Basketball
Inducted 2016 

Coach … Cop … Caring community volunteer.

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Everything he’s done — in and out of sports for more than a half-century — has benefitted others.

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You would be hard-pressed to find anyone with a cross word to say about Bob Hayes.  On so many levels, for so many people, over so many years, he’s been a Hall of Famer.

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Hayes earned eight letters playing scholastic basketball and baseball at St. Patrick’s (Class of 1955).  He served in the Navy aboard the carrier USS Intrepid.  What followed was a 35-year career with the Syracuse Police Department — first as a patrolman, then Resource Officer in the city schools.

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He was one of the Parochial League’s finest basketball coaches in the 1960s and ’70s.  A three-time Coach of the Year — 1969 and ’73 at his alma mater, ’74 at West Side Catholic (a merger of St. Pat’s and St. Lucy’s) — his teams won three Parochial crowns, two Diocesan Class B titles and the ’74 Section 3 Class C championship (highest level ever for a Parochial League school).

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His 1969 St. Pat’s team won the school’s first regular-season title in 33 years.

Bob was also athletic director at St. Pat’s.  He coached one season at Most Holy Rosary, then retired as a high school basketball coach but coached St. Pat’s grammar and CYO teams.  He also coached West End PBA Little League baseball for 25 years.

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He founded and directed the Rascal’s Youth Basketball League – still going today as the Leprechaun League and directed by two of Hayes’ former Rascals.  He’s had a positive influence on more youngsters in the Tipperary Hill area than you can imagine.

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Hayes – always supported by his late wife, Janet, and their four sons - is more than games won or championship seasons.  That’s why he was the 1978 Syracuse Optimist Club Award and the 1999 recipient of the Blind Men & Criers’ Lew Andreas Award - each for community service.  In 2002, he was inducted into Sections 3’s Basketball Hall of Fame.
 

Next year, Bob Hayes will become an octogenarian.  This year, he becomes a member of the Greater Syracuse Sports Hall of Fame, Class of 2016.