Builder of programs, mentor and friend to his players
Coach Dom Ferrara, who died in August, left a lasting imprint
It takes a certain skill to coach high school athletes, and those whohave it are never forgotten by the people they touch. So it was with Dom Ferrara, who left a lasting mark on Connecticut basketball.
“When you’re 16, 17 years old, you think you know it all,” said Bill Wisk, who played for Ferrara at Pulaski High in New Britain. “Once I got out of school and I looked back, it was, ‘Man, this guy knew a lot of basketball.’ He was tough on us, but he certainly turned programs around.”
A dynamic high school athlete himself, and later a widely respected coach, Ferrara died Aug. 27 from COVID-19 in Tucson, Ariz., where he had lived in retirement. Hewas 80. His family plans for him to be laid to rest in New Britain and hold a memorial service when it is safe to do so.
“He was more than an AD, more than a coach. He was a friend you could confide in,” remembered John Nowobilski, who was student manager of Ferrara’s first
teams at St. Thomas Aquinas in New Britain.
As a coach, Ferrara turned three programs, Aquinas, Pulaski and Windsor, into winners. Before that, he played for Red Verderame’s Wilbur Cross-New Haven teams in the late 1950s. Known as “The Little General,” and with future UConn player and coach DomPerno as his backcourt mate, Ferrera led the Governors to the New England championship in 1958. He also played baseball, and later coached it.
After earning a master’s degree at CCSU, Ferrara began as basketball coach and athletic director at Aquinas in 1966, and eventually led his team to two state championship games.
“He was a real role model to everybody,” said Bruce Dinnie, who played with Aquinas’ 1971 state finalists, losing to Kolbe Cathedral. “He was tough, but fair. He always stressed the team. He was a real mentor to not just his players, but to all students.”
Nowobilski remembers Ferrara installing what was then known as the “shuttle offense” at Aquinas, and always his teams stressed pressure defense. After he moved from Aquinas to Pulaski, he took a team without a player taller than 6 feet 1 to a state final in 1977, where it lost to Corny Thompson and Middletown.
“I would run into him on the golf course occasionally,” said Wisk, now the purchasing manager at Wurth Revcar Fasteners in Berlin, “and he would introduce me to people, ‘Meet my 6-1 center.’ Andhewould laugh.”
Greg Florio, executive director of the Capital Region Education Council, also played for Ferrara on that 1976-77 Pulaski team. “He was a great teacher,” Florio said, “and he also instilled in me the value of hard work and perseverance.”
Ferrara coached at Windsor for 11 seasons, winning the school’s first conference title in 34 years, and his 300th game shortly before stepping away in 1989. “To get 300,” he told The Courant that night, “you’ve got to be around a long time and be blessed with great players, and I have.”
Ferrara would use all of his players, to keep up the defensive pressure, and his teams packed the gyms at all three schools with his exciting brand of basketball. But in one memorable state tournament game, in 1984, Ferrara nearly pulled off a first-round upset with a slow-down offense, before there was a shot clock. Weaver escaped to win, 24-23.
“We weren’t stalling,” Ferrara said after the game. “We just wanted to work it around for a layup or a 5-foot jumper.”
Typically, Ferrara would instill an underdog mentality in his teams, remarking on where they were ranked, or what might be written in a newspaper.
“We were going to play second-ranked Immaculate,” said Dinnie, longtime parks and recreation director in Vernon, “and we were ranked 10th. He read the Danbury paper to us on the bus, and how they should ‘handle Aquinas easily.’ We won, 73-41. He got the most out of everybody. Weplayed teams that had more talent, and just with the defense, and the hustle and the relentlessness and how we played as a team, we were able to beat a lot of teams and make it all the way to the final.”
Ferrara later coached at Wolcott High, then volunteered as a consultant at New Britain High, and at Wesleyan. He has been inducted into the Connecticut High School Coaches Hall of Fame, the New Britain Sports Hall of Fame, the Wilbur Cross High School Hall of Fame, the New England Sports Hall of Fame and the NewHaven Tap-Off Club Hall of Fame.
“I’ve gotten 80 phone calls and texts since he passed,” said Nowobilski, the longtime pro at Tallwood CC, “and that’s what really impressed me about it, how he related to high school kids and after all those years they still retained tightness with him.”