John Taylor Babbitt '07 Memorial Field | alumni ... - Pingry School

[started coaching] to help Coach
[Tom] Boyer and Coach [Mike]
Webster. It was one of my best
decisions,” he says.
Patrick played for both the football
and lacrosse teams while he was a
student, and he considers Coach
Boyer a father figure and a mentor.
“He impresses me daily. He always
rises to an occasion,” Patrick says.
Ted Corvino, Jr. ’94
“Pingry has always been home for
me,” says Ted Corvino, Jr. ’94, a baseball
coach whose family has a long
affiliation with the school: Ted, Jr.
is a “lifer,” having attended Pingry
since Kindergarten; his father Ted,
Sr. is director of the Lower School;
his brother Robert graduated in 1997,
and his sister Amy graduated in
2002. Baseball has been a big part
of his family’s life, and it has been
Ted Jr.’s favorite sport since he was
five years old.
Ted has been coaching at Pingry
since the spring of 1999, starting as
the Middle School head baseball
coach and a varsity baseball assistant.
The following winter, he
became the head coach for Junior
Varsity Boys’ Basketball and the
assistant coach for Varsity Basketball.
He currently is head coach of Varsity
Boys’ Baseball and assistant coach
of Middle School Baseball; he also
teaches history. Faculty member
Manny Tramontana and former
faculty member Tom Johnson ’59
invited Ted to become a coach after
he started teaching Middle School
math at the Martinsville Campus
in the fall of 1998.
He graduated with seven varsity letters:
one year on the varsity water
polo team (1 letter), two years on
the junior varsity soccer team, two
years on the varsity basketball team
(2 letters), and four years on the
varsity baseball team (4 letters). In
1994, Ted was captain of the Varsity
Basketball and Varsity Baseball
Ted Corvino, Jr. ’94
teams; baseball won the Parochial
“B” state championship that season.
“That probably motivates my coaching
[at Pingry] more than anything,”
he says. “[I want] to pass along all the
excitement, learning, and team experience
that I felt here as a player and
a student. If I could help kids feel any
of that [excitement], that would be a
great thrill for me,” he says.
Ted considers successful coaching at
Pingry to be a balance of teaching
skills, promoting a competitive spirit,
modeling a genuine passion for the
game, promoting the importance of
preparation and approach as they
relate to performance, organizing an
efficiently-run practice environment,
and recognizing that his players need
to have fun. He constantly reminds
himself that his players have other
demands at school in addition to
playing sports, such as when one of
his players was preparing for seven
A.P. exams while the team was
involved in county tournament
games. He credits his father, Mr.
Tramontana, Mr. Johnson, and Peter
Jones ’77 for establishing standards
of preparation, setting goals, and
relating to students that he has
adapted to his own coaching.
“Being out there with the kids is
gratifying enough, but, to see their
faces when they’ve accomplished
something, when they’ve done
something well, when they know
that their hard work has paid off—
I think that’s the most gratifying
aspect of the job,” he says.
39
winter 2009