By Joe D’Amodio | damodio@siadvance.com
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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — The McKee/Staten Island boys’ bowling team will feel like a deck of pins without its headpin when the 2025 season gets rolling in mid-September.
Longtime head coach Rich Maniaci told the Advance/SILive.com earlier this week that he’s retiring after 47 years of coaching.
The 75-year-old, who is a member of the Staten Island Bowling Hall of Fame for meritorious service and also for Lifetime Achievement, stepped away from teaching 13 years ago but stayed around to coach MSIT’s bowling squad.
“I know I’ll miss it, but I felt it was time,” said the Eltingville resident, who has been the subject of many Advance/SILive.com articles through the years. “I have kept many of the articles and plaques and they decorate my wall. Someday my grandchildren will read them and remember some of grandpa’s accomplishments.
“Time passed in a blink of an eye all these years. I’m gonna miss the kids, the relationships I developed with them. I mean, just last week it was one of my former bowlers bowling on the league next to us on Friday night and he came over to me and he said, ‘coach I want to thank you for everything you did and how much I enjoyed the years.’
“I mean I’ve had hundreds of kids like that and that’s the best part of it.”
And what a run it was.
Maniaci’s teams were always competitive and the Seagulls made a handful of trips to the city title match, winning once in 2013 by beating Island-rival Susan Wagner.
Maniaci said he remembered all the trips to the basement of Madison Square Garden, which housed the alleys for the site of the PSAL playoffs for decades.
“In the early 80s, my wife, Betty Jane, used to come with me to Madison Square Garden, and after the playoffs — win or lose — we would go with one of my former bowlers Steve Goldstein and his parents to a Chinese restaurant close by in the city. So win or lose, we’d end up at the restaurant and have a good time.”
There was also the four years when Maniaci’s son, Robert, bowled for Tottenville HS.
“That was four years when we bowled each other twice a year,” remembered Maniaci. “You could imagine the conversations we had over the kitchen table. I remember his first match he was going to bowl against his dad, we were so excited but he bowled a 130. But then the the next time we played Tottenville, he bowled at 245 and I think they killed us.”
Another memorable moment that stands out for Maniaci was something that happened near the end of the 2013 PSAL city championship match.
“After the second bowler in the 10th frame, I realized we had clinched the championship, and I looked over at my anchorman, and it was almost as we were thinking the same thing,” said Maniaci. “There was a senior on the team … and not really a very good bowler, but for three years, he hadn’t missed a practice came to every match and if he wasn’t bowling, he was the biggest cheerleader for the team. And I looked at the team captain and anchorman and I said to him, ‘what do you think Winson?’ and he looked at me said, ‘Coach I’m thinking the same thing. Let’s let Michael clinch our first city championship.’ When I told Michael to put his shoes on — that he was going to be the anchor on the A Team that won the first city championship — he was so excited he could hardly tie his shoelaces. He ended up picking up a spare, and had the biggest smile on his face as the team celebrated around him.
“These are the moments that make coaching so special and I’ve been lucky to experience moments like this many times over the years.”
In a video interview with the Advance 11 years ago, Maniaci told former Advance sportswriter Jim Waggoner that he’s coached all these years “because the kids keep me young.”
Maniaci was also named the Advance/SILive.com‘s 2016 Service Award winner.
He spent more than 40 years teaching physical education while coaching bowling, handball, tennis and JV baseball at Concord High School and then McKee/Staten Island Tech at various times.
Maniaci, an avid bowler and the author of seven perfect games and two 800 series, won’t step away from competing and will do that as long as he can.
He still bowls with his wife of 51 years, Betty Jane. They are raising their grandson 16-year-old Mason, whose mom Lea (the Maniacis daughter) unexpedectly died in 2018.
“I want to thank Betty Jane for supporting me all these years,” said Maniaci. “She raised both our kids while I was out coaching. There was a lot of time spent away from the house. Now, it’s time to stay close to home and be there for my wife and grandson.”
And in all his years of coaching different sports, Maniaci revealed he only missed two matches — for health reasons in 2022.
News of Maniaci’s retirement spread quick around Island bowling circles.