When the news broke on April 5 that St. Anthony High School in Jersey City would shut down at the end of the 2016-17 school year, the school’s famed basketball coach, Bob Hurley, and his assistant Eric Harrield began fielding phone calls from coaches at other high schools. While the callers were ostensibly phoning to commiserate, and to offer their condolences on the shuttering of the school made famous by Hurley and his powerhouse teams, Hurley and Harrield knew they had another motive.
The closing of St. Anthony meant that the members of Hurley’s team — a group that includes some of the most sought-after teenage basketball prospects in the region — were now free to switch high schools.