Record night for record setters at Advance All-Star Dinner

One of Staten Island’s most successful high school coaches ever and 117 student-athletes were honored at last night’s Advance All-Star Dinner at the Hilton Garden Inn in Bloomfield.

A crowd of 594 acknowledged the accomplishments of competitors in 14 winter and spring sports this school year, which, once again, was marked by a number of Island city championships and a host of superb individual performances. A record total of 120 All-Star awards were handed out, with three athletes receiving recognition in two sports.

In addition, St. Peter's Girls' HS basketball coach Bob Daggett, who guided the Eagles to 459 victories and various championships over the last 23 years, received the Advance's History Award.

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* LIST OF 2011 ADVANCE ALL STARS

* PHOTOS FROM ALL-STAR DINNER

* PHOTOS OF 2011 ADVANCE ALL STARS

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St. Peter's is closing its doors for good later this month. It will be remembered, at least in part, as a place where Daggett coached successful teams while always competing against the best competition around.

Daggett led the Eagles to 16 straight CHSAA Island division championships, a number of Archdiocesan crowns and an incredible 101-game, regular-season winning streak against Island competition.

The Grant City resident also has Catholic state and state Federation crowns to his credit.

Advance Sports Editor Carmine Angioli pointed out St. Peter's girls' basketball was already rich in tradition before Daggett took over the program in the late 1980s, but referred to "two dominant themes" that best described the program and the coach.

"The more obvious of those themes is competitive greatness. There has seldom been a basketball season when a St. Peter's girls' team wasn't in contention for a Staten Island championship, if not the outright favorite," Angioli said. "That thirst for competition and the success year after year would certainly have stood alone as a reason for recognizing this coach and this program.

"But late in the 2010-2011 basketball season, we learned the devastating news that St. Peter's Girls' High School would be closing its doors forever when this academic year ended. And it was in those heartbreaking days that the other overarching theme, less obvious, but equally powerful, became readily apparent."

The second theme to which Angioli referred was what he called "the great Eagle spirit," something he said all of the school's graduates derive "from the people at their school, their classmates, their fellow graduates, their teachers, their coaches.

Jazz: Maynard Ferguson - Jazz virtuoso performer .

). Encouraged by his mother and father (both musicians), Maynard was playing piano and violin by the age of four. At nine years old, he heard a cornet for the first time in his local church and asked his parents to purchase one for him. At age thirteen, Ferguson first soloed as a child prodigy with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Orchestra and was heard frequently on the CBC, notably featured on a "Serenade for Trumpet in Jazz" written for him by Morris Davis. 's performing band for the next nine years. The band included, at various times, such players as Slide Hampton, Don Ellis, Don Sebesky, Willie Maiden, John Bunch, Joe Zawinul, Joe Farrell, Jaki Byard, Lanny Morgan, Rufus Jones, Bill Berry and Don Menza. Arrangers included Slide Hampton, Jay Chattaway, Bob Brookmeyer, Jimmy Giuffre, Bill Holman and Marty Paich. and formed a big band with British musicians that performed in the newly popular jazz/rock fusion style. The band's repertoire included original compositions as well as pop and rock songs rearranged into a big band format with electronic amplification. This British band's output is represented by the four "MF Horn" albums, which included arrangements of the pop songs " . Ferguson latched on to the burgeoning jazz education movement by recruiting talented musicians from colleges with jazz programs (notably Berklee College of Music, North Texas State University and the University of Miami) and targeting young audiences with performances and master classes in high schools. This practical and strategic move helped him develop a strong following that would sustain him for the remainder of his career. began working with producer Bob James on a series of commercially successful albums. These were complex studio productions featuring large groups of session musicians, including strings, vocalists and star guest soloists. The first of these albums was Primal Scream, featuring Chick Corea, Mark Colby, Steve Gadd, and Bobby Militello. The second, Conquistador in 1977, resulted in a top-30 (#22) pop single, "Gonna Fly Now" (from the movie Rocky), a rare accomplishment for a jazz musician in the 1970s. Aside from an exciting Jay Chattaway arrangement and dense Bob James production, the single was also helped by the fact that it was released prior to the official soundtrack album of the hit movie. recorded three big band albums with smaller labels in the mid '80s before forming a more economical fusion septet, "High Voltage," in 1986.

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