LAKE HUNTINGTON — The year was 1953 and Dwight D. Eisenhower was inaugurated as President of the United States, the same year Queen Elizabeth II was crowned as monarch of Great Britain. Elvis Presley recorded his first record and Jonas Salk gave himself and his family the first polio vaccine. It was the year the Korean War ended and the occasion of the New York Yankees’ fifth consecutive World Series Win over the Brooklyn Dodgers.  

It was also the year that a young Jerry Davitt graduated from Waymart High School in Pennsylvania ending his varsity career in soccer, basketball and baseball. Excellence was an early trademark for Davitt. His basketball team lost only two games throughout the course of his sophomore, junior and senior years.  Money was scarce and times were hard, so Davitt enlisted in the navy rather than going on to college. Davitt and his buddy Paul Zintel went on to Stroudsburg University. 

Davitt quips, “People had a pool going as to how long we’d last there.” 

Davitt fooled the odds- makers and graduated in 1958. Davitt and Zintel played varsity soccer all four years in college. Davitt got hired at Liberty High School in ’58, while Zintel got hired in Youngsville. 

“We didn’t know where either place was back then,” he said with a laugh.

Youngsville merged with Jeffersonville that year and Zintel became the junior varsity basketball coach. When the head coach Wally Baims retired the next year, Zintel took over the reins and asked Davitt, “why don’t you come over?” At the time Davitt was playing in three different leagues. “I played over 80 games in my first year of teaching,” he says with a chuckle. 

Zintel and Davitt did everything the same. They went to basketball clinics including those held by Indiana’s Bobby Knight and West Point’s Mike Kzyyzewski. “We started with the fourth grade and did the same drills all the way through. Zintel could take a guy up on the varsity if someone got hurt and that player would fit right in. We had a tough time at first but eventually we had great success. We had kids who never lost a game in their high school careers. I lost 21 games in 20 years in the league. I won 42 in a row, lost one and then won 48 in a row,” he recalls. 

Asked about the key to success in those days, Davitt replies, “We were strict disciplinarians; today we’d probably be in jail,” he says with that engaging grin. “We even sold season tickets to our games.” 

Davitt’s coaching resume spans 60 years (in and out) he adds. 

“I coached the JV and varsity. I coached baseball and we went to the state championship finals.” 

Bob Lynch was the football coach at J-Y and ran the same drills that Davitt and Zintel were running in basketball.  In 1987 Davitt was Tri-County Baseball Coach of the Year. The J-Y Trojans went to the state finals that year. The year before the team went to the states.  In 1987 he was also named the Southeast Region NYS Science Teacher of the Year. Davitt retired from J-Y in 1991. “I was also inducted into the Wayne County Hall of Fame in 1995.” Davitt wasn’t quite sure of the year of that honor. Davitt umpired baseball and served as a referee in soccer and basketball for 54 years. In that capacity he went to the state finals in all three sports. 

“I was also NYS Umpire of the Year in 2013. That was a nice honor,” he adds.

“I have to thank my wife Mary for putting up with me for 63 years. I was always on the road. We umpired summer baseball too. Zintel started the basketball referees board in Sullivan County. In 1969 I started the baseball umpires’ association. Then with Paul Orr we started the soccer association. I was President of the baseball and soccer association for years.” 

This year Davitt had a knee replacement but only a few weeks later he was assisting Sullivan West’s head basketball coach John Meyer. 

Meyer waxes poetic about Davitt who coached against him when he was playing. “He’s forgotten more than I’ll ever know,” says Meyer. 

Prior to the game between the Bulldogs and Tri-Valley, Davitt, 86, was honored and received the love and adulation of the crowd, several of whom were his former players. They gathered with him for a photo after the game. It was yet another iconic moment in the illustrious life and career of a true local legend.