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Jack Halloran with HCBL President Sandi Kruel after she announced the Westhampton Beach native was named this year's Bob Furlong Award recipient. ANDY WILCENSKI
Jack Halloran has enjoyed the past two summers playing for his hometown Westhampton Aviators. DREW BUDD
The Bob Furlong Award of the Hamptons Collegiate Baseball League, since its existence in 2017, has been given to a single player who has transcended the sport through integrity, teamwork and leadership on and off the field. When HCBL President Sandi Kruel was thinking of who would be a good candidate for this year’s award, she said there were a few players she thought of, but kept coming back to one.
Jack Halloran.
The homegrown talent, who graduated from Westhampton Beach High School in 2021, was selected as this year’s recipient of the award, which is named after the late Riverhead Tomcats GM who died in February 2017 after a battle with leukemia. He is the first-ever player from the Westhampton Aviators to be given the award.
Kruel admitted that Halloran is one of her favorite players to have ever played in the league.
“I have watched this game played for a long time, and I can honestly say he’s one of my favorite players to come through the system,” she said. “He plays the game every day with so much respect, such sportsmanship. He puts his head down and goes to work and does his business. There is no air of arrogance, it’s ‘yes ma’am,’ ‘no ma’am.’ He helps his players out, he’s the first player at the field, and the last one there, and he is honestly one of the best players just to watch play.
“I was just at the ocean and talking to someone who asked me if I knew Jack Halloran. ‘Oh, he’s just an amazing young man, he’s just a great kid,’ they said. Bob Furlong believed in sportsmanship, he believed in respect of the game, first and foremost, and Jack exemplifies that more than any other player.”
It helps that Halloran has helped put together a solid season for the first place Aviators, who ended the regular season on Sunday with the league’s best record (21-11-2). He batted .278 with four home runs and 17 RBI and 23 runs scored hitting in the middle of one of the most potent offenses in the league, all while dealing with a hip strain that’s lingered from his spring season at Emory University through this summer. Once the Aviators clinched the top seed in the playoffs, Halloran felt it best to sit the final few games of the regular season out, but he said on Monday he’d be back on the field when playoffs began on Tuesday.
Halloran, enjoying his second summer on his hometown Aviators, said he was a bit surprised when given the award in the middle of a home game on July 19.
“When Sandi came out and announced it, I wasn’t really sure what was going on,” he admitted. “But I am very honored to receive it. It’s a big deal, and I’m proud the league thinks of me in such high regard and it’s an honor to be the guy that they say I am.”
“I think, for the most part, whenever I played the game of baseball, I knew I was representing a name, whether it was here for Westhampton Beach High School or for my college program at Emory University, and it’s no different here for the Aviators. You’re representing an organization or a school that’s bigger than you,” he explained. “I always try and keep that in the back of my mind that I’m representing people beside myself, so I want to conduct myself with as much dignity as possible.”
Now Halloran’s quest — and the Aviators’ for that matter — is to bring home another trophy. Many of his teammates returned this year to get back to the championship series after losing to the Sag Harbor Whalers last year.
“I think the biggest part about last year is that we made it to championship and lost,” he said. “All the guys came back with a chip on their shoulders. We had a pretty good year in the regular season, and we want to take it all the way.”
