The Staten Island Basketball League is speeding to the half century mark, and there’s no doubt it will get there.
The league, which was founded by Islander Craig Raucher in 1980, recently turned 43 years old and has played all these years at PS 8 in Great Kills, which at age 85 is one of the oldest public schools on the Island. The school is run by Principal Lisa Esposito, who have given Raucher and his crew a place to play all these years.
“It’s one of the very few gyms left with the original wooden backboards intact,” noted Raucher, the league’s commissioner who despite being age 71 and having gone through two knee replacements and other various surgeries, still participates in the twice-a-week loop (Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings).
Raucher notes that the league has been the subject of numerous newspaper articles, television spots and various on line publications throughout the years.
It has been a magnet for some of the best players from Staten Island and to a lesser degree Brooklyn over the years, notes Raucher.
“It is run not as a a traditional league but as a high-level pick-up basketball game,” said Raucher, whose league’s current players’ ages run from 30 to 75.
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Scenes from the Staten Island Basketball League (SIBL)
Raucher estimates that more than 360 players have competed in the league through the years.
“It’s a mix of players, who historically have been from every walk of life — rich, poor, upper class, lower class, middle class,” says Raucher. “We’ve had ex-convicts, police captains, detectives, fire department lieutenants, alcoholics anonymous attendees, former drug abusers and dealers, stockbrokers, surgeons, business men, CEOs, factory workers, emergency room physicians, inventors, retirees.
“Plumbers, carpenters, union men, non-union men, subway conductors, small business owners and big business executives. Gay men and straight men. College graduates, high school dropouts, PHD’s and computer nerds.
“There were…
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