Bridgewater State's Joe Farroba Headed to New England Basketball Hall of Fame

By Jim Fenton, The Enterprise (Brockton)

BRIDGEWATER, Mass. -- His 24th season as the head men’s basketball coach at Bridgewater State University begins in November.

For Joe Farroba, the enthusiasm for the job remains the same as it did back in the early 1990s when he took over the program.

“It’s just unbelievable,” said Farroba. “I’ve been working at something I love doing, coaching. People say if you find your passion go with it.

“You could make a case you never worked a day in your life doing what you love doing.”

That has indeed been the case for Farroba, the program’s all-time winningest coach with a 333-278 record and six trips to the NCAA Division 3 tournament since being hired prior to the 1992-93 season.

Now, Farroba is going to receive a significant honor for all his success at BSU.

Farroba will be inducted into the New England Basketball Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2015 during a ceremony at the DCU Center in Worcester on Aug. 8.

“I’m happy to get acknowledged,” said Farroba, a 1975 graduate of the former Boston State College. “We’ve had some great success.

“I’ve coached good kids, I’ve had good coaches around me, good support from Bridgewater. There’s been a lot of positives.”

Farroba, an assistant coach at Bridgewater for six years before becoming the head coach, is highly regarded in Division 3 coaching circles.

He has brought the Bears to the NCAA tourney four times in the past six seasons with the program riding high lately.

“He’s very well thought of,” said BSU associate head coach Mike Donovan. “He’s an excellent teacher. He’s been doing it for a long time and doing it different ways. He’s adapted to the players and still has his old-school way of doing things. He’s fair and straight forward.

“I think he’s a very good coach in terms of making adjustments. And he’s the best coach I’ve seen as far as coming from behind. Joe is an underdog and he’s really good at coming back from a lot of points down. I can’t tell you the number of times in the last two minutes he’s said in the huddle, ‘This is going to be a great victory.’”

Donovan, Bob DiBari, Brian Ferris and Bryan Rubenskas are part of Farroba’s coaching staff that he credits with helping make the program such a success.

He also named a number of players who have worn the Bears’ uniforms for more than two decades.

“What keeps me going is I’m coaching good kids,” said Farroba, who runs a basketball camp for youth in Anguilla every summer. “I’m still a teacher. I teach basketball but I talk about life lessons you can get out of the sport. I’ve always been a teacher.

“I got an email from a kid I taught in middle school (in Medfield). I was his phys ed and freshman football coach. He sent me an email congratulating me and he’s talking about the impact I had on him. You do make a difference with kids growing up.”

Farroba’s two children, Justine (women’s basketball) and John (football) were athletes at Bridgewater State, and he credits his wife, Linda, for being supportive while he works so many hours on a part-time job.

“I’ve been a part-time coach the entire time,” he said. “I remember when I first started and I was down in New Jersey (for a tournament) and I was meeting these coaches and telling him I was a school teacher and part-time coach.

“They said, ‘You’ll never last.’ Now basically (24) years later I’m still standing and still enjoy it. I’ve had a very understanding wife.”

All the time and effort and success has led Joe Farroba to a spot in the New England Basketball Hall of Fame as he will be rewarded for doing something he loves to do.

“I got an email from a girl I went to high school with,” said Farroba. “She reminded me that if you opened up my yearbook, I said back then that my ambition was to be a coach.”