High school sports won’t be the same without the lovable Buddy Tarbotton

Posted: July 14th 2024

By BRIAN CUNNIFF

CapeAtlanticLive.com

We were pulling into the parking lot outside the Lakewood High School gymnasium ahead of a broadcast of a South Jersey title game involving Wildwood Catholic’s boys basketball team in 2006 or 2007.

There was some nervousness there, for the kids from Wildwood Catholic playing in the biggest game of their lives to that point and for us, hoping our upcoming broadcast would properly capture the moment. 

Next to the parking lot was a large cemetery. The personality of Buddy Tarbotton quickly took over.

Sounding totally serious, Buddy had a question for the group, which also included videographer Matt Ulmer and one of Buddy’s nephews who would be handling the game statistics for us: “Any idea how many dead people are in there?”

We were perplexed. After a pause, one of us said, “How are we supposed to know?”

Buddy’s answer: “Well, all of them.”

Without skipping a beat, he then asked, “Do you know the reason why every cemetery has a fence around it?”

One of us answered, “I have no idea, Bud.”

Buddy: “People are dying to get in the place.”

That was the essence of Buddy Tarbotton.

The happy-go-lucky guy who enjoyed life immensely, cracked jokes at perfect and sometimes not-so-perfect moments, cherished being around and advocating for young people, loyally supported all Philadelphia sports teams and absolutely loved his duties as a longtime broadcaster of Cape May County high school basketball and football passed away this weekend at the age of just 63 after dealing with major health issues over the past seven months or so.

A 1979 graduate of Wildwood Catholic, where he played basketball and baseball, Buddy had been involved in high school basketball as a player, coach and broadcaster for almost 50 years. But most of all, Buddy was a fan – of the game, of the people he met and, most of all, the athletes he got to lead as a coach and cover as a member of the media.

Full of self-deprecating humor, Buddy would be the first to admit he wasn’t the best basketball player in the world. He often jokingly claimed to be the only player in Cape-Atlantic League history to score 1,000 career points at the junior varsity level.

But Buddy quickly proved that you didn’t have to have great talent to become a tremendous contributor to the game. He later became an assistant coach at his alma mater under the venerable Fran St. John and the stories about Buddy’s coaching style from former players have grown legendary. But while he was tough and even sometimes brooding as a coach, the loyalty he showed to his players was unmatched. They returned the favor.

“Back then everyone was into strength shoes and I just didn’t have the money to buy them,” one former player recalled. “Buddy bought them for me and no one ever knew. And he did stuff like that all the time. That guy meant the world to me.”

Buddy first joined the ranks of the media as a part-time sportswriter at the now-defunct Cape May County Gazette and Wildwood Leader newspaper group. He later gravitated to broadcasting, first joining our team on 98.7 The Coast radio. He took to the job like a fish to water, mostly because, to him, it actually wasn’t a job. For Buddy, broadcasting high school sports became a passion and hobby for which he received the added bonus of getting paid for his efforts.

He continued to broadcast as he returned to coaching in the late 1990s/early 2000s, helping lead the boys basketball program at Margaret Mace Elementary School to great success.

All the while, Buddy was a man about town. He couldn’t drive across Central Avenue in his hometown of North Wildwood without getting a honk of the horn or the wave of a hand from a friend or acquaintance. He couldn’t enter a building without someone yelling, “Buddy!” as he walked through the doors.

A former longtime recreation director in North Wildwood, Buddy helped lay much of the groundwork for the myriad programs and activities run by the department today.

Buddy played an integral part in creating the Boardwalk Basketball Classic in 1998 as a charter member of the tournament’s organizing committee. He also served as stadium announcer for many of the games each year, using his signature, “That’s boooardwalking!” when a player was whistled for a traveling violation. He was proud to learn this past scholastic year that the tournament gave out approximately $43,000 in college scholarship money to graduating seniors at Cape May County high schools.

A deeply religious man, Buddy cherished his role as a longtime lector and eucharistic minister at weekend mass in Notre Dame de la Mer parish. Even in that role, his personality couldn’t be contained. He would bellow a long and loud, “Goooo-uh-oood morning!” as he began pre-mass announcements. And once, after accidentally slipping and falling up the steps in front of the lectern just before the start of mass at the Church of the Assumption in Wildwood Crest, he turned gasps of concern from among mass attendees into smiles and laughter when he quickly stood with a big grin on his face and waved to the crowd, indicating he was fine. Actually, he was more than fine. It was another way for him to remind us all just how much he simply loved being alive.

