Remembering a legend: The 2025 Shore Senior All-Star Game pays tribute to Neptune great Ken O’Donnell

It would always happen at some point of the Neptune basketball season when Shore Conference coaching legend Ken O’Donnell felt like his team was struggling to turn the corner.

“He’d come to me and say, ‘I’ll make them believe,’” his widow, Karen O’Donnell, said. “He’d say, ‘They don’t get it yet, but I’ll make them believers.’ It was about trust, and those kids would run through a wall for him by the end of the season.”

It didn’t matter if it was the boys or girls team, O’Donnell always made them believers. And then he made them champions.

The legacy O’Donnell left on and off the court at Neptune is being honored at this year’s first annual Ken O’Donnell Senior Boys All-Star Game at 5:30 p.m. on March 25 at Brookdale Community College. The game will feature Shore Conference senior stars like Manasquan’s Griffin Linstra, Central’s Jaycen Santucci, Colts Neck’s Lukas Sloane, Red Bank’s Zayier Dean and more.

Shore Sports Insider is proud to present the event in conjunction with the Jersey Shore Basketball League and the Shore Basketball Coaches Association.

Greg Kapalko, the chairman of the board of governors of the JSBL and O’Donnell’s former longtime assistant, knows the Neptune Hall of Famer’s legacy firsthand.

“I always thought I knew a lot about basketball from coaching all the pros I coached in the JSBL, but I got a real education coaching with Kenny O’Donnell,” Kapalko said. “He respected his players, his players respected him back, and he taught them about basketball and life. I consider it an honor to have worked with him.”

“What a blessing to have the game named after him,” former Neptune star guard Jaheem Woods said. “That’s perfect.”

O’Donnell, who died at 71 in 2021, was the first coach in state history to lead both a girls and a boys team to an NJSIAA Group title. He finished his career with a 570-109 career record between coaching the boys and girls at Neptune and led the Scarlet Fliers girls to the Group 4 title in 1984 and the boys to Group 3 titles in 2002 and 2009.

His teams won a combined 43 championships, including division and holiday tournament titles. He also is the only coach in history to lead a boys team and a girls team to Shore Conference Tournament titles.

“Playing for O’Donnell was a dream come true,” said former star guard Ikie Calderon, 30, who teamed with Woods to reach the Group 3 final in 2012 and played as a freshman on the 2009 Group champion team.

“You grew up in Neptune, you wanted to be a part of it.”

Ken O’Donnell was a star athlete in his own right

Before O’Donnell was a legendary coach, he was an All-State basketball and baseball player at Neptune. He helped the Scarlet Fliers reach the Group 4 final in 1968 as a point guard and reveled in playing big games against the likes of Asbury Park, Lakewood and Long Branch at Convention Hall in Asbury Park.

“He was the first coach I ever played for who had been in the same position we were in,” Woods said. “He did what he was telling us to do. It’s a little bit different when it comes from somebody who’s been in the same situation as you.”

However, it was baseball that was O’Donnell’s best sport. He was drafted by the Kansas City Royals in the fourth round in 1968 and played five seasons at various minor-league stops. A particular highlight came in 1972, when O’Donnell was with the Jacksonville (Fla.) Suns and pitched to his idol, Yankees immortal Mickey Mantle, in spring training. A photo of the moment autographed by Mantle was one of his prized possessions.

After hanging up his baseball glove, O’Donnell returned to the Shore and enrolled at what was then Monmouth College, where he met his wife. The two got married in 1973.

“He didn’t have an ego,” Karen said. “I went to his house and his uncle from Nutley was like, ‘Do you know who you’re dating? You’re dating Ken O’Donnell! He was a big star!’ And Ken’s standing there mortified.”

Karen also realized from the beginning that basketball was Ken’s life. There were no days off, as O’Donnell was also a fixture in the summer in the Jersey Shore Basketball League in Belmar as a coach and later the commissioner of the league.

The couple raised their three children, Kevin, Sean and Lauren, around the rhythms of the basketball season. Karen often served as scorekeeper or ran the clock at games.

“We never went anywhere,” Karen said before laughing. “These women I knew were like ‘We went here, we went there on vacation.’ I was like, ‘I was in a gym.’ Basketball was like 12 months out of the year. Early in our marriage, our son Kevin was in a stroller, and I’d bring a card table and keep score at games while he was sitting in the stroller.”

A legendary coaching career

O’Donnell began running basketball camps for kids in Neptune in the late 1970s in the Neptune gym and then outdoor courts in Belmar. He also served as the jayvee boys basketball coach in the late 1970s.

He first became a head basketball coach in 1981 when he took over the Scarlet Fliers’ girls program. By the next season, Neptune was the Shore Conference Tournament champion.

“He always coached them like they were guys,” Karen O’Donnell said. “He never babied them, ever. He’d say, ‘I can’t believe they come to practice with curlers in their hair!’ I’d say, ‘You’re dealing with girls, Ken.’ He loved them, and they loved him back. His girls were tough.”

His girls teams finished 230-42 in his tenure and captured four SCT titles, including three in a row from 1987-89. They also won the NJSIAA Group 4 title in 1984.

A team starring Michelle Allen and Ikie Calderon’s aunt, Millie Calderon, beat Plainfield to finish as one of the top teams in the state. O’Donnell then coached the school’s baseball program in the spring.

