08/08/2024
Last night I was watching the the Olympics with my wife and my daughter Chloe. I was telling them how good the Seton Hall University track team was when I was there. And despite how they practiced on a not so great wooden track in an inflated "bubble" surrounding asphalt basketball courts where I and Vailsburg friends played hundreds of pickup games.
This morning I found out that the new "World's Fastest Man" Noah Lyles, the 100m gold medalist and 200m favorite is the son of two Seton Hall track stars who were at Seton Hall when I was still a student at SHU. In fact, Noah's dad Kevin Lyles is in the Seton Hall Hall of Fame.
Small world, as my Dad is in the SHU Hall of Fame too. He caught a break and got a scholarship to Seton Hall Prep in 1932 from Sacred Heart Vailsburg Churchin Newark. I think he was the only of his 10 siblings who got to go to high school. Although he went to work right after the Prep and never took more then a few part-time classes at Seton Hall University, he made many friends there including then basketball coach and former Newark West Sigh HS star Richie Regan whose brother was a Newark fireman. My Dad started Seton Hall's first season ticket program and helped out SHU in other ways. I remember at the HOF event in 1982 he was seated alongside fellow inductee and native Newarker Rick Cerone who was at the time the starting catcher for the NY Yankees.
Definitely a small world. So many of my stories point back to Newark and Seton Hall. It will be a little more fun watching Lyles in the 200m finals.
