Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame inductees announced

By Jay Price - December 06, 2009, 11:50AM

Staten Island Advance file photo

Local tennis legend Ed Perpetua joins a Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame class of six members. Limits? Who tells the runner that he's too small to race against the best, or the sprinter that she's too ladylike to sweat?

Who tells the tennis champion when it's time to step aside, or dispatches the volleyball player to find another sport he can turn into a career?

Who decides which kids are too slight, or too green -- or too damaged -- to make it in the National Football League?

The 2009 Staten Island Sports Hall of Fame inductees -- the runners whose records have stood the test of time; the tennis champ who keeps adding to his resume; the volleyball lifer; the defensive back and the defensive end -- are the sweaty, determined, adrenaline-spiked proof, if we needed any more, that on the track or the court or the line of scrimmage we're only limited by our heart and our mind, and the reach of our imagination. The Class of 2009 -- volleyball pioneer Bob Bertucci; runners Artie Evans and Robin Jackson; tennis champion Ed Perpetua; and NFL stars Adewale Ogunleye and Lewis Sanders -- will join the 86 individuals and four teams already enshrined at the CYO-MIV Center at Mount Loretto, in a February induction ceremony.

ED PERPETUA

Ed Perpetua taught himself to play tennis by watching Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe on television, carried his own net to the courts on his bicycle, and spent one grueling year on the sectional circuit -- 62 events, 50 first-round losses -- learning how to compete.

Since then, all he's done is win -- 12 Staten Island singles titles, 21 in doubles, and 20 in mixed doubles -- more than anybody who ever picked up a racquet in this neighborhood.

He won the Staten Island triple crown -- singles, doubles, mixed doubles -- a record eight times, and won doubles titles with 14 different partners, including his wife Mayuko.

Over the years, when he wasn't coaching the men's and women's teams at Wagner College, Perpetua won the National Indoor 35-and-over Doubles and was a finalist in Singles, beat a couple world-ranked players, and hit with an up-and-comer named Andre Agassi, who revealed in his recent autobiography that he hated the game almost as much as Perpetua has loved it.