WEST ORANGE, NJ – Sixty years ago, the West Orange community experienced its version of the movie “Hoosiers.”
West Orange Mountain High School, in only its second year of existence, saw its boys basketball team embark on and complete a magical journey.
The 14-member team finished a perfect 25-0 state championship season.
Under head coach Ken Murray and assistant coach Robert Caprio, the Rams captivated the town during that 1961-62 season.
Jeff Kadish was a junior on that team. Though he hardly played, Kadish recalls that season fondly.
“It was just a magical year,” Kadish said in a phone interview with the West Orange Chronicle on Feb. 11. “It was a lot of fun for me. I will never forget those memories. It was very rare for a new school or any school to go undefeated and win a state championship.”
Kadish also didn’t mind that he didn’t get to play much.
“I viewed it positively in that I had the best seat in the house,” he said with a laugh.
The starters consisted of senior forward Mark Zamat, senior forward Harvey Poe, junior center Joe McGovern, junior shooting guard Don Brotman and senior point guard Ron Cacioppe.
All the starters went on to continue their athletic careers collegiately. Poe, who died a few years ago, played at the University at Buffalo, where he was an All-American, and later had a tryout with the Baltimore Bullets in the NBA.
Zamat went to Colgate University in Hamilton, N.Y., where he was a captain and also played tennis; Brotman attended the University of Maryland, College Park; and Cacioppe attended Lafayette College in Easton, Pa.
McGovern attended Penn State University in State College, Pa., where he was a captain of the basketball team. He also played baseball at Penn State.
Zamat and Brotman are cousins. Zamat has lived in Fairfield, Conn. since 1971 and is a dentist. Brotman lives in Wilmington, N.C.
The key subs on that Mountain team were Pete Levitt, Nick Betlow and Glen Riker. The team manager was Harvey Geller. In addition to Poe, other deceased members of that Mountain team are Allan Kline and Joseph McCartney.
The Rams didn’t compete in the Essex County Tournament that season. Kadish said it might have been because they competed in a league called the Jersey Hills Conference. Clifford Scott won the ECT title that season. East Orange–based Clifford Scott, like Mountain, eventually closed. Mountain closed in 1984, while Scott merged with East Orange High School in September 2002.
Scott might have won the ECT championship, but Mountain defeated them two times that season, including in the thrilling Group 2 state sectional championship game, which went into overtime. That game was held at Upsala College, which is now East Orange Campus High School.
“It was one of the greatest basketball games that I had ever seen,” Kadish said.
Said McGovern, in a phone interview on Feb. 23, “The Clifford Scott game was something that everybody said was, for years, one of the best games ever.”
McGovern recalled that the Upsala gym held about 3,000 spectators, and that officials had to turn back another 10,000 people from entering. People were literally fighting to get into the building, he said.
That was considered the team’s toughest game. They then played Dumont in the state semifinal in another tight contest. For the first time all season, Mountain trailed at the half.
Murray, who was an imposing figure at 6-foot-2, 230 pounds, was furious in the locker room, recalled Kadish — so much so that he kicked a large garbage can against the wall. The garbage can nearly hit Kadish. The incident fired up the players, who rallied to win the game.
Mountain then traveled to Haddonfield, the site of the state championship, to face South Plainfield on March 17, 1962. Kadish said it was the farthest south he had ever been in the state. Mountain won the game to complete the perfect season.
Murray wasn’t that much older than his players. He actually was a basketball legend at West Orange High School in the late 1940s. He had an All-American career at St. Bonaventure University in Allegany, N.Y., and played in the NBA in the early years of the league. The first season for the NBA was in 1946-47. Murray played for the Baltimore Bullets and Fort Wayne Pistons in his rookie season in 1950-51 and was on the NBA All-Rookie team, which included legendary players Bob Cousy, Bill Sharman and Paul Arizin. Murray then left the NBA to serve in the Army for two years. Murray returned to the NBA and played for Fort Wayne in the 1953-54 season. He played in his final season in 1954-55 for both the Bullets and the Philadelphia Warriors.
