A graduate of the State University of New York (SUNY) in Brockport, Jim founded two wrestling programs at Cardinal Mooney High School in Rochester, N.Y. in 1964 and at Holy Cross in Waterbury. His Cardinal Mooney teams won three straight City Catholic championships in Rochester from 1968-70. He coached wrestling, football and track and field while serving as a physical education, biology and physical science teacher.

He moved to Holy Cross in 1971, became athletic director and coached the wrestling team from 1972-89, winning 166 matches. Despite no feeder program, his Crusaders finished third in Class LL in 1980 and fourth in Class LL in 1989. Jim served as chairman of the CIAC's wrestling committee from 1979-83 and twice as president of the Naugatuck Valley League (1981, 1989).

He was honored by the Connecticut High School Coaches Association as its wrestling coach of the year in 1983 and its athletic director of the year in 1995. At Holy Cross, he helped introduce girls sports at the school, which was an all-boys school until 1975. 

Jim served as athletic director for Holy Cross for 34 years before retiring in 2004. Today (2010), he is an assistant wrestling coach with his son Mike, the head coach at Xavier High in Middletown, Conn. Jim and his wife, Maureen, live in Wolcott, Conn., and have two sons, Mike and Tom.

Posted by the Connecticut chapter of the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, June 2010
Profile photo taken June 2010