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Upper New Jersey Shore area Discussion

MolivaManiac

MolivaManiac

Spider's Club
Feb 8, 2004
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To continue the thread I hijacked on the hoops board...

AZ, I think the decline of RBR football and basketball is due to the changing demographics of Red Bank, particularly the West Side of Red Bank. RBR should be getting much better at Soccer, if you can catch my drift.

Sadly, I believe the star player for the RBR basketball team had a heart attack at a practice and died shortly before this season started. See link.

Albert Martin
 
Mo, thanks for the information. I had heard about the Albert Martin tragedy a few months back via the online edition of the Asbury Park Press. That was an incredibly sad story. Regarding Garrett Sickels, I wonder if he was related to any of the Sickels who grew up in LS during the 70s/80s. Teddy Sickels was a guy who graduated 3 years ahead of me at RBR. I haven't been back to LS in like 15 years. I'm hoping to get my family out there sometime in the next year for a visit.

The one thing that surprises me is the dominance of RBC in football over the past 20 years while RBR has fallen on hard times. Even RFH seems to do very well in BB and FB which shocks me because they completely sucked when I was growing up...we'd beat the hell out of those guys in all sports. Now it seems like they dominate the local sports headlines with RBC. RBR seems to be an after-thought in the Asbury Park Press' sports pages.

Yeah, I definitely remember the old days back at the shore...Donovan's Reef, Surfrider Beach Club, Jack's music in Red Bank, working at The Farmhouse Restaurant in LS, bussing tables at Fisherman's Wharf in Rumson and Bahrs Resturant in the Highlands, etc...taking the boat out on the Shrewsbury River...playing baseball, etc at Boro Field in LS...beating the hell out of RFH in all sports...dating girls from Shrewsbury (when I was at RBR they were the best of the bunch)...
 
We were still beating the hell out of RBC and RFH in everything in the mid 90's. I was at RBR when Eric McCoo, Tahj Holden and Sean Axani were there. Are you familiar with those names? McCoo was the most incredible athlete I ever had the opportunity to compete with. Holden won a National Championship with Gary Williams at Maryland back in 2002.

It was really been since the turn of the century that RBC and RFH seem to have surpassed us and if I lived closer, it would probably really bother me.

We were actually in Shrewsbury a couple days last weekend. My folks are in the process of selling their house in Shrewsbury, which is behind the Monmouth County Library and moving to a smaller place in Ocean Township off Hope Road.

They took me for a ride around the area to look at the devastation from Sandy last fall and it was pretty remarkable. The Beach Clubs in Sea Bright are mostly wiped out. Dononvan's is completely gone. There is a huge mountain of sand where Sea Bright Public Beach was. Looks like Kill Devil Hills.

We went to Sands Beach Club when I was growing up. My mom is still a member at Chapel (they plan to reopen this summer, although having seen the place - it's hard to imagine).

My cousin owns a coffee shop in Atlantic Highlands, so we did drive by Bahrs, as well. Bahrs appears to be open for business, which is surprising. Atlantic Highlands must have been a bathtub when Sandy came through.

My favorite bars growing up were in Red Bank. Globe Hotel, Brannigans and the Dublin House. I watched Richmond upset South Carolina in the 1998 NCAA tourney at The Globe while we were on Spring Break, actually.
 
We were also members at Sands beach club in Sea Bright when it was owned by John Chimento (a LS resident) for several years back in the late 70's to late 80's...that might have been a bit before you guys were there. I do recall Eric McCoo and Taj Holden in the 90s...those must have been some glory days when you were there. I was at RBR in the mid 80s when we had guys like Dan Stubbs and Greg Montgomery in football, both of whom went on to be collegiate All-Americans and NFL players for several years. During my sophomore year, RBR went 31-0 in basketball and beat Elmwood Park at the Meadowlands for the state championship. We'd pummel RFH every year because those guys really, really sucked (they were my HS version of JMU). My history teacher my senior year was Becky Weinberg, the wife of E-Street drummer Max Weinberg. She wasn't much older than us at the time and she was definitely hot!! I spent many a night at the Monmouth County Library "studying" (anything but)...what a shame all the beach clubs are gone...those were some of the best days of my growing-up years. I just hope that RBR gets their act together and fields some decent teams in the coming years...when I retire, I might need to come back and serve as their AD. I'll do anything to put the Bucs back in their rightful place as the #1 power in the two-rivers area.
 
Chimento still owns whatever is left of Sands to this day. I will always remember John for ruling the Game Room at Sands with an iron fist. His son JT was a few years older than me and his other son Mike was a few years younger than me. I believe JT runs another beach club somewhere around Long Branch.