“He was a tough guy. Everybody was scared of him,” Kadish said good naturedly. Kadish said he idolized Murray, and the two remained close for many years. Murray coached at Mountain for about seven seasons. In his final season, in 1966-67, Mountain almost had another perfect season, winning the North 2, Group 3, sectional title, but losing in the Group 3 state semifinals to finish with a 20-1 record.
All of the players on that 1961-62 team admired Murray. After graduating from college, McGovern enjoyed a successful professional singing career. He admired Murray so much that he wrote a song about him, called “Where Did All My Heroes Go,” a few years after Murray died in 2008 at the age of 80.
“The thoughts of him linger in our minds and hearts forever,” said McGovern. “My father wasn’t around, so he became kind of a mentor, but also a father figure. From 1963 until the day he died, coach (Murray) and I talked probably three or four times a week.”
Kadish still marvels at the fact that the school was only 2 years old when it had such a great basketball team.
“What makes that experience so unique was, that was only the second year that Mountain High was in existence, which is very unusual,” said Kadish, a self-professed hoops fanatic who tries to attend as many high school games as he can. “The first year was 1960-61, the second year was 1961-62. This was the first year we were playing a full varsity schedule.”
The following season, 1962-63, the Rams had another phenomenal run. They went back to the state championship game in Atlantic City but unfortunately lost to Salem, to finish with a 22-2 record.
Back then, in West Orange, everyone was close friends. The students at Mountain came from Pleasantdale. There were only about 220 kids in Kadish’s graduating class and approximately 750 overall in the school.
The 1961-62 team was great because of the players’ camaraderie and Murray’s guidance.
“The team was just a phenomenal team, played at the highest level, was well-coached, played man-to-man defense, a terrific defense, and their offense setup by Coach Murray was really very innovative,” said Kadish, who lives in Bedminster and works as a lawyer in Morristown. “He knew how to work on the strengths of the five or six best players.”
“The whole thing about that team,” said McGovern, “was that we all grew up together, and we played basketball either behind Pleasantdale School or over behind Redwood School, and we played together every day for years and years and years. And when we got with Coach, everybody had a role to play, and we all played it and we all played it well. We were all like brothers.”
McGovern lives on a 200-acre horse farm in Madison, Ga. McGovern, who goes by the stage name Cody Marshall, performed in a show in Madison one time and loved it so much that he decided to move there. He has lived there since 1973.
“When I grew up, my front lawn was as big as a coffee table, and now I have 200 acres,” he said with a laugh.
McGovern said he always loved singing, ever since he was a boy. He would entertain his Mountain teammates on the bus. He recalled how he got into the music business after graduating from college.
“A bunch of fellas and I signed a recording contract with Columbia Records,” he said. “The group broke up, and I went to New York to seek my fortune and fame, and I made it very big in the music business.”
McGovern recalled how everyone on that Mountain team had a role. “Mark Zamat was the high scorer, and Harvey Poe was the defensive genius, and I was the rebounder,” he said. “I had a great deal of jumping ability, which got me a full scholarship to Penn State University, and I happened to be captain of the Penn State team.”
Each player knew exactly what they were supposed to do.
“When someone was going to do a play, I knew what they were going to do, just by looking at their eyes,” said McGovern, who also played football and baseball at Mountain. “We were brothers, man. Everybody got along, and we played together since we were 6 years old.”
Zamat spoke animatedly about the 1961-62 team in a phone interview on March 4. He especially talked about his love of Murray.
“He gave us the ability, the freedom to be the best we can be as individuals and as a team,” Zamat said. “I loved that man. I love him to this day. It was a special time. You played in Ken Murray’s system, and you believed and you trusted him.You feared him, in a good way. You respected him because he earned it, and the result was (success). Who doesn’t like success? So we went with it and we just enjoyed it. He was the glue. We got what we got, because of Coach Murray.”
