

But they insist he would remember this one high-school basketball game. This is someone who’s lived through the AIDS epidemic and the swine flu pandemic, cared personally for Ebola patients and now finds himself dealing with a virus that has long been his worst fear. The upset was such a seminal event that Fauci’s teammates believe it must have left a permanent mark on him. “I remember that game like yesterday,” Zeman said. They ran to the locker room to celebrate before realizing they were being called back to the floor to collect a trophy that Fordham Prep figured would be staying at Fordham Prep.
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But the game itself was unforgettable because of the f inal score: Regis 64, Fordham Prep 51. Regis’s players didn’t know how to react to this strange phenomenon otherwise known as winning a basketball game. The exact details of what happened in this one magical game have been forgotten to history. “ He worked hard and he was very unselfish-kind of the way he shows now. “He was the leader.” “He wasn’t a yeller, and he wasn’t a rah-rah-rah guy, but everybody looked up to him,” said Tom McCorry, a classmate and future college-basketball coach. “The leader doesn’t always score the most points,” Zeman said. The team would have fallen apart without him. Fauci scored 10.2 points per game, according to the school yearbook, but his teammates say those stats were deceptive. “It was like Mutt and Jeff with Guarino and Fauci,” said George Garces, one of the school’s three cheerleaders. Fauci was the outside threat, and his pal Artie Guarino was the inside force. He also happened to be one of Regis’s best players. “He would literally dribble through a brick wall.” “He was just a ball of fire,” Zeman said. Six of his classmates and teammates described him as a tenacious competitor in short shorts and striped socks whose feistiness on the court defied some parts of his personality and reflected others. “He was ready to drive through whoever was in his way,” said Bob Burns. Here’s the scouting report on Fauci: classic point guard, excellent ballhandler, pesky defender. When he learned that Fauci was the captain of his basketball team, his former colleague Mike Goldrich once replied: “Tony, how could you possibly be the captain of a basketball team?” But he also knows that some people are smaller than their heights. And we did.” Tony, the team captain better known as Fauch, a short kid with a thick Brooklyn accent who led his overmatched team to a highly improbable victory in the biggest game of his life, now answers to a name that most Americans have come to recognize: Dr. “Everyone figured it was going to be a blowout.” But there was one teenager who looked at this demoralizing collection of data and came to a wildly optimistic conclusion. Regis was led by a diminutive future doctor who would one day run the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “Nobody gave us a chance,” said John Zeman, a Regis alumnus. The other team’s star was a future NBA coach who would one day run the New York Knicks.



WSJ - The basketball team at Regis High School had a 1-16 record as the players entered a rival’s gym in the winter of 1958 fully expecting to leave with yet another loss.
