Legendary Tottenville High School

baseball coach Tom Tierney dies at 81

Published: Tuesday, April 11, 2011, 4:13 PM   Updated: Tuesday, April 12, 2011, 4:19 PM
 

By Jerry Lee Staten Island Advance

Staten Island Advance/Hilton FloresTom Tierney, left, coached baseball at Tottenville High School for 33 years.

Tottenville' High Schools legendary baseball coach, Tom Tierney, has passed away. Tierney, 81, coached at the Huguenot school for 33 years before turning the reins over to his son Tom Tierney Jr. in 2000. Tierney compiled a 940-120 record at Tottenville and was inducted into the Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame in 1999.

Tierney was a three-sport star at Curtis High School, and a Hall of Fame Athlete at the University of Vermont; a veteran of Army ball and the Milwaukee Brave organization, and star of the Stape Americans, semi-pro descendents of the NFL Stapleton Stapes.

At Vermont he was twice All-Yankee Conference in both baseball and football; a .350 hitter who led the team in RBI, the leading rusher on the football team two years in a row, and winner of the Seamans Trophy as the school's outstanding athlete.

But when he got to Tottenville High School as a teacher and coach, all the dominant teams were at the other end of the Island. Tierney won Island championships as a tennis and bowling coach, helped organize the track team and the football program. But it was in baseball that he left a singular mark.
 

His Pirates won city championships in 1986 and 1987, and four more after that, including a 32-0 season in 1998.
In more than 30 years on the coaching lines, through hip-replacement and heart bypass surgeries, his teams won 900 games.