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Adrian Wojnarowski's recently released profile of St. Anthony High School and its boys basketball team in downtrodden Jersey City, NJ is a breath of fresh air in a genre that needed an antidote to the dirty atmosphere of high-profile high school sports. With "The Miracle of St. Anthony," Wojnarowski has effectively done for high school hoops what John Feinstein did for college ball with "The Last Amateurs" -- taken our understanding of the hype and corruption surrounding the game and turned it on its head with a look into a singularly pure program.



It's quite a departure from reads like Buzz Bissinger's "Friday Night Lights," Darcy Frey's "The Last Shot," and Ian O'Conner's "The Jump," as well the especially vivid movie "Hoop Dreams," that chronicles the tribulations of two poor, black Chicago high school players, William Gates and Arthur Agee. The coaches in these works come in two flavors -- they're either Sharks or Working Mothers (that is, too busy and hassled with the details of running a program in an impossibly demanding community to give the sort of individual attention and nurturing their adolescent players need to grow). In "Miracle," though, the coach, Bob Hurley, is neither. Instead, his first priority seems to be on making exceptional team players and good men out of his charges. And in doing so, Hurley has helped the Friars to over 800 wins, 22 state titles and two national championships. More importantly, he acts as a strong father figure to the many St. Anthony's players who need a responsible and caring taskmaster in their corner -- for life.

That's the crux of Wojnarowski's book, along with the secondary stories of the high school itself, with an enrollment of only 200, and the personalities involved. St. Anthony, no longer funded by the local Catholic parish, constantly teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, and readers witness that woeful balancing act as both Hurley and the two Felician nuns who run the school approach their imminent retirements. God knows the place will fold as surely as if it were under the wrecking ball once Hurley and the sisters depart. But until then, all devote their lives to the school and the team in a way that's become almost mythological in the world of high-stakes prep sports.

Hurley, the hard-driving father of ex-Dookie superstar Bobby Hurley, coaches his team as if its players are in reform school. Which, in a sense, they are -- Hurley sees his role as coach through the lens of his former job was as a probation officer (also his father was a Jersey City cop) and his players are coming to him from the poorest of poor families in a city ravaged by crime and violence. He takes no guff from them and demands they play the oldest of old-school basketball. There's no backtalk or whining -- not in practice, not in games. They play the most team-oriented ball since James Naismith invented the game, and they focus on their suffocating defense. It can't be fun to play for Hurley, one must point out, and whenever players stray from Hurley's near-Biblical rules, he enters what might be best described as the Bobby Knight Zone -- cursing, humiliating, berating and insulting the offenders until you think either the players will crumple to the floor in a puddle or Hurley himself will stroke out. Whichever comes first.

And it seems Wojnarowski has had the luck to profile what turns out to be a undefeated season that stars what Hurley never tires of pointing out is "the most dysfunctional group" he's coached in his 32-year career. He might be right about a couple of the players, though I found others more or less troubling than those Hurley continually raged at. For instance, while Hurley chronically rails on the four seniors on the team, each of whom seems to have the sort of stand-offish ambivalence about him best exemplified in the linebacker Ivory Christian in "Friday Night Lights," I was far more cranked by the only white player on the team, Sean McCurdy. McCurdy is a transplanted Friar, a product of a wealthy Connecticut family that sees Hurley's program as the perfect launching pad for their son's big-time college and possibly NBA career. And, sickeningly, though he proves to be an offensive liability on the court, McCurdy attracts the interest of an embarrassing number of Top 25 programs primarily because he's white. Wojnarowski doesn't follow up sufficiently with this touchy subject, though McCurdy is an divisive figure on the team -- not only because he's rich and white, but because the other players sense he's not being held to the same hard-ass Hurley standards demanded of them. And they're absolutely right. Why Hurley continues to give McCurdy chances when his black Jersey City players don't get the benefit of the doubt is never explained. One gets the feeling that even the writer here fell under the often intimidating influence of St. Anthony's reknown coach.

Still, one can't argue with results. Though we won't find out until Wojnarowski does some sort of follow-up in the years to come what kind of men this class of players turns out to be, we do hear from a boatload of former St. Anthony's players, who, to a man, believe in Hurley and his MO. Particularly telling are the players Hurley watches go on to decent college programs who end up making a difference on their squads because of the work ethic Hurley instilled in them. (Aside: While no Friars have gone on to have the sort of college or NBA experience Bobby Hurley had, it's noted that 100 percent of Bob Hurley's players are accepted into college, and a good many on scholarship.) Or ex-players who hear Hurley inside their heads while on the job, as one Jersey City firefighter did when faced with a life-or-death situation -- and he gives credit to Hurley after saving both his own life and that of a fellow firefighter during a fire: "Think before you react. Awareness. Alertness." When it counted, Hurley's former player knew instinctually how to manuever in the danger zone.

In the end, Bob Hurley strikes the reader as a classic mid-20th century father -- gruff, emotionally distant (unless you count his anger), and immersed in his life's work to the point of neglecting his own children (especially Bobby's brother, Danny). But he's got much more on the plus side -- a near-holy mission, an awesome understanding of basketball, an invaluable transparency, and a staff that helps smooth the rough edges of his temperment so that the boys in the program don't bolt before learning the considerable gifts he has to offer. That Bob Hurley has led this exceptional program at this school in this city is really nothing less than a miracle.