Tom Priestley
New Orleans Sports Hall of Fame
Basketball Coach
Carver High School
Inducted: 1997
Tom Priestley posted a 448-128 record in 21 years as the head basketball coach at Carver High School (1970-1991). His teams won 14 district titles and posted two runner-up finishes in 16 years, including winning every district title during the 1980s except for 1986. The Rams won 20 games 15 times under his tutelage.
In both 1987 and 1989, his Rams reached the state finals. They lost to Broadmoor in 1987 and Shaw in 1989.
He was selected as the Louisiana 4A Coach of the Year in 1986-87 and was also named District Coach of the Year 14 times.
“We can never repay Tom Priestley for the job he’s done,” Carver principal Lindsey Moore told The Times-Picayune upon his retirement in 1991. “It’s things you can’t see or touch. He believes in the kids, the community and the school. That’s why he’s been so successful.”
Priestley joined the staff at Carver in 1960 two years after the school opened.
“I always felt this was an area I would be able to contribute something,” he said to the Times-Picayune. “I grew up in a project. I had a good idea what these children had to go through.”
He grew up in the challenging Calliope area in the 1940s and played baseball and basketball at Booker T. Washington. He earned a basketball scholarship to North Carolina A&T and then spent four years in the Air Force and three years coaching high school ball in North and South Carolina before returning home.
“He’s a teacher, and he taught us about life,” Tom Singleton, a former Carver star who excelled in college at Notre Dame, graduating number two in career steals and assists for the Fighting Irish, told The Times-Picayune. “He always pushed us to do the right thing, and he never let us forget how important academics was. He wanted us to be prepared when we moved on.”
