Ocean City High School Alumnae Inducted into Southern NJ Basketball Hall of Fame

OCEAN CITY — It was a slam-dunk decision when the Albert Carino Basketball Club of South Jersey announced earlier this year that it would be inducting Ocean City High School (OCHS) alumnae Lisa Foglio into the South Jersey Basketball Hall of Fame on Feb. 14.
Foglio holds the OCHS career scoring record with 1,970 points, and helped lead her high school team to the South Jersey Finals every year from 1976 to 1979; they won the South Jersey title in 1979. During her time at OCHS, the Red Raiders’ record was 97-9.
“Lisa was a confident competitor. To have accomplished all of those things… she’s clearly a leader,” said Pat Dougherty, Foglio’s coach at OCHS, who herself is a member of the Hall of Fame. “She could do it all. There wasn’t anything, skill-wise, that she could not do. She wanted to be the best and that’s all there was to it.”
After graduation in 1979, Foglio played for Mercer University in Macon, GA, scoring 316 points in 35 games. The 29-6 season set a school record, and the team won the Georgia Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (GAIAW) State Title and Region III tournament before losing the Association of Intercollegiate Athletics for Women National Tournament (AIAW) by one point.
After a year at Mercer, Foglio transferred to Florida State University where she scored 1,227 points in 82 games during three seasons. She still holds the 20th all-time scoring record at the University, and holds the third-best, all-time free-throw shooting percentage; she made 78.8 percent of her 255 attempts. She is fourth in all-time goal percentage, making 54.4 percent of her 946 attempts. She amassed her scoring before three-point attempts became part of the game, and before women began using a smaller-sized ball, as they do today.
At a special ceremony at the Crowne Plaza in Cherry Hill, Foglio was honored along with several other former players, including Timothy R. Bieg, Thomas L. Bowe, Clayton Brown, Donna Clark, Charlie Kates, Frank “Bud” McAlarnen, and Joe McAleer. Dougherty was on hand to congratulate Foglio, who attended the ceremony with her father, Joe.
“Lisa and I have a tremendous mutual respect for one another. We’re lucky to have that kind of family support at OCHS,” said Dougherty, who was with the district for 37 years and now is a resident of Marmora.
The Basketball Club of South Jersey was a long-time dream of founder Al Carino and organized in the fall of 1962, with the help of Courier-Post sportswriters Charlie Schuck and Walt Burrows. During the first year, an All-South Jersey team and the Coach of the Year were honored at the first postseason banquet, the Suburban Newspapers presented the Suburban Cup, and State Champion Coaches were feted. The club did not honor women until the fall of 1974; the 1975 banquet cited the girls’ scoring champion in addition to the girls’ Coach of the Year and the girls’ Top Ten Award.
Carino, along with a committee, created the Hall of Fame, holding the first banquet and induction ceremony in 1981, inducting 13 nominees that year. Women were included the following year. The Hall of Fame includes former outstanding coaches and players, as well as one inductee per year that is chosen for distinguished service to basketball in the area. There currently are about 355 members of the South Jersey Basketball Hall of Fame.