He took over the boys program in 1991 and restored the Scarlet Fliers to glory as a Shore Conference powerhouse. They won four SCT titles and reached the finals eight times in his 23 seasons, in addition to winning Group 3 titles in 2002 and 2009.

“He is an established winner,” Woods said. “He did this with the girls, with the boys – he did it all. His methods are tried and proven.”

The boys also won multiple sectional and Shore Conference division titles. The Scarlet Fliers were an obstacle season after season for any team looking to make a name in the Shore Conference. They also became a public school foil for perennial non-public power Christian Brothers Academy.

Neptune was known for a rugged schedule that included state powers like what is now the Patrick School and the now-defunct St. Anthony.

“OD didn’t duck any smoke,” Calderon said. “We would play Lincoln (N.Y.) with Sebastian Telfair, Newark East Side, anybody, anywhere.”

His 2001-02 squad is considered one of the legendary teams in Shore Conference history. The Scarlet Fliers were the only public boys team in Shore history to reach the Tournament of Champions final during the TOC era from 1989-2022.

They featured star combo guard Taquan Dean, who went on to reach a Final Four with Louisville, bulldog point guard Terrance Todd, who became an all-conference player at Fairfield, and bruising forward Marques Alston, a standout at Monmouth University who helped the Hawks make the NCAA Tournament in 2006. They won a school-record 29 games and reached the TOC final before falling to perennial juggernaut St. Anthony.

“What started it was we went up to Seton Hall and played St. Patrick’s, and we beat them,” Alston said. “That was like, ‘We can run with anybody.’ That was an epic season. We talked about it for years to come.

“I remember doing harder workouts than we’ve ever done before, and learning the matchup zone on defense,” he continued. “That was our key to start beating CBA. They beat us my first two years, but my last two years we got ’em.”

O’Donnell’s tenure ended in 2014, when the Neptune Board of Education voted not to re-hire him and hired current head coach Joe Fagan.

Keeping tradition alive

Ensuring the players knew the lineage of Neptune basketball was important for O’Donnell, especially considering he was once one of them.

“He bled red and black,” his wife said.

“It’s not Neptune basketball unless you press a team 90 feet up the court the whole game, push the ball and play aggressively,” Woods said. “It was my favorite. We were going to be in your face all game long. Other teams hated knowing they had to come play at Neptune because it was intimidating.”

O’Donnell kept the full court pressing, frenetic style he learned under his own coach, Scarlet Fliers legend Larry Hennessy.

“He would always pick Larry’s brain,” Karen O’Donnell said. “He’d be coming back from Pete & Elda’s from a game, and Larry would put X’s and O’s on a napkin. He always said Larry was a genius. He knew what worked there.”

“He would have some of the older guys come in to talk about teams from the past with Larry Hennessy, and the team that beat Camden in the states (in 1981) under Henry Moore,” Alston said. “We had a banner in the gym that said ‘Tradition of Champions,’ and that’s what sticks with me. We were prideful in being part of the tradition of champs.”

More than just basketball

His players also remembered O’Donnell as a genuine person away from the court who cared about their futures.

“Coaching at Neptune means dealing with a lot of off-the-court stuff,” Calderon said. “People saw the hour that we came and showed out on a basketball court, but they didn’t see the other 23 hours when O’Donnell had to have his phone on at 2 in the morning.”

Much of O’Donnell’s legacy is reflected in the Neptune Township Police Department. His son, Kevin O’Donnell, who played guard for his father in the early 1990s, is a captain on the force.

“My dad treated me just like everyone else,” Kevin said. “I had to earn everything I got – even more so in many ways because I was his son on the team, and he was very strict about doing things fairly. That was another one of his great qualities. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.”

Ken O’Donnell’s former assistant, Mike McGhee, is the deputy chief in the department. Alston, 40, is a 17-year member of the force, and Woods is in his eighth year. Former Neptune players Rob Layton, Kaan Williams and Bryan Taylor are also members of the Neptune PD.

“I saw him when I first started being a police officer, and he was just so proud of me and how far we all came as people,” Woods said.

“He was a family man, and he cared about us more than just for basketball,” Alston said.

He also inspired others to follow in his footsteps. O’Donnell officiated countless youth games following his tenure at Neptune and served as the officiating assigner for the leagues at Hoop Group Headquarters in Neptune. He roped in Calderon, who is now a Shore Conference official who does basketball and football.

‘I’m a referee because of OD,” Calderon said. “That’s how the whole thing started.”

Even though it’s been 11 years since he coached a game and nearly four years since his death, O’Donnell has not been forgotten by two of the Shore Conference’s proudest programs on the boys and girls sides. The Shore Conference senior all-star game is now another place to keep his memory alive.

“I believe he was put here for that reason,” Karen O’Donnell said while holding back tears. “His legacy is all these kids. I remember one calling him from North Carolina and telling him he was paying it forward for everything Ken did for him. The kids haven’t forgotten him. What better legacy can you have?”

Scott Stump is a freelance reporter, newsletter writer and editor who first started covering Shore Conference football in 1999 and has covered basketball, wrestling, baseball and seemingly every other Shore Conference sport at some point. 

You can contact him at [email protected]