas City.

Jones won back-to-back District 19 Player of the Year awards in 1986 and ’87, along with Philadelphia Small College Player of the Year honors.

In December 1987, through a friend of coach John Dzik, Jones wangled a spot on the Washington Generals, the Harlem Globetrotters’ designated patsy. Six months later he was promoted to the Globies themselves.

Every night he’d haul a basketball back to his hotel room and practice the tricks and one-finger ball spins required of a Globetrotter. Years later, he still can impress the neighborhood kids when the mood strikes.

In 1991 Jones hopped off the merry-go-round, with its one-day-off-a-month grind, and returned to Philadelphia, where he’s worked for Amtrak ever since. At night he’d shake and bake in the Hank Gathers League for graying former stars and near-stars, going up against ex-NBA players and college luminaries.

An Achilles’ tendon problem has put his post-career career on hold, giving him more time to coach his 13-year-old son Allen III. "I see him do some things that I don’t want to become habits, like slouching on defense," he said.

After all, who knows better than Dad that you have to be good enough for Radnor before you can even think of Rio.
 

JOYCE L. MCCREESH
Women's Basketball, Field Hockey
Class of 1974

After more than three decades, Joyce McCreesh finally has come clean about her secret past. How she crept across Eagle Road and played field hockey for none other than archrival Eastern, while she led Cabrini’s basketball team in scoring.

"My freshman and sophomore years, I played for Cabrini’s field hockey team," McCreesh explained. "My junior year, we didn’t have enough players come out. But if you took two classes at Eastern, they let you play for them.

"In my concentration [physical education], you had to take courses at Eastern anyway since we didn’t have the facilities. It was done all the time. So I played for them, and we had a fabulous team. I remember we won a big tournament at Franklin Field."

When she could tear herself away from her Eastern friends, Joyce McCreesh had a pretty nice career at Cabrini as well. She was a long-range bomber who could hit from Harrisburg and put up startling numbers in an era when 35 points was a respectable team total.

In 1973 McCreesh struck for 30 points in a 38-35 loss to LaSalle. The schedule also included St. Joseph’s and other big names.
McCreesh’s name would be all over the Cabrini record book except for one thing. Virtually no records exist.

"Back then, no one thought of adding up all that stuff," she said. "That’s why I’m beyond thrilled at being singled out for the Hall of Fame. We had no accolades, no awards, nothing.

"I played because I loved basketball and competing. Nothing was better than beating colleges much larger than Cabrini. They didn’t think much of us until the final score."

McCreesh honed her shooting touch in backyard 3-on-3 games with her family. She was the youngest child by six years, and driving to the hoop was asking for trouble.

"You got beat up," she recalled. "My brother’s 10 years older than me,
and he never gave me a break. That’s why I learned to shoot from far away."

After five years as a teacher, McCreesh embarked on a successful restaurant business and retired early. Which gives her plenty of time to kick butt when the neighborhood boys in Broomall stop around for a game of H-O-R-S-E.

"They think they can show up an old woman," she crowed. "Then they realize, ‘Hey, she’s not too bad.’"
 

THOMAS NERNEY
Men's Basketball
Class of 1977

As a general rule, new basketball programs have it rough. Their more established opponents beat up on them, often with little mercy.

But when Cabrini launched its new men’s varsity basketball team back in 1974 — its first men’s varsity in any sport — the squad won from the start. In their first four years, the Cavaliers went 57-23.

It helped immeasurably that those first four years coincided with the college years of Tom Nerney.

As a four-time captain and leading scorer, Tom Nerney didn’t just help his team. He didn’t just lead his team. He put the program on the map.

Nerney did it all, averaging 19.5 points a game, 5.7 rebounds and 3.3 assists in an era before the shot clock and three-point arc led to stat inflation. As a senior, he piled up 30 points against Alvernia and became the first career 1,000-point scorer in Cabrini history, male or female.

He also served as assistant coach of the women’s team that year. Off the court, he was an active member of the Student Government Association, Council of College Affairs, Kappa Sigma Omega and the Athletic Association.

On April 30, 2001 Cabrini named the Dixon Center basketball arena in his honor. Since then it’s been known as Nerney Field House. And one floor above the field house, you’ll find the Nerney Family Fitness Center with its weightlifting and cardio equipment.

Nerney once said that "when students play team sports, they’re learning that together everyone amounts to more." He’s put those words into practice as president and CEO of United States Liability Insurance Group and in his philanthropic efforts. He and his wife, Jill Chambers Nerney ’77, have demonstrated a commitment to family, friends and community.

Nerney, a current member of the Cabrini College Board of Trustees, has been generous with his time, talents and resources. When the child of a Cabrini staffer needed a bone-marrow transplant, he made a sizable donation to defray the cost of the initial screening, and he sponsored all of his employees who wished to donate blood.

Nerney also has coached and sponsored the Philadelphia Belles, a leading AAU girls’ basketball program. The Belles have finished second, fifth and seventh in major national competitions.
 

VERONICA O'HORA ELLERS
Field Hockey, Women's Cross Country, Women's Track & Field
Class of 1993
 

Veronica O’Hora Ellers’ dad is Tom O’Hora, long-time Cabrini track and cross-country coach, but she owes her selection to push, not pull. With her dad’s help, Veronica managed to push herself from fumbling novice to finalist for NCAA Woman of the Year in 1992-93.

"From Little League softball to college, he always stressed hard work and never giving up," recalled Ellers, the only Cavalier ever nominated for the NCAA prize. "My first softball game in 4th grade, I was pitching and the 6th-graders were hitting me all over the place. I wanted to leave the game, but Dad said, ‘You will learn from this.’"

Learn she did. Veronica would lead her team to the league finals. Eventually she earned Outstanding Athlete awards from her middle school, high school and college.

All-area in basketball at Lower Merion High, Ellers drifted away from hoops at Cabrini but earned team MVP honors three times in both field hockey and track and field.

Her track career was an afterthought. Looking to stay in shape, she started running with the Cabrini track team. The upshot: A slew of school records, including the oldest on the books (4,004 points in the heptathlon). And three straight small-college team titles at the Philadelphia Metropolitan Championships. And a pair of Philly Metro MVP awards.

Her cross-country career was a favor to her dad. "He had four runners and needed a fifth [to qualify for team titles], Ellers recalled. "That was my job — just to finish. But I improved every year."

As a senior in 1992, Ellers helped Cabrini win the first PAC women’s cross-country title. Then she rushed back to campus, changed uniforms and played in the first PAC field hockey title game. She may be the only athlete in league history to compete in two championships in one day.

Her days still are pretty hectic. Ellers, who majored in early childhood and elementary education, is a literacy coach at Hillcrest Elementary. She lives in Bala Cynwyd with her husband, 6-year-old and 4-year-old.

And she’s still pushing herself — through three classes a week in TaeBo, a cross between aerobics and kickboxing. She’s been at it for eight years.