FEATURES | THE NORTHPORT RECORD, FEBRUARY 10, 2005

The Gandolfis: Always In Competition

By Michael R. Sisak / The Northport Record

Grace Gandolfi walked into her son Frankie’s room and surveyed the damage from a supposed accidental fall, earlier in the evening. The wall suffered the brunt of the impact. It appeared to have been hit with such great force that the original explanation, offered by Frankie in a telephone call to Grace an hour earlier, seemed artificial.

“He told me, ‘I was helping Chris with his homework like you said and he wanted to disconnect the PlayStation, so he stood on a chair and fell off and hit the wall and it made a dent,’” Grace recalled. She had been at work when the alleged accident occurred. “When I got home, you could see it was clearly a body slam into the wall.”

Mothers know, particularly when her sons, Frankie, an 18-year-old senior at Northport High School, and Chris, a 15-year-old sophomore, are both varsity wrestlers who have, over the years, resolved most conflicts through the art of grappling. Grace has banned wrestling in her East Northport home. Still, the brothers went at it.

“We were fighting over the TV,” Frankie explained. “We started wrestling in my room and my room’s not too big. I double legged him and he went right through the wall. Now, there’s a big hole in my wall.”

Their sister, Corrine, a 16-year-old junior who plays varsity basketball and lacrosse, has tried to stay above the physical fray, reserving her competitiveness and aggression for rivals.

“When we were younger, me and Chris used to gang up on Frankie. I used to beat the crap out of them when we were younger. I guess they were afraid of me,” Corrine recalled. “Since they started wrestling, they’ve had that advantage over me and I haven’t won a match since.”

The Gandolfis have long been competitive. Corrine has played basketball since grade school. Chris and Frankie segued to wrestling in middle school. They lived through the divorce of their parents, Grace and Frank. They have adjusted to a bicameral life — two homes, two networks of support, two independently powerful authority figures. And they have emerged as the first family of athletics at Northport High School.

Closer Through Coaching

Frank and Grace divorced when Chris was 3, Corrine, 4, and Frankie, 6.

“When we first separated, it was a little crazy,” Grace said. “They changed schools, they changed homes. Where they lived with two (parents), now they lived with one.”

Grace, 42, attained primary custody and moved back to East Northport, where she had been raised in a family transfixed by sports, particularly basketball. Her father, Victor Miranda, was a standout player in high school and had earned a scholarship to play at Fordham University. Grace did not play sports when she was younger, but her exposure level was high through television and conversation. Victor would often have the family set tuned to a basketball game. Later, during her time as a student at John Glenn High School in Elwood, Grace grew fond of the sport that her sons fell for.

 “I grew up with four brothers and a sister and that was all that went on, and my father, that’s all he watched — basketball, college basketball and high school basketball,” Grace said. “When I was in high school, I was a fan of wrestling. I used to watch it all the time.”

Frank, 43, a confessed “basketball junkie” who works as a self-employed building contractor, remained in Holbrook, where he built homes for himself and two of his sisters, Rose and Geri, along an adjacent stretch of the same block. The proximity to family, and cousins who were close in age, helped Chris, Corrine and Frank field teams for neighborhood basketball tournaments and football games.

“It’s pretty neat to be able to go next door and have your cousins there,” Frank said.

The neighborhood family that cut across blood and property lines fostered an early association with the sense of community and camaraderie that Chris, Corrine and Frank share with their current teams in Northport, Frank said.

Frank played basketball into his sophomore year of high school, when a knee injury pushed him to the sideline, and more recent among friends in a league for men over 30. For nearly a decade, he has served as a coach for local youth teams. He started with the Eaton’s Neck league teams that Chris, Corrine and Frankie played for and, as their interest grew, led squads in the AAU and CYO programs. Chris and Corrine started playing while in the second grade. Frankie started in the fourth grade.

“I never wanted my kids, because their mother and father were separated, to be robbed of anything that a child would have if their parents were still together,” Frank said. “Sports has always been the safety net for my children.”

Practices and games were an epoxy to the geographic and domestic schism that the separation cut between Frank and his children. It presented an affable distraction to the social and psychological adjustments forced upon the children and it offered an opportunity for them to interact with their father more often than on weekends. Diane, the elementary school teacher who lives with Frank, assumed a role akin to stepmother. She and Frank attend basketball games and wrestling meets six days a week and, early on, would drive the kids to events and help with homework projects.

“It was tough at first, we were real young, we were the new kids in school,” Frankie said. He and Chris struggled to maintain friendships until middle school. Corrine fit in with a different dynamic: tomboy. “It was all new; we were so young to experience all this stuff, but it all worked out.”

