Robert Ockenfuss

I was born in Southampton, Long Island, New York in 1948. My hometown is East Hampton, New York, where I attended high school and graduated in 1966. During my high school years, I played interscholastic baseball, golf and basketball, competing on championship teams in each sport. I earned all-league and honorable mention All-Long Island in basketball during my senior year.

After graduation from high school, I attended Wilkes College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania where I majored in history, graduated with honors and played intercollegiate basketball for four years and intercollegiate golf for three years. My basketball coach at Wilkes was Mr. Ron Rainey. At the time, there were only two division levels in college basketball, division one and all of the small colleges lumped together.

After my college graduation in 1970, I enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserves. After basic training at Parris Island, I did play competitively on the Camp Lejeune base team. Our squad advanced to the national service championships, but, by this time, my six-months active duty stay at the base had concluded. I served in the Marine Corps reserves from 1970 through 1976.

Judy Cobleigh and I were married in 1970. In 1973, Judy and I moved to Perkasie, Pennsylvania where I began to teach at Central Junior High School within the Pennridge School District. During my tenure at Pennridge, I taught a variety of social studies subjects, served as a middle school history department chairperson and also coached interscholastic basketball and golf. I retired in 2007.

Judy and I have two grown children, Amy and Rob. Until recently, I was a member of Indian Valley Country Club in Telford, Pennsylvania, where I have won three club championships and six senior club championships. I have also won club championships at South Fork Country Club, Locust Valley Country Club and Bellewood Country Club. I was fortunate to have qualified for and competed in the 2007 United States Golf Association Senior Amateur Championship at Flint Hills National in Wichita, Kansas, where I advanced to match play. My son, Rob, and I won the Metropolitan Golf Association Father-Son Championship at Metedeconk National in 2002. I continue to compete in Golf Association of the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania Golf Association, Golf Association of Philadelphia and Metropolitan Golf Association championships.

Prior to having written Quest for the Net, I have been the author of two other works. During my teaching career, I wrote a workbook as a companion to the textbook I was using in class, Our Pennsylvania Heritage (Penn’s Valley Publishers). In 2015, working with Philadelphia P.G.A. Professional Stu Ingraham, I co-authored a golf book entitled Mind Game: Discover your Golf Identity (Amazon Createspace). This latter publication garnered positive reviews in both the Metropolitan Golf Association and Philadelphia Golf Association magazines.

During my elementary, middle school and later high school years in East Hampton, I was fortunate to have had a great mentor in Mr. Carl Johanson. No matter who we are, we can all benefit from such people! Mr. Johanson, his wife Holly and their four kids were neighbors of my family, living just across the street from our house on Sherrill Road. He originally had been from the upstate city of Schenectady, New York. Besides being a neighbor, he filled many important roles for me while I was growing up. He served as a counselor in the East Hampton Boy’s Club during the summer months, was my eighth-grade history teacher and was my first high school basketball coach during my freshman through sophomore years. He was instrumental in bringing me up to the varsity squad during the second part of my freshman year. He always put academics first, wanting to look at the report cards of all of his players when they came out four times a year. I was a New York Yankee fan, he was a Boston Red Sox fan, so things aren’t always perfect! Oh well, I guess you can’t have everything. Since Carl Yastrzemski of the Red Sox came from Bridgehampton, the town next to East Hampton, Coach Johanson was able to get the future Hall of Famer to visit our high school to speak to us boys. I even got his autograph, but I couldn’t begin to tell you where it is today. At one time, Yaz, a multi-sport star, held the boy’s Suffolk County Long Island basketball scoring record. Over the years, Coach Johanson served as a great role model for me and many other students at East Hampton High School. He later became the first principal of East Hampton Middle School.

