Kevin Gormley, Gordie Ernst, and Jim Psaras are compelling Rhode Island stories. Local kids who excelled at their sport and became well-known coaches. Unfortunately only one story has a happy ending.
When North Kingstown High School swept Bishop Hendricken for the Division I baseball championship on June 18, coach Kevin Gormley’s immediate reaction was, in his own word, disbelief.
“We’ve been battling Hendricken so long and been on the other end of it. They are so tough. It’s a monumental task to beat them,” he said.
Bishop Hendricken is a perennial power in Rhode Island high school baseball, a 22-time state champion. North Kingstown was an occasional contender, losing to Hendricken in three finals. The Skippers beat Coventry for the 2021 title, the second in school history, and became the third public school in 50 years to win consecutive championships when they eliminated Hendricken last month.
“We had a team that was so mentally tough and was able to handle adversity.” Gormley told me a few days after the title-clinching victory. “If I can teach a kid how to adapt to change and handle adversity, then I’ve done my job.”
Gormley knows about adapting and adversity. He was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2012, received radiation and chemotherapy treatments, and the cancer went into remission for about two years. He continued to teach business classes while coaching basketball and baseball.
By July 2014, the cancer had spread. Surgeons removed his sternum, and Gormley retired from coaching. More chemotherapy and a stem self transplant led to a five-week hospitalization in the fall of 2014 and ultimately recovery and remission.
Something wonderful occurred during the four years he was away from baseball.
“As I healed, I noticed I could do a lot of things I used to do,” he said. So he started coaching travel teams and put together a team called the Rhode Island Rebels. Meanwhile, his daughter Meghan grew into a high-school softball player while his son T.J. worked his way through Little League.
In the summer of 2018, just before T.J. started at North Kingstown High, the NK baseball job became available. Was Kevin interested? Is the left field wall at Fenway a Green Monster?
“I missed it like hell,” he said. Also, the chance to coach his son and kids he had coached since Little League was too good to pass on.
“These boys are from one town, one community, not from all over the place. They’re not only teammates but also very good friends. They are quality kids. They play the game the right way. They all have a GPA of 3.2 and above. They have good parents. Everybody is invested,” he said.
After winning the 2021 championship, Gormley decided that 2022, T.J.’s senior year, would be his last season coaching the Skippers. He wants to see him play at the University of Maine and Meghan play her senior year at Brown.
Winning it all this year was the perfect, and unexpected, ending.
“If you had told me we’d win back-to-back titles, I’d say who’s your doctor and what medications are you on,” he said. “Whether we won or lost, my career was fulfilled.”
Kevin Gormley is 50 and plans to continue teaching at North Kingstown High for another dozen years. His coaching days, however, are history.
“I’ve had a great ride. I wouldn’t change a thing.”
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This latest chapter of the Gordie Ernst story has an unhappy ending.
After pleading guilty last October to federal charges of bribery, conspiracy and filing false income tax returns in connection with the “Varsity Blues” college admissions scandal, the former Cranston East high school hockey and tennis star received a 30-month prison sentence on July 1. He must report to federal prison on Aug. 29.
Federal prosecutors charged Ernst with accepting $3.4 million in bribes while coaching men’s and women’s tennis at Georgetown University. In return Ernst designated 22 high school students with questionable or no tennis background as tennis recruits, facilitating their admission.
In a stunning appeal for leniency in sentencing — his plea bargain included jail time of between one and four years — Ernst wrote to U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani and described physical and emotional abuse he suffered at the hands of his father, Rhode Island coaching legend Dick Ernst.
“More of a coach and a tyrant than a dad,” is how Gordie described his father. When he failed on the ice or tennis court, Gordie wrote that his father “would beat me to the point of bruises and injuries.” He remembered his father visiting his bedroom “wielding a belt or worse.”
Those allegations conflict with the image of the Ernsts as a tightly knit family led by a famous teacher and coach, a loyal stay-at-home mom, and three athletically gifted sons, none more gifted than Gordie. He was All-State in hockey and tennis, never lost a match in high school, played both sports at Brown, tried the pro tennis tour, flirted with finance and then turned to coaching.
Brothers Bobby and Andy were also All-State hockey and tennis players, but judging from the way Dick always promoted Gordie, the sun shone brightest on him. Dick died in 2016.
Rollie Ernst denied that abuse occurred under their roof. Her husband was intense with himself but not abusive, she told Brian Amaral of The Boston Globe. “All my kids had a great time growing up. Dick made things fun,” she said.
In his letter to Judge Talwani, Gordie Ernst apologized for his actions. She must not have been moved by his act of contrition, or by his lawyers suggestion that he accepted bribes to afford his family the privileges that otherwise would have been out of reach financially, because she dealt Ernst the harshest penalty of any defendant in the Varsity Blues case. Ernst himself has not elaborated on his reasons for participating in this admissions scheme.
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Jim Psaras, the beloved former Newport physical education teacher and Rogers High School basketball coach, died of cancer July 2 at his Middletown home. I met Jim in 2012, when he led his Vikings to the semifinals of the Rhode Island state basketball tournament. His devotion to his players, his school, his community and the game of basketball after so many years pacing the sideline of high school gyms impressed me.
Jim coached the Vikings from 1988 to 2014 and led them to state championships in 1990, 1991, and 1993. As Scott Barrett reported in the Newport Daily News, his teams won 421 games and missed the playoffs only three times. His impact was so profound that in May four dozen former players met on his front lawn to reminisce.
Jim was a Rogers High and University of Rhode Island alum. He was inducted into the Rogers High School Athletic Hall of Fame in 2021 and true to form gave credit to the boys who played for him and the assistants who coached with him.
Jim Psaras was 58. His funeral was yesterday.
Condolences to his wife Kit, daughter Julia, and son Will.
