Honoring a legend
Riordan’s court-restoration project pays tribute to one of the best S.F. has produced
Since its opening in 1950, the sunken-pit gymnasium at Riordan High School has been an aspirational symbol for boys on parish school basketball teams in San Francisco.
In the feeder grammar schools — Corpus Christi in the Excelsior, St. Gabriel and Holy Name in the Outer Sunset, St. Emydius in the Ingleside — the parochial dream for many has been to wear the purple and gold of the Riordan Crusaders, then the green and gold of the University of San Francisco Dons, and make it to the NBA.
Of the thousands who have tried, just one one has made it, Kevin Restani out of St. Thomas More, near Lake Merced.
Restani led Riordan to two West Catholic Athletic League championships (1969-1970), then helped USF to three West Coast Athletic Conference titles. Drafted in the third round, he played eight seasons in the NBA and eight more in Italy. Then, in the ultimate gesture of a native San Franciscan, he came home and gave many Kevin Restani, right, is memorialized in the gym in which he took the first steps on a journey that led him from Riordan to USF and then the NBA.
more years to the amateur masters team at the Olympic Club. He had just gotten home from a club tournament win in Milwaukee when he collapsed with a fatal heart attack at age 58, in 2010.
The shock of it festered on barstools in the Philosophers Club in West Portal, Glen Park Station and Joe’s of Westlake. Something ought to be done, and on Friday night, it will be. Eight years and $800,000 later, Restani Court will be dedicated during halftime of the rivalry game between Archbishop Riordan and Sacred Heart Cathedral Prep.
The old thin hardwood court — laid over concrete and offering up a steady supply of dead spots, shin splints and bad knees — has been replaced. An NBA-quality floor with a cushioned core has been installed and topped by a maple parquet surface to evoke the historic Boston Garden. The people who raised the money say it is the only parquet floor at a high school gym anywhere, and the $30,000 in extra labor cost was worth it to honor the person and the player who Restani was.
“Kevin was unique in that he was a star throughout high school and college but never acted like it,” says Bill Nasser, a classmate, best man in Restani’s wedding and owner of a printing company in South San Francisco. “He had no ego, even as a pro. He was always the same old Kevin.”
And Restani Court will be in the same old arena, though brightened by paint and LED lights. This is not an expansion. That would be sacrilege on a campus that hugs tight against the Westwood Park cluster of bungalows.
Unlike the other big Catholic schools, Sacred Heart (S.H.) and St. Ignatius (S.I.), which have gone undergone major expansions and added second gymnasiums, Riordan has not budged from its original footprint on 9 acres across the street from City College.
It looks the same as the autumn day in 1966 when Restani ducked his head through the archway, as a gangly, and very quiet freshman. By the time he graduated in 1970, the school was huge, with 950 boys enrolled. Then the baby boom peaked and the single-sex Catholic high schools started to struggle for enrollment. Both S.I. and S.H. went coed and enjoyed a surge in enrollment.
Only Riordan stubbornly has remained all-boys, to protect the integrity of what they call “Riordan Brotherhood.” In the case of the capital campaign, called “Remembering Restani,” the brotherhood reached far and wide. The Olympic Club Foundation was the lead donor with a $100,000 matching grant and got its winged logo printed under Restani’s name on the court. The plumbers and pipefitters union, Local 38, donated two scoreboards.
Nasser, who rode this project through four successive Riordan presidents, asked maybe 100 people and organizations for donations. Nobody turned him down, not even a man who couldn’t take the call because he was about to undergo surgery for cancer. Three years later, a check for $1,000 arrived, after the man had recovered and remembered.
In all, 500 businesses and individuals kicked in, including graduates of the long-gone high schools for girls: Star of the Sea, St. Rose and Presentation. There was unusual generosity from alumni of S.I. and S.H., even from Serra in San Mateo.
“The Riordan brotherhood was expanded to include all the people, even from rival schools, who were inspired by Kevin’s basketball skills and humility,” said Kevin Holl, a member of the Class of ’75 and president of the alumni board. Holl knows brotherhoods: he is one of seven Holl boys who went to St. Gabriel by the San Francisco Zoo and who attended Riordan from 1963 to 1979.
Holl started going to Riordan games in 1968, when his brother, Dennis, was a forward on the team centered by Restani. It was a different game back then. Showiness and flash were not tolerated, and it was a major violation to dunk or even touch the rim. At 6foot-9, Restani towered over everyone and only once each game, before the referees took the court, would he show off his power.
“I’d sit down at the end of the lower section with my dad,” Holl said during a timeout at the Riordan-S. I. game last week, “and at the end of warm-ups, Kevin would come up and dunk it.”
This would fire up the student rooters, who stood shoulder to shoulder stood throughout the game in the upper part of the stands, dark like a theater and 13 rows rising to the roof. At the bottom by a walkway with an iron railing, the Riordan cheerleaders in purple sweaters trimmed in gold, stood on that railing with their backs to the floor to keep it going all game.
“The gym would get hot and loud” Holl said.
In Restani’s senior year, Riordan went 24-3 and he was named first-team all-state. Bill Walton of Helix-San Diego and Keith Wilkes of Santa Barbara — both future stars at UCLA and the NBA — were on the second team.
Two West Catholic Athletic League championships behind Restani have become 14 overall, the most for basketball of any school in the WCAL. Two years ago, still playing on that dead floor, the Crusaders won the Central Coast Section Division III championship.
So the players in the parish schools still come to Riordan even if their fellow students don’t come to the games. School spirit has been withering and dying everywhere. In an effort to combat it, Riordan introduced a marching band 10 years ago. No experience was required. Interested students would be given a purple jacket and white captain’s hat and taught to play an instrument.
What started as a boys band like in “The Music Man,’’ is now more than 100 strong. The band has marched up Market Street in a Giants World Series parade, on the field at the Super Bowl, at Disneyland, and in Rome on New Year’s Day 2017.
The band is one reason enrollment has bounced back from a low of 532 in 2010 to 684 this year. Among these are 39 foreign students boarding in quarters where the priests once lived. This year’s freshman class is the largest in two decades and it was greeted by an energetic new principal who was hired from S.I.
His name is Tim Reardon and the brotherhood is already after him to correct the spelling. According to Reardon, Riordan had 500 applications for 200 slots in next fall’s freshman class.
If this keeps going, they’ll have to bring back the cheerleaders and the rooting section. As it is, both of those jobs are performed by the band. Before home games, the musicians muster in the cafeteria and make a dramatic entry through a corridor and into the arena, where they rim the sidelines and perform as the players warm up.
The players are proud that their classic gym is not like all the others, with roll-out risers putting fans right on the floor. At Riordan, the seating is fixed, 5 feet above the court and there is no way to get there. As starting guard James Chun wrote in the school newspaper, “It is like the Roman Coliseum in terms of playing, knowing everyone is watching.”
But during the game against S.I., there were more fans watching from the alumni section down low than in the student section above.
“The school hopes the remodel will attract students to come to more games,” wrote Chun, “and give the band more incentive to play proudly in a beautiful gym.”
Friday night will be the test. Holl expects the alumni turnout to be 100, maybe 200.
“Kevin Restani inspired remarkable school spirit and enthusiasm,” he said. “Now the court named in his honor will be a catalyst for the future. Riordan is on the rise.”