Tara Sullivan

Sports Columnist, @Record_Tara

Bob Hurley will walk into a meeting Wednesday afternoon at the Catholic archdiocese office in Newark as the president and head boys basketball coach of Jersey City’s St. Anthony High School.

When he walks out the door, it appears likely he will leave those titles behind forever.

Without a miraculous eleventh-hour reprieve, the odds have grown increasingly toward an archdiocesan decision to close St. Anthony at the end of the current school year, a final concession to the ongoing financial troubles the school has been staving off for decades.

Reached by phone early Tuesday afternoon, Hurley declined to speak to the specifics of Wednesday’s meeting, but he did confirm it remains the final chance to make a pitch to keep the doors open. But with ongoing declines in enrollment and continuing shortfalls in the budget, there’s not much left for him to say.

Hurley did speak with The Record at length recently about the dire straits his school is facing, saying, “Where we are is understandable to me, because I’ve been around the numbers for the last three years as president. It’s a deficit, on a yearly basis, of a million and a half each year. We’ve tried all different things. But this is where we are. There’s no more ideas. No more things to come up with. We’re moving toward April 5.

“For all the publicity, I want to be able to thank everyone who has been of such help for so long. And the second thing I want to tell them is that it’s nobody’s fault if it doesn’t continue.”

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And yet it remains an unthinkable scenario, especially for Hurley, who has made the school his life’s work. For all the success he engineered on the basketball court – and there, he is unmatched with 28 state titles, three USA Today national coach of the year awards and a personal induction into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame – it is his efforts to keep the school open that have marked his last decade. After two different careers in Jersey City, working as a probation officer and then as the recreation director, Hurley took over as school president, forgoing salary for both that position and his one as basketball coach, funneling every resource he could back into the school.

But it appears time may have finally run out. The last big fundraiser, held in conjunction with the Showtime documentary series recently aired about Hurley’s work, didn’t raise nearly as much as hoped, and since then, a new reality seems to be coming into focus.

“A month ago, Bob and I were talking this could be it, this could be my last season, last year with these kids, I was sort of getting used to it,” Bob’s wife Chris said in a recent phone conversation. “Then we were going to have this huge fundraiser, it didn’t do what we hoped, it’s no one’s fault, it just didn’t happen. I think that was a sign. … I just don’t know. I think Bob has done the begging, and I think he’s done doing it. I feel sorry for the teachers, and the kids. We have such a great, great group of kids.”

By sometime late Wednesday afternoon those teachers, those kids, the Hurleys, they will have their answer. Hurley didn’t want to speculate Tuesday what that answer would be, but said he would be available to talk at the school at 4 p.m. Wednesday. Stay tuned.

Email: sullivan@northjersey.com