Bishop Hendricken basketball coach remembers the days of Joe Mazzulla

JOHNSTON, R.I. (WLNE) — Boston Celtics Head Coach Joe Mazzulla played basketball for Bishop Hendricken High School in Warwick.

Mazzulla’s high school basketball coach, Jamal Gomes, said Mazzulla made a huge impact both on and off the court.

“I would say character, determination, grit, toughness, intelligence,” Gomes said. “That’s going back to when he started here in the ninth grade here at Bishop Hendricken and now seeing what he is doing at the highest level in professional sports. I think those words still ring true for Joe Mazzulla.”

Mazzulla made an impact at Hendricken, earning all-state first team honors and winning three state titles for the program, but his impact was not just on the court.

“When he was a young man here at Bishop Hendricken, he was a great player and a great student and a great athlete,” Gomes said.” He had his ups and downs like any other high school student, trying to figure their way through life, but he had an ‘it’ factor.”

To this day, Gomes said he and Mazzulla communicate regularly, inclduing on the day Mazzulla became the Celtics coach, asking Gomes to stop by his first practice as the Celtics head coach.

“That was a very proud moment, I put it up there with getting married to my wife, having my two daughters, and then watching Joe Mazzulla on his first day as the head coach of the Boston Celtics,” Gomes said. “I remember driving home that day from Boston almost in tears of how proud I was of him.”