Nick Cariglia was a member of championship baseball teams at Warren High School and Providence College.  Later he became a championship coach and a leading basketball and football official.

He was the center fielder on the first Class C team to win a championship in any sport, the 1939 Warren High School Class C and State Baseball Champions who were coached by Charlie Burdge.  Nick’s teammates Johnny Abbruzzi, Winky Correia, Ditty Drainville, Ben Ferrazzano, and Beany Ryan are all members of the Warren Athletic Hall of Fame, as is Charlie Burdge.

Nick then attended Providence College.  While there he played for the Crown Zippers, winners of the 1941 Rhode Island Baseball League regular season title. 

In 1942, just before his graduation, he was the leading hitter on the Friars’ Rhode Island and Eastern Collegiate Summer Champions. 

 Entering military service, he played a number of games against a team starring Ted Williams (the greatest hitter who ever was), and, more often than not, his team came out on top.

He played professionally with the Cranston Chiefs of the New England Baseball League in 1946.  Having played in the Warren versus Bristol Baseball Little World Series in 1938-1940, Nick returned after the war to play in the last four Series of 1946-1949; he served as Warren’s player/manager in 1948.  He batted .312 in twenty-one games over a twelve-year span.

In 1948 he played for the East Providence Portuguese American Athletic Club and won the Tim O’Neil Providence Amateur League batting title.  That same year he was the All Star center fielder for the Merchants team that captured the championship of the Warren Twilight League.  In 1949 he was a member of the Providence Amateur League Champions Federal Knife, while a year later he played for the Fall River All Stars who defeated Johnny Pesky, Phil Rizzuto, and a number of other major leaguers.

Nick coached baseball and basketball at Westport, Massachusetts High School from 1947 to 1957, winning titles in both sports including the Bay State Class D Basketball Championship in 1954.

He returned home to coach basketball and led Warren High to only its second championship in that sport, the 1961 Class C title.  He then assumed the role of Warren High School principal before returning to Westport as Superintendent of Schools.

Nick was a member of the Federal Engineers/Smith’s Drug fast-pitch softball team that captured six consecutive titles from 1956 to 1961 under the tutelage of Al “Casey” Primiano.  (Nine members of the Warren Athletic Hall of Fame played for that legendary team at one time or another.)

He served as president and rules interpreter for the Southeastern Massachusetts Football Association and was a member of the Eastern Collegiate Football Association.  Nick was very proud of the fact that he had officiated at the Army/Notre Dame football game in 1969.  On the day of his untimely death in 1971 he was scheduled to fulfill his lifelong dream and take the field at the Army/Navy game.

Picture from Hall of Fame archives (1961 Class "C" Basketball Championship starting five)