The Winningest Coach in Catholic League Basketball History
Buddy Gardler began coaching Catholic League basketball in 1969 at Bishop Kenrick and, with a two-year gap in the middle, kept at it until 2008 at Cardinal O'Hara. Thirty-nine seasons. Five hundred and sixty wins. The most by any basketball coach in the history of the Catholic League.
Born in Ridley Park, a Bonner and St. Joseph's product himself, Gardler was a gym rat whose family orbit never left the basketball court. His summers were a rotation of swim club, hoop camps, clinics, and pickup games with his son Chris. By the time Chris was a junior at St. James High, the Gardlers had spent almost as much time playing one-on-one together as father and son anywhere in the Delaware Valley.
Then came the game that made them briefly famous.
"I'd Do That to Any Good Player"
It was February 1986. Cardinal O'Hara needed a win over St. James to stay alive for a Catholic South playoff berth. The best player for St. James was a 5-8, 140-pound senior guard named Chris Gardler — Buddy's son. Chris had scored 12 points in the first half. In the second half, Buddy put Bill Kirschner on him and ran a diamond-and-one box the entire way. Chris scored only seven points the rest of the night. O'Hara won 71-64.
Buddy, as the Daily News put it the next morning, "officially forfeited all chances to win any organization's Father-of-the-Year award for 1986." He also, he knew, was going home to a very quiet house.
I was kidding him all week. I was saying, 'We're going to play you in a box. You score half the points.' I don't think he believed me. I'd do that to any good player. Nothing personal.
I never thought in my life he'd do something like that. I guess I should have taken it as a compliment. There was no doubt it hurt us. I was kind of mad, but, no, I didn't look over or say anything. He was trying to win, same as us.
