Prudente Inducted Into Small College Basketball Hall of Fame
PHILADELPHIA -- Legendary Swarthmore coach Ernie Prudente was inducted into the Philadelphia-Area Small College Basketball Hall of Fame at a luncheon in his honor on Tuesday, December 11. Prudente, the winningest coach at Haverford College and second-winningest coach at Swarthmore College when he coached the Fords and Garnet from the 1950s to the 1980s.
Prudente won 103 games at Haverford from 1957-58 and 1968-69, and 81 games at Swarthmore between 1969-70 to 1980-81. Four of his Haverford teams advanced to the Middle Atlantic Conference basketball tournament. He is also the most successful baseball coach in Swarthmore history with 216 wins.
Prudente played varsity football, basketball and baseball at Haverford Township High School before wartime service in the U.S. Navy. He entered Friends’ Central Prep in 1946-47 and played the same sports there. He helped FCS share the 1946 Inter-Ac football title with Episcopal and Haverford School as an All-Scholastic tackle. In basketball, he was all-league for a team that went 8-0 in the Inter-AC despite returning no starters from the previous year. Prudente had 12 points in the 42-34 season-ending win over runner-up Penn Charter in 1947.
Prudente matriculated at the University of Pennsylvania, where he played four years of varsity football and basketball, plus freshman baseball. He lettered on the 1949 and 1950 Quaker football teams and the 1950-51 basketball team.
In the fall of 1969, Prudente switched to Haverford’s historic rival Swarthmore and brought the squad its first winning season since 1950-51. He coached basketball until 1981, defeating the Fords in his first seven tries with Fred Miceli ’72 and Paul Schectman ’71 (a Rhodes Scholar and the N.Y. State Director of Criminal Justice from 1995-97) leading the way.
Prudente, who also served as a football assistant, led the Garnet baseball team for 25 years. Upon retiring in 1995, Prudente had compiled 216 wins, the most in school history. He directed the 1985 baseball team to a school-best 27-6 record (one loss was to the St. Joseph’s Jamie Moyer, current Philadelphia Phillie), He was named MAC Southern Division Baseball Coach of the Year in 1985 after directing Swarthmore to its lone baseball appearance in the NCAA Tournament. The entire Garnet infield was selected to the MAC Southern Division All-Star team and outfielder/pitcher Ed Greene ‘85 was named All-America and went on to sign a professional contract.
Prudente became a full professor of physical education at Swarthmore in 1992, teaching tennis, volleyball, badminton, archery, squash, basketball, and touch football at various times, while running the College’s intramural program from 1981 on.
Prudente was inducted into the Delaware County Chapter of the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame in 1987, then the Delaware County Hall of Fame in 1990. Swarthmore has presented the Ernie Prudente Sportsmanship Award annually to the male and female athletes that through their participation, have demonstrated the characteristics exemplified by Ernie: Sportsmanship, love of the sport, and respect for their teammates.
Prudente started his coaching career as a line coach at Haverford College under head football coach Roy Randall. Prudente soon became junior varsity basketball coach as well, going 7-7 in 1952-53. Based on the strength of 9-4 and 11-3 records in his last two seasons as JV mentor, Prudente replaced Bill Prizer as Haverford’s head basketball coach in time for dedication of Alumni Field House in 1957-58. Haverford compiled its best record in over 15 years and swept Swarthmore for the first time ever in Prudente’s first season. The Fords would go on to sweep the Garnet in six of Prudente’s first nine seasons as coach.
During the 1960-61 season Haverford earned its first Middle Atlantic Conference playoff berth in 12 years. The young 12-5 team went 8-4 in conference play and knocked off Penn Military (Widener), Franklin & Marshall and Swarthmore entering the MAC tournament at Muhlenberg. The Fords fell to Northern Division top seed Albright, 74-51, in the semifinals, but defeated Drexel, which had swept them during the regular season, in the third-place game, 72-61.
In 1962-63, Dorwart was a force, averaging 16.3 points and 18.5 rebounds per game after he was joined in the frontcourt by freshman phenom Hunter Rawlings ‘66. Darlington was another top scorer up front (14.3 ppg), with Kent Smith ’63 and Eliot “Bang” Williams ‘64 handling the ball on the perimeter. The team won seven of its last eight regular season games before falling to Butch van Breda Kolff’s Hofstra team, 86-56, and Drexel, 61-56, in the MAC tourney.
Prudente’s 1965-66 team qualified for the MAC tournament for the third time in six years during an era when Sam Cozen’s Drexel teams were dominating the top spot in the Southern Division. The senior-laden Fords, led by guard Walt Whitman ’66, won 11 straight games to open the season. They ended the year 13-3 overall, 11-2 league with regular season and MAC South final losses to the 20-4, 12-0 Dragons.
Coming off a 4-12 season in 1967-68 that featured a stunning 67-65 home win over Drexel – the Fords’ last win over the Dragons – Prudente’s team rebounded to take the third spot in the MAC Southern Division tournament in 1968-69 despite a 7-9, 7-7 record.
Prudente remained as a football and baseball assistant under Randall throughout his 18 years at Haverford, and he became head baseball coach twice for one season. His 1963 nine went 3-9 with captain Greg Kannerstein ’63 and his 1969 squad was 4-9 for Jarocki. Both captains later became coaches for their alma mater: Kannerstein in baseball and Jarocki in soccer and golf.