But it was through his broadcasting where Buddy proved that the most. He enjoyed coming up with quirky phrases such as the “Crest Savings Bank shot” and “he shot that three-pointer from over at A&LP,” referring to the deli located across the street from Wildwood Catholic High School. Or, “that pass landed on the front steps of the Bellevue Tavern” if an errant pass was thrown during a Middle Township game.

One of the all-time Buddy being Buddy broadcasting stories was born in a boys basketball game in the late 1990s. We were broadcasting from Cape May Tech for the first time ever for their game against Wildwood and the Cape May Tech community was excited for the coverage. The team’s manager, Jay Mackle, was even listening to the radio broadcast on an old Sony Walkman while sitting at the end of the bench. The game was close after the first quarter, but Wildwood then scored 10 or 12 straight points to open the second quarter. Buddy then commented on the air, “Cape May Tech manager Jay Mackle might want to go down and tell Coach (Bob) Ridgway he should take a timeout.” Without hesitation, Mackle did just that, walking down the sideline and tapping Ridgway on the shoulder to relay the message. Needless to say, the coach wasn’t pleased at the time, although he laughs like crazy at the memory today. Buddy, of course, was in stitches. So were the listeners.

Buddy tried to bring that kind of fun with him to every game, constantly cracking harmless jokes. Some were awful and he knew it, and he’d laugh at his own absurdity. But there were other times he’d say something so funny you’d have to take off the headset so your practically unending laughter wouldn’t go out over the air.

Through it all, Buddy remained an advocate for the players. He enjoyed all of their accomplishments and continued to follow all of those fortunate enough to play at the college level. He had a special place in his heart for those from Wildwood Catholic but that heart was also big enough for him to also love the kids playing for all of the area’s high schools, regardless of sport.

Many of those players took to social media over the weekend as news of Buddy’s passing spread.

“Great man of the community, always showed love to me whenever I ran into him,” Wildwood High School boys basketball’s all-time leading scorer, Kyion Flanders, posted to Facebook. “I’m glad you were able to come up to Stockton to cover one of our games during my final year. A loss is never easy. You’ll be missed.”

Former Middle Township star Lauryn Fields echoed those sentiments on her Facebook page: “Ugh. My heart breaks. Buddy Tarbotton was such a sweet soul. He made sure to stay in touch with me and my brothers after our high school careers. … High school sports won’t be the same. RIP.”

On X, formerly known as Twitter, former Middle Township boys basketball standout Darrell Shelton offered: “Prayers to his family. Loved hearing Buddy while I was playing and years after.”

Brian Coyle, the head girls basketball coach at Our Lady of Mercy Academy, posted to X: “Sorry to hear this. Great guy. Always said hi and loved to chat hoops.”

Former Wildwood Catholic girls basketball standout and later assistant coach Caitlin McMullan was one of the first to post Tarbotton’s obituary on Facebook. She wrote: “What a great guy. Rest easy, Buddy! You will always be remembered fondly in the Wildwoods.”

Beyond the broadcasting, Buddy simply loved being involved. Nothing gave him greater joy than walking into a gym for a game and having people come up to say hello. And there were many of them – parents, current and former players, coaches and general fans. They were all happy to see him and he valued every single person he met along the journey.

The games are going to continue this fall and winter. The broadcasts, whether streamed live online or on local radio, are going to continue as well. But there’s no doubt they won’t be the same without Buddy Tarbotton. And they certainly won’t be as fun.

(Note: Services for Mr. Tarbotton will be held Saturday, Aug. 3, at St. Ann’s Roman Catholic Church in Wildwood. Visitation will begin at 9:30 a.m., with a mass to follow at 11 a.m. In lieu of flowers, the family has requested that donations be made in Mr. Tarbotton’s name to The Step Back Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Cape May County that provides athletic equipment and other necessities to local children and families in need of assistance that is chaired by former Wildwood High School girls basketball star Maddie McCracken.)