The Hamptons is basketball country, thanks to the enduring impact of teachers like Coach Ed Petrie. This Saturday, Long Island Basketball Foundation‘s fundraiser at The Clubhouse will support Suffolk County student-athletes while honoring one of New York’s most accomplished high school coaches.
For generations of Hamptons hoopers, parents, and basketball fans, Ed Petrie was simply known as “Coach.” If you’ve ever known somebody whom you still call coach long after you left the team, you know that it is an important honorific.
The title carries considerable weight. It means, in equal measure: discipline, opportunity, and the steady belief that young people learn as much in the gym as they do in the classroom. On Saturday, July 11, Coach’s enduring influence will be celebrated at the Ed Petrie Legacy Scholarship Fundraiser, hosted by the Long Island Basketball Foundation at The Clubhouse in East Hampton from 6pm to 9pm.
The event will raise funds for scholarships, resources, and opportunities benefiting Suffolk County student-athletes pursuing academic and athletic goals. The guiding message, “Investing in Student-Athletes. Honoring a Legacy,” is a fitting tribute to a man whose impact extended well beyond the scoreboard.
Petrie’s coaching résumé is the stuff of East End sporting lore. Over 52 seasons, he amassed a New York State record 754 victories, becoming the winningest public high school boys basketball coach in state history. Even the New York Times has covered Coach’s accomplishments! But for those who played for him, competed against him, or watched his teams take the floor, the numbers only tell part of the story.
Born in White Plains in 1932 and raised in Rye, Petrie first made his name as a point guard and captain at F.E. Bellows High School, where he helped lead the team to consecutive county championships in 1950 and 1951. He continued his playing career at Seton Hall University, captaining the Pirates in 1956 and helping guide the program to National Invitational Tournament appearances, when the NIT was among college basketball’s most prestigious postseason stages.
After graduation, Petrie was drafted by the New York Knicks and spent time playing professionally in the Eastern League before a different calling brought him to the East End.
In 1959, he joined Pierson High School in Sag Harbor as a physical education teacher and coach. His influence was immediate. The 1960–61 Whalers earned the school’s first league title in two decades, and Petrie helped establish a Biddy League program that placed basketballs in the hands of children throughout the village.
“I had excellent teams throughout that decade, and I can’t imagine a better place to have worked,” Petrie later said of his years in Sag Harbor.
A decade later, he arrived at East Hampton High School at the request of former coach and administrator Carl Johansen. There, Petrie built the Bonackers into a perennial force. Between 1975 and 1978, East Hampton posted a remarkable 62–4 record, led in part by the celebrated 1976–77 team featuring future professional player Howard Wood. That squad captured a state championship, and Petrie added another state title in 1989 with a team featuring Wood’s brother, Kenny.
His later years on the sidelines proved that the program had lost none of its competitive edge. East Hampton claimed overall Suffolk County championships in 2008 and 2009, while Petrie’s teams went 67–6 from 2007 through 2009. He retired in 2010, leaving behind an unmatched body of work: 20 league titles, three county championships, two state championships, and a standard of excellence that became woven into the fabric of East Hampton athletics.
Petrie was inducted into the New York State Basketball Hall of Fame, New York State Baseball Hall of Fame, Seton Hall University Hall of Fame, Suffolk County Sports Hall of Fame, Frank McGuire Foundation Hall of Fame, and the inaugural East Hampton High School Athletic Hall of Fame. In 2010, East Hampton honored him by dedicating its gymnasium floor as Coach Petrie Court.
He died in 2015 at age 82, but the values he championed remain very much in play.
The Long Island Basketball Foundation’s fundraiser is designed to carry those values forward, translating Petrie’s lifelong dedication to young athletes into practical support for the next generation. It is an evening for former players and longtime friends to reconnect, for the community to celebrate one of its great mentors, and for future student-athletes to benefit from the legacy of a coach whose lessons reached far beyond the final buzzer.