From Courts To Mats

Corrine played her first organized basketball game on a team in the Eaton’s Neck youth league alongside future Lady Tigers teammates Almog Cohen and Kelly Dunne. She scored 12 points in her debut and on defense began to instinctively study the way an opponent handles the ball — now a hallmark of her man-to-man play.

“As the guard is bringing the ball up the court, I’m watching and I see Corrine and she’s looking at the ball and I realize, she’s timing how this girl handles the ball,” Frank said recently, after reviewing a videotape of the game. “She steals the ball and she brings it in for a layup.”

One night a week, Frank held practices for his three teams in a consecutive block in the gymnasium at St. Phillip Neri Church in Northport. Corrine would often play against the boys’ team, which included several future Northport High School athletes. Among them: Kevin Roby, a member of the Northport football team, Kevin Tschirhart, the cross-country runner, and Brian Hager, a guard on the boys basketball team.

“That’s where she really got her toughness and aggressiveness,” Frank said. “She used to take on a lot of the boys one-on-one. She would play one-on-one with her brothers all the time. The boys used to really get frustrated and get physical with her and she would never back down.”

During halftime of one of Frankie’s early games, Chris and Corrine left the stands and engaged in a terse head-to-head battle. She wound up with a black eye.

“I went to drive on him, he stepped in front of me and he bit my eye,” Corrine said. “I had teeth marks below my eyebrow. I wore sunglasses to school for a week and a half.”

Chris played basketball until early in the sixth grade, when the sickening word arrived that Dan Trant, a coach from Chris’ AAU team, had been killed in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Trant, a former professional basketball player who moved to Northport after a brief career with the Boston Celtics and a squad in Ireland, was a bond broker for Cantor Fitzgerald. He worked on the 104th Floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York.

“[Chris] just couldn’t do it anymore because every time he would step on the basketball court he would think of Dan Trant,” Frank said. “Danny was a great guy. We were real close. He died, and we went ahead with the basketball and it just wasn’t the same.”

Chris found salvation on the wrestling team. Frankie had already made the transition and helped his brother with maneuvers and training. Chris went 8-3 at the middle school level in seventh grade and 9-1 in eighth grade. As a freshman, last year, a slot opened up at 145 pounds. Coach Al Cicio asked Chris to step in.

“It was definitely a new experience. You’re moving from a middle school level to a high school level and varsity, it’s even harder,” Chris said. “There are kids who have been on varsity for three or four years and who are a lot better than you.”

Chris placed first at the recent Sachem North tournament at 145 pounds and Frankie finished third at 135. Frank and Chris are the first off the bench to congratulate or consol each other.

“They’re very supportive during matches, they help each other warm up, they root for each other,” Frank said. “When they’re out of the school and at home, they’re two normal brothers. They can go at it. They can bang their heads, especially with wrestling. They’ll go down stairs and they’ll wrestle. Things are flying all over.”

In public they are each other’s biggest fans. In private, they offer critiques of each other’s performances and seldom offer compliments. The tough love, and the conflict resolution through pick-up matches, has made each better competitor, they said.

‘The Girl,’ A Safe Bet

Corrine has continued with basketball through middle school and into a starting role on the varsity team at Northport. She has emerged from tomboyish youth into young womanhood and has remained fiercely competitive, even on vacation.

Three years ago, Corrine went on a family trip to Curacao, in the Caribbean. As she shot baskets on a court at the resort where they were staying, a boy maybe 15 years old, walked up to Corrine, 13 at the time, and challenged her to a duel.

“Corrine was in her bikini playing basketball with no shoes on. This boy came up and wanted to challenge her, one-on-one,” Grace said. “My brother Victor pretended like he didn’t know Corrine and started taking bets on who was going to win. He kept saying, ‘my money’s on the girl.’ Some people were saying, ‘no, the boy’s going to win.’ Well, Corrine won. We were all laughing because we were wondering if she won on skill or because she was wearing a bikini and the boy was distracted.”

At home, Corrine has become a vital part of the undefeated Northport girls basketball team and a favorite of Rich Castellano, the team’s patriarchal coach.

“I love her to death,” Castellano said.

The feeling is mutual, though often unsaid.

“Corrine adores him,” Grace said. “Castellano, he adores his girls. He’s like a father to them. Growing up with an absent father, Corrine respects it, she craves it.”

Last year, in her first season with the varsity team, Corrine played the sixth man role during a run to the state semifinals. In the spring, she helped the lacrosse team also reach the state semifinals.

“She’s very fortunate,” Grace said. “A lot of girls never get that and she had that twice in one year.”

On the eve of the basketball postseason, Corrine said she that wants more.

 “I want to win. I want to win the State Championship. If it comes down to me taking a winning shot, it’s just hoping that it goes in,” Corrine said. “When I was in third grade, I had a dream where I had one game winning shot. I don’t want to be in that situation. I want to be up by enough points where that doesn’t have to happen.”