St. Anthony's star guard to remain in-state at Rutgers
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Mike Rosario, who was recently named a McDonald's All-American, leads top-ranked St. Anthony with 19 points per game.
AP
JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- When Joanne Rosario's youngest child, Michael, was 12 years old, she would wake up at 7 a.m. most Saturdays, open the door to his room, only to see an empty bed and begin to worry where her son had gone. "Drug dealers were in the hallways, homeless people were lined against the wall," Joanne says. "I'd worry, but when I looked down from our 12th floor apartment, there he was dribbling a ball on the Lincoln Park court."
Raised in the hardscrabble A. Harry Moore Housing Projects on Duncan Avenue in Jersey City, Michael rarely strayed far from home. A natural athlete, he outran a few youthful scuffles, pushed past drug peddlers and strode easily through baseball, football and basketball leagues. On the diamond, his refined skills brought home plenty of trophies. As a football player, he was the city's best quarterback in the eighth grade. There were days when he would play baseball by light, return home and change clothes, reenergize and play football past dark. But then there was basketball, the game his peers most enjoyed and he found best absorbed his energy. "He had the most trophies from basketball," his mother says. "That's when I knew it was his sport."
More than two miles from the West Side projects, Rosario joined neighbors on a basketball team at the Hudson County Boys & Girls Club on the city's East Side when he was in the fifth grade. Initially the club offered gym space and court time, but Rosario stayed later and longer than most. After performing well enough to play on the sixth grade traveling team, he became a gym rat, immersing himself in the instruction. By the time he was in the eighth grade, Gary Greenberg, the club's executive director, would take Rosario 10 blocks from the club and have him sit in on practices at St. Anthony High. "He was always moving and it was hard to sit him down, but once he saw those players and knew their history, that was his dream," Greenberg says. "I'm not sure he makes it out of the environs he grew up in without the support."
Now Rosario, who leads top-ranked St. Anthony in scoring (19 ppg), is one of six Friars seniors to receive a Division I scholarship (Rosario will attend Rutgers) and this week was named the storied school's sixth McDonald's All-American. From the backcourt, Travon Woodall (Pitt) and Tyshawn Taylor (Marquette) will join Rosario in the Big East while Jio Fontan (Fordham) will join forwards A.J. Rogers (Saint Joseph's) and Alberto Eastwick (Fordham) in the Atlantic 10. "No one can argue this is our deepest class in terms of players going to high-end schools," says legendary St. Anthony coach Bob Hurley, who has won 919 games in 36 years and has produced more than 131 Division I scholarship winners. "Michael burns to compete and so do the others."
Of the six, three -- Woodall, Fontan and Rosario -- have become particularly close. Fontan's father, Jorge, a building manager, has become a de-facto father to his son's friends, housing Woodall fulltime and hosting Rosario most weekend nights, to form their own three-man-weave of Division I guards under one roof. "There's motivation among the three of us and Mike wakes us up early to get out and shoot in the off season," Woodall says. "We've all been good for each and pushed to the limits."
Rosario, a 6-foot-2, 170-pound sharpshooter with quick feet, chose to stay in New Jersey for college, despite offers from several major Division I programs outside the Garden State. Like few of his peers in New Jersey, Rosario thought outside the box by staying inside the state to assist the resurrection of the Rutgers program. "I think of it like I can be the prince of New Jersey," Rosario says. "It's going away for college because I'm not at home, but home can still come see me play."
For Rutgers, which was 10-19 last year and is 10-14 this season, the cultivation of Rosario will be key. Next year he will be coupled with current freshmen Corey Chandler, an athletic slasher from Newark's Eastside High and Michael Coburn from New York's Mount Vernon. "It's a double-edged sword with so much talent in the Jersey area," says Rutgers coach Fred Hill, who offered Hurley his top assistant's position when he inherited the position two summers ago. "We have to give them a first-rate program that proves capable of developing players."
Hurley, who has had a long-time relationship with Hill, says the choice was not his to make, but he feels Rosario fits perfectly. "You cannot make the decision for the kids because if things do not work out then they never got to choose their path," says Hurley, whose former player, Darren Savino, is a Rutgers assistant. "There was a level of comfort that he sought there."
They still talk about Rosario in the halls of the Jersey City Boys & Girls Club. Now a role model for the youth, he and his mother filed for Section 8 housing vouchers six years ago and live in an area where many Jersey City police call home. No homeless people line the hallways, and the Harry Moore projects are in the process of being razed and supplanted with new townhouses. "He is like the rose that grew from concrete," Greenberg says.
Before the Garden State's top homegrown product can blossom for Rutgers, though, he knows there is work to be done. In three years, the deepest class in school history has yet to win a state title as they have watched rival St. Patrick capture three straight crowns. "I know where I am going, but we want that title," Rosario says. "It would be a fitting crown."
