Joe Ciriello coached the Stonington High School boys' basketball team for 26 seasons before retiring in 2001. Then he came out of retirement to coach for two more seasons in 2003-04.

And even when he called it quits for good at Stonington, he was still in the gymnasium helping his good friend Paulla Solar coach the girls' basketball team or outside on the tennis courts assisting his pal George Crouse with the girls' tennis team, such was Ciriello's commitment to the hundreds of athletes who wore brown and white throughout the years.

Ciriello, a member of the Stonington Athletic Hall of Fame and someone Crouse referred to Monday as an "elder statesman" of the town's coaching fraternity, died Saturday of cancer. He was 78.

"One of a kind," Alex Jensen, an all-state boys' basketball player who graduated from Stonington in 2000 and went on to play for Division I Vermont, said of Ciriello.

"That's tough news to get. He was something special, you know? He was just one of those guys. He just made a difference. You always wanted to be around him. He always had a story to tell. When you saw him, it just made your day. He had a connection with everyone. Everyone he met, in his own way, he had this connection with them."

"For me he was an awesome friend," said Solar, who has coached the girls' basketball team for 29 seasons. "I knew how smart he was in basketball but he was always there for encouragement. It went beyond X's and O's. I would go to him or give him a call. I don't think he knew his impact. He would just burst into my gym. The door would open. I would give him a (practice) schedule and he would burst into the gym. He would make sure the kids were doing the simple things like making the right cut."

Ciriello hailed from Waterbury and played collegiately at Central Connecticut State University. He was a businessman before arriving at Stonington in 1975 as a physical education teacher. He coached boys' basketball for 28 years, girls' tennis for 11 years and boys' tennis for four years. He was girls' tennis assistant coach for 13 years and boys' tennis assistant for six, as well as spending a year coaching baseball.

Crouse first met Ciriello at Central, where they were members of rival fraternities.

Crouse's son, George, played basketball for Ciriello. Crouse coached alongside Ciriello in basketball and Ciriello coached with Crouse in tennis, changing roles with the seasons.

"He wouldn't take any baloney from anybody," Crouse said of Ciriello. "He was tough. You missed a gym class, he'd keep you after school. But a lot of the kids that had problems would go see him; they sought out his advice."

Crouse described Ciriello as a fisherman and a fitness buff who once went jogging at 6 a.m. in Hawaii and passed the car that Crouse and late Stonington teacher Thad Wicks were driving in on a return trip from a nearby coffee shop.

Ciriello, of Pawcatuck, and his wife Sandra have two daughters, Linda and Andrea, and four grandchildren, Julia (23), Celina (20), Benjamin (15) and Alexa (15).

Calling hours will be held from 2-5 p.m. Sunday at Buckler-Johnston Funeral Home and a funeral mass will take place at 10 a.m. Monday at St. Pius Church in Westerly.

Solar said her girls' basketball team will dedicate the upcoming season to Ciriello.

"I don't really think he knew how much of an impact he had in the community," Solar said. "He taught me so much."

Jensen, 39, now lives in Charlotte, N.C., and works for Bank of America. He and his wife Sandra have a 9-year-old, Webb ... who loves baseball. Jensen said Ciriello was "always kind of there for me no matter what."

"Definitely, I wouldn't been the kind of player I was without him," Jensen said. "I thought I knew, kind of, what hard work was. If you wanted to be good at something, it was going to take a lot of hours, a lot of repetition.

"But (Ciriello) was always there to do it with me. Like, 'Yeah, I'll be there and do it with you. I'll get up 500 shots with you.' He would be there. And if I missed a day, he would in his own way say, 'I shot it great yesterday' because he knew that by telling me, it was going to make me mad. ... We always stayed in touch. He would always come visit. He always was a part of who I was. We had a special bond."

v.fulkerson@theday.com