Boys basketball: Pat McGuinness takes over at Clarkstown South ahead of schedule

It was two years ago when Pat McGuinness first came home to Rockland County — hired then as the men's basketball coach at Rockland Community College. Problem was, McGuinness never coached a game there, not after RCC's 2020-21 season was erased amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The former Albertus Magnus star was soon hired to teach at Felix Festa, a middle school in the Clarkstown Central School District. He stepped into the position hoping it would one day coincide with a long career in coaching.

He just thought he'd have to be patient.

"It's kind of happened quicker than I expected," McGuinness said.

So quick, in fact, that the 28-year old was approved Thursday night as Clarkstown South's new boys basketball coach. He will take over the program from interim coach Jeremy Login, who stepped into the role when Matt Backs resigned last December.

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Login, who had been the junior varsity coach, will return to that role alongside McGuinness, who became Login's assistant during last season's ill-timed transition.

"Jeremy actually said to them that I would be a good candidate for the job and that he would like to do the JV," said McGuinness, who played at Le Moyne and Bridgewater State before serving two seasons as a graduate assistant coach at Springfield College. "There were other people sending in résumés, but he selflessly stepped aside."

McGuinness said he first began to form a bond with some of his players during the pandemic. He hosted workouts in his backyard during idle times in 2020 and said those relationships have given him a strong foundation with the program.

"I know them pretty well. I know the parents pretty well. It's not like I had to introduce myself to the program," McGuinness said. "Being around them, going through the ups and downs of adapting, it led us to be closer and I think it really toughened them up. They know this could be taken away any day."

And, despite his age, McGuinness assumes his new role with some built-in coaching wisdom. His family's basketball roots run deep in Rockland County basketball. Pat, who won back-to-back Section 1 titles and was a two-time all-state player as the point guard at Albertus, will now run the program where his younger brother, Conor, starred. (Conor, who played at Adelphi, is now a varsity assistant coach and teacher in North Rockland.)

More fittingly perhaps, McGuinness will also follow in the footsteps of his father, a former coach and athletic director at Tappan Zee and Albertus Magnus who, himself, starred as a point guard at Clarkstown South. The Rockland County Hall-of-Famer later played at West Point and Manhattan, including as a player under then-Army coach Mike Krzyzewski. The court at Albertus Magnus High School is now named in his honor.

Joe McGuinness tragically passed away in 2016 from cancer at just 56. Nonetheless, his son intends to apply lessons he gleaned from watching his father into coaching his own team.

"Growing up around my father, he had been a coach in Rockland County his whole life. The way he was able to do it, by being real with all his players, it just made him a really great coach," Pat McGuinness said. "I saw him set the stage for a lot of these kids. It helped me and my brother Conor realize how great coaching is and that we want to do it for a long time."

Josh Thomson is the Sports Editor for The Journal News and Poughkeepsie Journal. He can be reached by e-mail at jthomson@lohud.com, on Twitter at @lohudinsider, and on Instagram at @lohudinsider.