(Photo: Pauline Andersen, '55)

(Photo: Arty Benoit, '55)

---

CITY champs. No matter what size the city, this title is enough to give shivers.

"Yes," Artie Benoit said, "but this was New York. This was the mecca of basketball."

The old point guard remembers the day Jamaica High School won the city title, 50 years ago yesterday. They won it at the Garden, the old Garden, the one farther up on Eighth Avenue.

Benoit admits to feeling slightly jealous of the movie "Hoosiers," based on the team from tiny Milan that stunningly won the Indiana state tournament back in 1954. Benoit and his teammates felt they had accomplished something akin to "Hoosiers": a team from sedate Queens outlasting schools from the more fabled boroughs.

Of course, Jamaica had a huge enrollment, more than 5,000 students, and it also had the city's career leading scorer at the time, Alan Seiden, who later became a star at St. John's. All championships have their motivation, their resentments, and underdog worked for Jamaica.

Benoit, who helps run St. Maggie's Cafe at 120 Wall Street, is working on a reunion for May 6, to celebrate the day he and his teammates became princes of the city whose heartbeat is a bouncing basketball.

The city produces lippy, strutty, control-freak personalities. Spike Lee. John McEnroe. Paul Simon. Jamaica had one of those in Seiden.

"My family moved out from Brooklyn when I was 11," Benoit recalled on Friday. "I went down to the schoolyard at P.S. 26 and saw him out on the court.

" 'Hey, kid,' he said. 'You play the game?' And he tossed me the ball with a two-hand chest pass. Then he showed me how to dribble left-handed and right-handed. Then he showed me how to pass left-handed and right-handed. Then he said, 'That's all.'

" 'That's all?' I asked him. 'What about shooting?' And he said, 'That's what I do.' "

That was the basis of an enduring friendship - longer, better and deeper than Simon and Garfunkel, those other kids from Queens. In 1954-55, Jamaica lost the second game at Jefferson of Brooklyn and kept winning, three straight playoff games in the Garden.

Their opponent in the final was Madison of Brooklyn, with a big front line that included Rudy LaRusso, who later played for Dartmouth and the Lakers. The game was at 11 a.m. The Jamaica coach, Charley Shannon, drove Seiden and Benoit in from Queens, so nervous he stopped for green lights and ran the red ones.

"We came across Madison Avenue, and I'll never forget this as long as I live," Seiden said the other day. "Artie said, 'We're going to run over Madison the same way we ran over Madison Avenue.' "

Yappy Queens talk. But early in the game, Benoit uncharacteristically drove for the basket, drawing fouls, drawing attention. He recalls his buddy questioning him about all the shooting: "Benny, what are you doing?" (Seiden does not recall saying any such thing.) Thereafter, Benoit stuck to passing and defense, Seiden scored 31 points, and Jamaica beat Madison, 64-59.

"My father ran out on the court," Seiden recalled. His father, Mickey, had taught him the game, had given him his abundant confidence.

"Alan's dad took us to the Brass Rail, and he picked up the check," Benoit recalled.

Later they all met up at Dante's, the pizza joint at Union Turnpike where they had celebrated victories on snowy Friday nights in the winter. A few days later there was a rally at the old Valencia Theater on Jamaica Avenue. Benoit's eyes lighted up as he described the grandeur of the old-fashioned palace, with purple curtains, and the cheerleaders and Jean Gollobin's choir all paying homage. Every city championship produces memories. These are Jamaica's.

All five starters went on to play college ball - Jerry Cooper at George Washington, Billy Reed at Bowling Green, Richard Rodin at Columbia, Seiden at St. John's and Benoit helped make Adelphi, under George Faherty, a small-college power.

Benoit (pronounced Ben-NOYT) taught school and became a bartender in the Hamptons, where he was known, French-style, as Dr. Ben-WAH. In the 70's he owned September's and October's, singles bars on the East Side of Manhattan, and for the last 20 years has helped run St. Maggie's Cafe. He is divorced, with three grown sons.

Seiden played minor league ball for a while and gave up schoolyard ball only a few years ago when his knees gave out. Operator of the Henry Hudson Ticket Service in Fort Lee, N.J., he lives in Queens with his brother and his mother, Dora, age 90. A few years ago, he ran into Ruth Mechaneck, whom he had dated back at Jamaica, and they are, as the saying goes, seeing each other.

The two old guards acknowledge that winning the city championship stays with them.

"I think about it every day," Benoit said. "I've lived off it for 50 years. It influenced my life. It gave me confidence. I rose to the occasion."

For Benoit's 50th birthday, somebody from Madison gave him a grainy old video from 1955. The footage is mostly of Madison on offense, Jamaica on defense - "We would move as a unit," Benoit said -young men in skimpy red shorts, so earnest, so intense, and city champs forever.

(Clipping courtesy Pauline Andersen, '55)

JAMAICA HIGH SCHOOL TIME CAPSULES : : : : : : : :
04/05/05 - 6/1/05