PASQUALE J. “PAT”/”DOC” ABBRUZZI (Athlete, 1998 Charter Inductee, Posthumous)
Pat Abbruzzi was named one of the greatest Rhode Island sports figures of the Twentieth Century by Sports Illustrated.
After being named an All Class C football running back for Warren High School in 1948, Pat was the catcher on the 1949 Warren/Bristol American Legion Baseball team that won the Eastern United States regional championship. Later that year, in his senior season, he was named an All Class C and All State football running back.
At the University of Rhode Island (URI), he made the All Yankee Conference football team in four straight seasons, from 1951 to 1954, even though he missed much of his senior campaign with injuries. He was named All New England in 1952, 1953, and 1954 and received All American Small College honors in 1953. At the end of his senior season he starred in the annual North-South All Star game, scoring on a fifty-two yard run, and was in line to win the game’s Most Valuable Player award before the South came from behind to win in the tilt’s last minutes.
In both of his first two seasons at URI, Pat essayed the longest run in the nation, ninety-nine yards in 1951 and ninety-eight yards in 1952. As a sophomore, he ran for three touchdowns and 306 yards in a 27-7 defeat of New Hampshire, while his junior season featured a last-minute touchdown pass to down Connecticut.
Named the Rhode Island Athlete of the Year in 1954, he was also honored as the Rhode Island Italo-American Athlete of the Year in both 1953 and 1954.
Following college Pat was drafted by both the Baltimore Colts and the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League. The Alouettes gave him a $500 bonus to help pay for his honeymoon, and, as a result, he competed north of the border from 1955 to 1959. He broke that league’s rushing record in both 1955 and 1956 and was named the Outstanding Player of the Year in Canada in 1955. He is a member of the Alouettes Hall of Fame.
Beloved as “Doc” by his players, he replaced Charlie Burdge as Warren High School’s football coach in 1961 and led teams to divisional championships in 1964, 1966, 1972, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1983, and 1986, winning the recently-instituted Class B Super Bowl title in 1975. Following his “second or third retirement,” he returned as an assistant coach for the Pop Warner Football Junior Midgets who captured the Northeast League 1993 title and Mount Hope High School Football’s 1995 Class B Co-Champions. (And, in his spare time, he coached the Warren High baseball team for a number of years.)
Pat was named to the University of Rhode Island Athletic Hall of Fame in 1972, honored as the Rhode Island Schoolboy Coach of the Year in 1975 and installed as a member of the Rhode Island Football Coaches Hall of Fame in 1976. He was later elected to the Sons of Italy Athletic Hall of Fame.
In college he was a featured performer on the trampoline at halftime of his school’s home basketball games. In his most famous performance he jumped high in the air, and, on his descent, tore through the trampoline and hit the basketball floor with his face.
In 2005 Pat was named to the Rhode Island Interscholastic League Hall of Fame.
Picture from Hall of Fall archives