“The Street Stops Here,” TeamWorks Media’s documentary about Jersey City’s impoverished and athletically dominant St. Anthony’s High School basketball team, has its national broadcast premiere March 31 at 9 p.m. on Ch. 11/PBS.
“This project has impacted our company in a major way,” TeamWorks CEO Jay Sharman says. “We’re talking to folks about how we can do visual storytelling that impacts lives.”
Bob Hurley has coached the St. Anthony Friars basketball team in Jersey City since 1972, sending all but two of his players to college. One of the winningest high school coaches in U.S. history, Hurley has led St. Anthony’s to 23 state championships and coached a number of future NCAA stars, including his own sons Bob Jr. and Danny.
During the production of TeamWorks’ first documentary, “The Demons Within,” in 2000, Sharman returned with DePaul point guard Rashon Burno to Burno’s alma mater St. Anthony’s, where Sharman first interviewed Hurley.
In 2006, Burno told Sharman that the famously private Hurley might open himself up as part of the campaign to keep open the cash-strapped inner city school.
Hurley “was looking for ways to bring exposure to the program,” Sharman says. “I sat down with Coach and said it wouldn’t be a puff piece. It had to be warts and all.”
And so it is.