It was that strong team camaraderie that made it so special.
“It was magnificent,” said Zamat, who went to NYU College of Dentistry after graduating from Colgate. “We enjoyed the big crowds, we enjoyed the accolades, we enjoyed each other, We were all friends. I grew up with these guys. We were all best friends. We still are, to this day. We still have dinners, once or twice a year, with the guys who can come. We were friends before that (season), and we are friends still to this day.”
Murray’s son, Ken Murray Jr., who lives in Rahway, shared a long letter written by Cacioppe, who currently lives in Perth, Australia. In the letter, Cacioppe poignantly expressed the positive impact that coach Murray had on his life.
Cacioppe wrote, “Ken Murray probably doesn’t know it but he has stepped through this parallel universe and has been injected into Australian life. I have often talked about him to managers and MBA students in leadership development programs I teach in. I describe him as an exceptional leader who built an extraordinary, high-performing team through his amazing insight into a player’s basketball skills as well as his ability to see deeply into our characters and know our personal foibles and weaknesses. He pushed buttons that made you look at your major inadequacies and others that made you leap tall buildings in a single bound.”
Cacioppe was a professor of leadership at the University of Western Australia and started a company that runs leadership development programs, leadership coaching and team-building programs for the state police and fire departments, sporting organizations, state and local government departments and energy/resource companies. “I often speak about Ken Murray as an extraordinary coach who taught me so much about leadership and teamwork that I made it my life’s work,” Cacioppe said. “So, Ken Murray’s legacy lives Down Under in Australia.”
In an email to the West Orange Chronicle on March 4, Brotman wrote, “Like all great coaches, his teachings were about being successful in life. Ken had a tremendous basketball mind, and he knew how to motivate others to capitalize on their talents and appreciate one’s lot in life.”
Brotman has lived in Wilmington since 2017. He and his wife, Jeanie, have been married for 47 years. Following his college graduation, Brotman was drafted in the peak of the Vietnam War, just as he was beginning a career on Wall Street. He served abroad in Korea. Upon his return from service, he settled in northern Virginia and entered the corporate world in sales management and business development. He eventually started his own commercial real estate firm and has been in business for more than 30 years. While running the firm, he also taught college courses for 15 years.
Brotman recalled that Mountain scrimmaged Central prior to the 1961-62 season. Central had far more talent, but Murray was proud of his team’s effort. More importantly, Murray put things in perspective, said Brotman.
“At the first practice after this scrimmage we all sat down in the bleachers to get Coach’s words of wisdom,” Brotman wrote. “These meetings were always priceless critiques filled with humor — never a dull moment. But on this day, one could see the warmth and love that Coach had for the team, far different than the tough exterior shell he could display to make us strong. He recalled how proud he was of this team. We were smaller, less athletic than Central’s exceptional young men, and by all measurements, should not have been on the same court with this talent. What we lacked in physical stature we overcame by displaying great discipline, street-smart talent, toughness and not backing down one inch. Coach said, ‘I am proud of the way you played and respected the competition.’”
Geller, the team’s manager, said Murray cared about what his players made of themselves. “He said to me that he felt his greatest accomplishments were not his victories, but what became of his players in later life,” Geller said in an email to the West Orange Chronicle on March 10. “He was first and foremost a teacher who helped produce lawyers, doctors, professors, and others who became successful in their fields of choice. Basketball was the means to a far greater end. All of us, even those like me who did not play for him, were inspired by him and are grateful for the opportunity to be part of his legacy.”
Levitt, one of the key subs on the team, graduated from the University of Pittsburgh and then medical school. He and his wife, Enid, settled in Denver, Co., where he had a very successful cardiology practice until his recent retirement.
Like in the movie “Hoosiers,” Murray and the Mountain Rams had a special bond. The Mountain Rams truly were inspirational for that one magical season six decades ago. Their legacy will forever endure in West Orange history.
Photos Courtesy of Ken Murray Jr.
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