June 26, 2008 Issue                                       

©2007 The Chestnut Hill Local

Local Sports

CHA’s triple threat Mattei co-winner of Patterson Cup
by Justin Goldman

The three faces of CHA’s Mike Mattei: (left to right) playing football against Malvern Prep, basketball against Germantown Academy and baseball against Mercersburg. (Photos by Jimmy J. Pack Jr.)

It can be said that recent CHA graduate Mike Mattei is a bit nostalgic. He remembers sitting through graduations and hearing the names called for the winners of the J.L. Patterson Cup, an award given annually to CHA’s best athlete. But it wasn’t until last summer that Mattei really thought he had a shot to win the highly coveted award.

Sultan of Sweep: Hill’s Bill Lamb keeps The Prep crew on top
by TOM UTESCHER

On the dock at the St. Joe’s Prep boathouse, Coach Bill Lamb stands by the Strawberry Mansion Bridge, which spans the Schuylkill just below the starting line of the Kelly Drive racecourse.

The accomplished oarsmen of St. Joseph’s Preparatory School attend class on Girard Avenue and row out of a boathouse on Kelly Drive, but a key element in the “Prep” crew’s phenomenal success lies right in Chestnut Hill.

Hill resident Bill Lamb, who graduated from Norwood Fontbonne Academy in 1975 before entering St. Joe’s Prep himself, began coaching the Hawklet freshmen in the early 1980s, and became head coach in the 1991-92 school year. With a team roster that regularly numbers in triple digits, the Prep program is often regarded as the national high school standard when it comes to racing eight-oared “sweep” boats.

In contrast to sculling, the discipline in which each athlete hauls on two oars, sweep rowers work one oar apiece on either the port or starboard side of the boat, and few coaches have had their rowers swing those long shafts as successfully as Bill Lamb. After triumphing time and again at the scholastic level, his Prep protégés have gone on to join top college programs and junior and senior national teams, and several have become U.S. Olympians.

Mount hoopsters win three of four in summer league
by TOM UTESCHER

In the second and third week of action in the Hatboro Horsham Summer Basketball League, Mount St. Joseph Academy went 3-1 in four contests, falling to Neshaminy High School, 40-28, on June 11, and then rolling to victories over Lansdale Catholic (52-15), Methacton (43-29), and Jenkintown High School (50-17).