Board of Directors

Lorraine Lettieri - President and Treasurer Lorraine is the President and Treasurer of SITRAC. Previously, since 1996, she had been treasurer. For the past four years she has been the Head Girls Coach for the St. Clare CYO Track and Cross-Country team. Lorraine has received both the Fred Lebow and the Lou Marli Awards from the Staten Island Athletic Club for her extensive service to the Road Running community. As a member of the Staten Island AC she held the positions of treasurer for five years and Public Relations Director for two.  Lorraine has a full-time career as a Sales Director for Level 3 Communications. She earned a BS in Biology from NYU and an MBA from Stern/NYU. A runner herself, Lorraine has competed in numerous road races and completed two NYC Marathons. She is the mother of two sons: Gregory, who was a runner for St Clare CYO, Xavier HS and Syracuse University; and Jordan, who is a Special Olympian.

Bill Welsh - Vice President Bill is vice president of SITRAC. Everyone would agree that he is the "dean" of all coaches and runners on Staten Island. Consider that he coached numerous champion athletes up to the level of the Olympics. Consider again that during his running career (which continues through today), he was one of America’s top-ranked distance runners. Honors that have been bestowed upon him are too numerous to list, but they include the highest in all categories related to running and coaching. He is a member of the SI Sports Hall of Fame and that of St Francis College. He has a lifetime membership in the SI Athletic Club and the Central Jersey RRC. He was there when the first SI high school cross country championship was held in 1954--- sponsored by his team, Augustinian Academy. Between 1946 and 1964 if there was a distance race of merit contested in the metropolitan area, Bill was probably in it and probably the winner. While he was discouraging the running competition, he was coaching successful runners as well. First at St. Francis College and then at high schools and clubs. His greatest coaching moments were perhaps at New Dorp High School beginning in the 1970’s. His coaching knew no boundaries as indicated by the variety of stellar performers. Bill knew the shot. hurdles, vault, sprints, distance and especially the high jump, where his pupil Billy Jankunis went on to qualify for the Olympics. Bill Welsh’s wisdom, optimism, good cheer and character give SITRAC a dignity it could not get anywhere else.

Bob Orazem - Recording Secretary Bob has been involved in different aspects of running on Staten Island for over 30 years. He began his running career at Susan Wagner HS where he was a member of a nationally acclaimed four by mile relay team. His college running took place at East Stroudsburg College in Penn. After graduation he was one of Staten Island’s most successful road runners and ran an outstanding 2:26 marathon, one of the best in SI history. Since 2001 he has worked as the meet director for the NYC Public Schools Athletic League (PSAL) for Cross Country and Track and Field. Bob served two stints as President of the Staten Island Athletic Club from 1976-1980 and 1996-2002 and the elite Greenery Bar Racing Team from 2000-2003. A retired NYPD-NYFD member Orazem is recording secretary for SITRAC. He is the father of two children; both are currently runners for their high school teams.

Pete Whitehouse - Corresponding Secretary Pete Whitehouse is one of Staten Island’s native sons. He was born in West Brighton in 1942 and attended Blessed Sacrament Grammar school and St. Peter’s Boys High. In 1960, after finishing an outstanding high school career in track and field he rejected athletic scholarship offers from several eastern colleges, choosing instead to take a less traveled path to Notre Dame in what was considered then to be the "distant" mid west. In the words of Robert Frost, "that made all the difference." At Notre Dame he thrived. He earned a degree in sociology in 1964, sharing that proud moment in South Bend with his father and mother, Leo and Julia. His was the first college degree earned in his family. At Notre Dame he served as team captain and monogram club secretary. By his senior year he set the record as the highest point scorer in Notre Dame track history. He finished that memorable year by earning first team All America honors when he took second place in the 110-meter high hurdles in the NCAA championship meet in Eugene Oregon. Later that summer he qualified for and ran in the 1964 Olympic trials. After graduation Pete moved straight into the profession he always envisioned for himself, that of teacher and coach. He taught in both Catholic and public high schools but finished his 33-year career at Tottenville high school in 1997. The track teams he coached won more city championships than any other team in any other sport in PSAL history. His cross country program was ranked among the top five in New York State for the decades of the eighties and the nineties.

