Saturday: Perez To Enter Nanuet Hall of Fame

Nanuet Sports Hall of Fame 10th Annual Dinner is this Saturday and five are being inducted:

• Rob Veltidi 1965
• Dick Berich 1968
• Ray Perez 1968
• John Hassler 1968

RAY PEREZ

• Soccer, Wrestling & Track
• Class of 1968

Ramon “Ray” Perez overcame a difficult upbringing to become one of the most decorated athletes at Nanuet High School and its premier soccer player. Ray’s mother died of leukemia when he was a toddler and his father, a Merchant Marine, abandoned the family early on. At age 3 Ray came from the South Bronx to St. Agatha in Nanuet, a home for orphaned and troubled children from New York City. He remained at the home for the next 14 years, growing up in a nurturing, sheltered environment conducive to learning and character development.

“I was really blessed to be placed at St. Agatha’s because the priests, nuns, counselors and townspeople really became my family. When I look back at things I must say that the coaches and teachers all had a profound effect on my life. Without them I wouldn’t be at where I’m at now, I was blessed with three lovely children and they gave me six grandchildren. Living in an institution is never a family setting but they really gave us as normal of a family setting as I could have imagined.”

The induction is actually Ray’s second to the Nanuet Hall of Fame. Three years ago he was honored as a member of the RCPSAL championship track team from 1965.

Like many of the kids from St. Agatha, Ray felt at home on the Nanuet school athletic fields, especially on the soccer turf. He was a three-time All-County player, at center forward and inside right, and led the Rockland PSAL in scoring as a junior with 17 goals and 5 assists, and as a senior with 21 goals and 7 assists. Twice he scored a PSAL-record six goals in a game, versus Suffern in his junior year and against Tappan Zee the following season. He also had a five-goal game against the Mounties and a four-goal outburst against the Dutchies. His scoring marks for a single game, season and career have never been equaled by a Nanuet player.

During the winter, Ray wrestled JV his freshman year, joined the newly christened indoor track program the next two years, then switched back to wrestling as a senior when the County’s top matman in his weight class, 136 pounds, broke an ankle and remained out for the season. Ray capitalized by winning all but one of his matches and placing second in the County tournament. He was coached by Ray Stedge, whom he described as “a screamer, a disciplinarian, like a drill sergeant. He’d challenge you, and some guys quit, but he made a lot of kids produce, and the team was successful.”

In spring track, Ray competed for Dave Hanson’s team all four years, including the PSAL championship seasons of 1965 and ’68, and pole-vaulted 11 feet in 1968 for a school record (broken later that season by Ed Stagl). He also scored valuable points in the 120-yard high hurdles, 440 dash and triple jump. At the end of his senior year Ray was voted the “Most Physically Fit” male athlete by the Nanuet coaches and represented the school in a regional athletic competition at West Point.

Ray earned a full soccer scholarship to Bishop College, a small Baptist school in Dallas that’s now defunct, but never played a game there. The coach of the team left before the season started and Ray was given the option of being flown back home or trying out for another sport. If he made a varsity squad, his scholarship would be honored. Ray made the football team – “I wasn’t going back to Nanuet empty-handed” – but languished on the bench as a third-string flanker and gave up football after one season.

Although college soccer was no longer an option, Ray continued to indulge his passion for the game by playing in a semipro league in Dallas during the school year and also playing for five summers in the highly competitive Cosmopolitan League in New York City. He had a tryout with the New York Cosmos professional team but was displaced by the foreign stars recruited to attract fans to the new franchise. “I always tell people that the coach picked Pelé over me,” Ray says with a laugh.

Ray has been employed by the New York State Department of Corrections for 28 years. He started as a recreation supervisor, obtained his master’s in education from Canisius College, and is now education supervisor at Collins Correctional Facility in Collins, N.Y., south of Buffalo. Ray, who’s 61, and his wife Sonia have been married 41 years and make their home in the Buffalo suburb of Hamburg. They have three children: Orlando, 39; Ramon, 38; and Elizabeth, 29; and six grandchildren: Ryan, 15; Jacob, 9; Brianna, 7; Aryanna, 9; Tyler, 7; and Joseph, 9 months.

*Biographies Courtesy of Jamie Kempton of the Nanuet Hall of Fame Committee.