We were definitely going to Sands in the 80's.

It appeared that Surfrider was the only beach club that survived the storm to some degree.
 
Moliva - I must have missed you by 1 year at RBR and UR. I was a freshman at RBR the year after McCoo graduated and the year that Holden, Axani, etc were seniors. My father(oldwilk) took me to many of McCoo's games, including one his freshman year. The football team started falling on hard times after McCoo left. We only won 1 or 2 games each my first three years on the team. I am proud of the fact that my senior class started to turn the program around under coach Harry Chebookjian with the first winning season post McCoo. We should have made the playoffs that year in 2001 but fell apart vs a bad Lakewood team, who at the time had JR Smith playing safety and wr. RBR then made the playoffs in 2002 and made it to the state championship game in 2003 but lost to Middletown South.

The projection of the RBR football team sort of mirrored what I
experienced at Richmond. I worked for Ken Hart and my first three years
we were terrible, the last two under Jim Reid and then Clawson's first
year. Then my senior year was the year that Clawson took us to the
playoffs and we beat Hampton in the first round and then lost to Furman
at home. And then you guys know the rest.

When I was at RBR we also beat up on Rumson and RBC in baseball so it has
to be since after 2002 that things have changed. We made a deep run in
the state playoffs my senior year and they had a decent team for a
couple years after that.

Growing up I belonged to Surfrider. I actually haven't driven through Sea Bright since Sandy. Living through it in Hoboken was bad enough, I can't imagine what it was like during the storm at the beach.

I also spent many nights at the Globe, Brannigans, and Dublin House. However, after spending a few straight summers during college just going to those bars I grew tired of them and started frequenting Belmar and Bradley Beach. I have not been out in Red Bank in a few years now.

Going back to the Markham conversation, when I was there Don Nolan was the basketball coach and still is the last I heard.
 
I didn't think the Chimentos were still involved with the Sands to this day...that's amazing to think that they've had the place for 35+ years (I think John's dad might have owned it previously). As a kid, you didn't want to mess with John if you valued your well-being, for sure. You previously mentioned Globe Hotel in Red Bank. When I was at RBR, they sponsored a summer basketball team for the RBR varsity BB team called "Globe Hotel" (opponents from outside the area thought it was an actual hotel, not a bar...betcha couldn't allow a bar to sponsor a HS team nowadays). Do you know if any of the old Italian eateries in Red Bank are still around, like Danny's, Brothers, Sal's, etc? They were some of the old-school places that us locals frequented. I fondly remember hoisting more than a few beers at The Dubliner as well. Our neighbors in LS were the owners of Fisherman's Wharf so that is how I got to work there every summer.
 
Wilk, I graduated from RBR in 1997. My brother graduated from RBR in 2001 and went on Delaware. By my math, you may have been at RBR at least 3 years with him. He played soccer and ran track like I did. I got to know McCoo on the track team. My senior year we beat CBA at Monmouth Counties. It was the first time CBA had lost in decades.

My senior year, we also narrowly missed the football playoffs. We went 7-2 but lost to Matawan because of a missed XP. In basketball, I believe we won the SCT in Winter 1998, after I had left. I recall intently following the title game, also against CBA, on the NJ.com message board. Beating CBA in anything was a big deal to me.

Regarding the Globe, I think the upper floor(s) was a Hotel originally. Hence the name. I actually had lunch on Monday at New Corner, next door to the Globe. Great pizza.

Wilk, do you remember Chubbys? I didn't go there very often, but typically a good joint to hear a cover band and find an attractive chick from Middletown to bed for the night.
 
Your math sounds correct. My brother also was in the 2001 class. I was at the SCT championship game when we beat CBA. It was a great low scoring game, in the 40s if I remember correctly.

And Chubbys, yes I went there on occasion but it was hit or miss. I had a few fun nights there when they had their 18 to enter 21 to drink college nights.
 
But, in all seriousness, last years RBR FB team had a lot of talent. They lost 2 games in dbl OT, and easily could (and should) have made the playoffs. They beat Neptune when they were ranked #1. I believe besides Sickles they had 4-5 kids get ships. However next year not looking so great.
 
Must be something in the water that causes that kind of behavior.
wink.r191677.gif
 
just read about a senior prostitution and drug ring in englewood, nj. WTF, i move to texas and all the action is in jersey. am sure you guys know all about this and ticks me off that you did not recommend that i move there instead of here. the guy running it is almost as old as T and know he does not run one of these out in his part of the woods. if christie would just advertise these things, would have all the senior moving there instead of florida or arizona, what a great tourism piece.
 
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