  

Board Members

Jim Hughes Jim began coaching track and field at the Parish of St. Clare on Staten Island in the spring of 1977, two years after competing his high school running career at Moore Catholic H. S. He, and his twin brother John ran cross country and track. Both excelled as exceptional sprinters. The St. Clare cross country and track and field programs have for some years numbered several hundred and have taken more than their share of Staten Island C.Y.O. Championships. Many athletes of St Clare have had successful high school and college careers in track and field. For thirty years Jim has been instrumental in developing and coordinating the CYO Track and Field program on Staten Island, the New York Archdiocesan Track and Field Championship Meet, and the CYONY team. The last mentioned has sent teams to the AAU National Track and Field Team Championships and the AAU Junior Olympics. He, along with the assistance of about a hundred volunteers, directs an average of 500 competitors in each cross country meet and more than 1000 competitors throughout each of the meets of the outdoor season. Jim has also been a track and field and cross country coach at Moore Catholic since the fall of 1977 and is the President of the Staten Island High School Track and Field Association a post he has filled with distinction for 25 years. In recent years, Jim and coaches Tom Kelly and Bob Orazem guided the Moore HS track program, which won the coveted New Balance Team of the Year Award. Jim graduated from Moore Catholic High School in 1975 and Pace University’s New York Campus in 1980. He has been teaching at Moore since 1980.

George C. Kochman George is enjoying his retirement as a part time track and field writer for the Staten Island Advance. In his other life he had been a teacher and Chairman of the Social Studies Dept. at Msgr. Farrell HS, a position he held with distinction for forty years. During the bulk of those years he was also the head track and field coach. His teams were perennial Staten Island champions in track and cross country. One of his relay squads won at the Penn Relays and in an unprecedented action was inducted, en mass, into the SI Sports Hall of Fame. George’s interest in running began in high school at Augustinian Academy. He was talented enough to go on to compete at Georgetown University where he earned a degree in 1961. He continues to run recreationally to this day. George has been recognized frequently for a variety of services and accomplishments by the Penn Relays (Jesse Abramson Award), SI T and F Assoc., Catholic HS AA, Shore (New Jersey) AC, Msgr. Farrell HS, Wagner College, SI Community College, Alzheimer’s Assoc. and SI Community Board #2. George is a history buff and has done post-graduate work at the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College and the Museum of Jewish Heritage.

JoAnne Kopycinski JoAnne received her B.S. in Athletic Administration and an M.S. Elementary Education, both from St. John's University. She has been a teacher for the past 23 years at Sacred Heart School. For the past twelve years after classes every day she journeys to St. Joseph by the Sea HS where she is the head coach for girls. Her teams have won titles in indoor and outdoor track and a CHSAA Sectional title in Cross Country. Joanne has held numerous offices in local T&F organizations since the 1970’s. Currently she is Vice President of the S.I.H.S.Track and Field Association and is New York CHSAA Sectional Representative on the Games Committee for the CHSAA Intersectional Meets. For the past 20 years at NYC Marathon time, JoAnne has been a tireless volunteer working at the starting line. She did her high school running at Tottenville HS where, among her other honors, she was the SI champion for 400 meters.

Jack Minogue Jack Minogue has been involved in Staten Island sandlot baseball for more than a half-century. He has coached teams in nearly every sandlot level:  Kiwanis Junior, CYO, Titan League, Babe Ruth, American Legion, and the Twyford-Muche Major League, which he helped reorganize, eventually ran and still runs. He began coaching in 1955, as an assistant for the Violets, a role he continued with the perennial Kiwanis Junior state champions until the team disbanded in 1960.  He also started and coached CYO baseball and basketball teams at St. Rita’s parish in 1956. In 1968, Jack organized a twilight baseball league that continues to operate with 28 teams and bears Fred Muche’s name. Jack also teamed with Murphy League president Rich Guarino, a former player, to organize the S.I. Baseball Alliance, which combined into one operation the three Sunday leagues (top-seeded T-M, mid-level Murphy, and entry-level Pete Tomasino) with the Fred Muche League. Jack also still finds time to coach a team, Victory Sports.  Jack taught at St. Peter’s H.S. for two years, at Port Richmond for 13 years, and then transferred, in 1974, to help start and administer the St. George School, a GED school. He retired in 1993, and then, five years later, was asked to reprise his role for the St George evening program. He retired again in 2002.Jack is best known by Staten Islanders for his work as sports writer and columnist at the Staten Island Advance. In 1960 he began working part-time as a sports reporter/columnist and today, as a full timer he is one of the most influential sports writers the SI Advance employs.

Larry Rampulla