In terms of basketball, Mr. Johanson was my first shooting coach, coming across the street to share some initial instruction at a backboard and hoop that my dad had erected for me in the driveway of our front yard. Adult Town Team basketball was big during the winters when I was in elementary and junior high school. During basketball season, all of the towns in eastern Suffolk County played against each other, something one doesn’t see any more. This East Hampton team, which played in the old, band box high school gym with nearby surrounding walls and a stage at one end, won several championships against North Shore rival Mattituck. Mr. Johanson was a guard and had a deadly two-handed set shot like N.B.A. player Larry Costello of the Syracuse Nationals, now the Philadelphia 76ers. Incidentally, Larry led the league in free throw percentage in the 1962-63 and 1964-65 seasons. Since he was the influential boy’s head coach, as I got older, I also attended all of the games in the new gymnasium that was part of an addition to the original high school building. There were big and exciting rivalries between East Hampton and nearby Bridgehampton, Southampton and Sag Harbor that were played out both home and away. All of these experiences helped to contribute to my budding love affair with the sport of basketball. Later on, when I began to play for the high school team, Coach Johanson arranged for Leroy DeBoard, a past star at E.H.H.S., to tutor me in the various skills and moves that were required to play the game near the basket.

During our junior year in high school, Mr. Jack Lilie, who had played college basketball at Kent State, became the head coach of our basketball team. During the course of the season, we kept improving as individuals and as a team. With an eye to the next season, Coach Lilie took us to the 1965 Suffolk County Championships on the Long Island S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook campus. This experience certainly motivated us to keep improving and working on our games. Over the summers, my teammates and I attended camps in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania and at Kutcher’s Country Club in the Catskill Mountains of New York, where we were exposed to coaches such as Clair Bee from Long Island University, Bobby Knight from Army and N.B.A. great Wilt Chamberlain. As seniors, our team won our league championship with an unblemished and undefeated record. We were a small school with about 120 students in the entire senior class. Near the end of the season, we defeated Sag Harbor to win the mythical eastern Suffolk championship and then advanced to the county championships at S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook. As a small school, we went up against high schools with a much larger enrollment than our own. We made it all of the way to the semifinals, losing to Bay Shore who eventually lost to Port Jefferson in the championship game. We were the only team in the tournament that had to play back-to-back quarter- and semi-finals night games, most probably because, I think, no one on the organizing committee thought we’d advance that far. We defeated Sag Harbor for a second time in the consolation game to finish with a 19-2 record, best in Suffolk County in 1966. In 2019, this team was elected into the East Hampton High School Athletic Hall of Fame. Even now, it’s hard to believe that this all happened over fifty years ago. We were the first basketball team from East Hampton to advance that far in the playoffs. Some years later on, two other East Hampton teams won state championships in the expanded playoffs under legendary New York State Coach Ed Petrie, the man who had been the Sag Harbor coach in 1966.

As I have previously mentioned, during my teaching career, I coached both middle and high school basketball for many years. I also officiated high school basketball. Along the way, I was exposed to many coaches who influenced my knowledge concerning the proper method of shooting the basketball. I transitioned from shooting a two-handed set shot in my early high school years, like that of Coach Carl Johanson, to the method I am teaching in my book, Quest for the Net. At a height of 6 feet, six inches, I needed to incorporate a jump shot into my game. I used this method while I was at Wilkes to be, at the time, one of the best collegiate free throw shooters in the nation. In the ensuing years, I have also been very observant and aware of the mechanics and techniques employed by great shooters at every level of the game that enable them to be successful at what they do.

Quest for the Net covers all of the factors an individual must be aware of and implement to be a great shooter. However, to me, first and foremost, basketball at its highest level, will forever be a team game where individual offensive and defensive skills are properly blended together for the good of the whole. The game should not be played selfishly! When you think about it, it’s pretty much the same with a good shooter. He must properly blend together all of the key factors in order to be successful. No matter in which era the team game of basketball is played or a ball is shot into the basket, the basic fundamentals and principles will always remain the same. No doubt, it’s really a timeless situation!

I am not a celebrity or a well-known name, but I can assure you that I know the information I am sharing with you is one hundred percent correct. I can only say that I hope you enjoy and benefit from this instruction! Coaches are always looking for players who can both reliably and regularly shoot the ball into the basket. If you can do so as a player, and you are coachable and willing to listen to and keep learning from quality coaching, you will truly have fun playing the sport!