cohenzone
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One of Connecticut's outstanding athletes of the 1960's passed away yesterday after a difficult illness. Gene Reilly, long-time hoops coach at Portland CT HS was an all-state point guard and baseball pitcher. He attended Bulkeley HS and then went to CCSC where he was part of one of the best D2 hoops programs in the country. In my life, he falls into the "small world" category. I'm a Weaver High kid, a year behind Reilly in school. We absolutely had no use for him, on the most disliked rivals list, mainly because he hurt us all the time.
A thin wiry guy, I'd heard of him when I was playing Little League ball in the north end. He was in the south end, always in the paper for throwing no-hitters and he acquired the nickname "Chucker". Ironically, his family at one time had lived very near Weaver where is older brothers played sports. The small world comes in when my son married his niece. He'd been in my house on a few occasions. As these things go, he wasn't the villain I remembered from high school.
Gene was on of the 3 great athletes in each of the Hartford high schools., class of 1962. Our star at Weaver was 3 sport 1st team all-stater John Lee, a great guy who ultimately played minor league fb for the old Hartford Knights (?). The stud at Hartford Public was Eddie Griffin, the best basketball player of the 3 and a very good running back. He might still be coaching hs hoops in CT, at least he was a few years ago.
RIP Chucker.
A thin wiry guy, I'd heard of him when I was playing Little League ball in the north end. He was in the south end, always in the paper for throwing no-hitters and he acquired the nickname "Chucker". Ironically, his family at one time had lived very near Weaver where is older brothers played sports. The small world comes in when my son married his niece. He'd been in my house on a few occasions. As these things go, he wasn't the villain I remembered from high school.
Gene was on of the 3 great athletes in each of the Hartford high schools., class of 1962. Our star at Weaver was 3 sport 1st team all-stater John Lee, a great guy who ultimately played minor league fb for the old Hartford Knights (?). The stud at Hartford Public was Eddie Griffin, the best basketball player of the 3 and a very good running back. He might still be coaching hs hoops in CT, at least he was a few years ago.
RIP Chucker.