The Beierles and basketball
OLD TAPPAN, N.J. — In times like these, when professional and amateur sports have ground to a halt, we can take a moment of introspection to look at sports and what they bring to our lives. Certainly, we miss the thrills of victory and the agonies of defeat that we feel as our favorite sports teams win and lose. There is also the sense of loss when recreational and local sports are postponed and suspended. Sports always have been an integral part of our lives. Sports are more than just fitness and entertainment; they instill life lessons for all who take part in them. Regardless of whether we are playing a pick-up game of basketball on a Sunday morning or watching our kids play recreational tee ball, sports help us learn who we are and in doing so better prepare us for life.
With this backdrop, our athlete of the week is not an athlete per se. Instead, it is a multi-generational family that shows us how much athletics mean to us all. The Beierle family and its love of sports—especially basketball—show us that playing sports instills in us all life lessons that we take with us into our personal and professional lives long after the final buzzer sounds.
Growing Up Beierle
At the center of the Beierle family are Carol and her husband Lou. The Beierles have lived in town since 1990. Over the years, Carol and Lou built a loving family. Their children—Cassia (Cassie) (37), Louis (36), Dana (33), Mary (29), and Mark (28), grew up in town and were all involved in a variety of sports growing up. The Beierle kids’ love of sports was always encouraged and fostered.
Growing up, Carol fondly remembers playing basketball in the driveway with her father and younger sister. They also swam and rode horses. In her own words, Carol remembers being “always active.” At the time, there were no organized sports teams for girls in her town, so she became a cheerleader. When she got married, Carol and her husband continued to live by the “always active” mantra. The two were avid runners and did yoga in order to stay fit and live a very active lifestyle.
In 1990, when the Beierles moved to River Vale, neighbor Terry Kirkby asked if their kids might be interested in playing soccer. As Carol and Lou signed their children up, they may not have realized then what they know now: Athletics would help to shape the lives of the entire family. Over the course of the next decade, Lou volunteered to coach soccer, basketball, baseball, and softball. But above all, the sport of basketball “took the hearts and minds of the family.” The seed had been planted in the foyer of their home, at the basketball hoop on their street, and at CYO basketball at their local parish church, St. Andrew’s in nearby Westwood.
Carol says, “I saw that through our children’s involvement with organized sports their confidence began to develop and other positive attributes were beginning to develop as well.”
The Beierle Bus
As the Beierle girls got older, they began to attend Jeff Jasper’s Summer Basketball Camps each summer and their love for the game of basketball blossomed. When Cassie arrived at Pascack Valley, she was determined to play girls’ basketball and to be a part of Jeff Jasper’s “Long Gold Line,” a storied program that went beyond just basketball on the court. Jasper’s commitment to excellence, not only on the court, but in life, was something the Beierles were already instilling in their children at home. The program’s demand for “high excellence,” “high discipline,” and “high expectations” were attributes that the Beierles believed would make their kids not only successful in sports, but also in life. Cassie paved the way for her sisters to join the Long Gold Line. For 12 consecutive years, a Beierle daughter played for the Pascack Valley Indians.
Carol fondly remembers driving the Beierle Bus to summer leagues. She would happily drive her daughters and their teammates all over the state! During these years, the teams that the Beierle girls played on for Jasper were very successful, from Group II & Group III State Championships, several County Championships, innumerable League Championships, and individual honors such as All County and All League Selections. More over, according to Carol, the Beierle boys—successful athletes in their own right— “were also positively influenced by knowing and being around Jasper’s program.” Along the way there were, no doubt, disappointments and heartbreak, but as Carol and Lou look back at these trying times, they were “steel being forged in fire.”
Carol says, “Lou and I always viewed organized sports as sort of an active classroom to assist a parent in teaching important life skills such as loyalty, commitment, discipline, respect for authority, perseverance, trust, courage and the development of confidence in one’s self and in others.”
The Beierles Today
Carol and Lou are both retired today. Carol spent 41 years in the River Vale education system. She worked both as a Speech and Language Pathologist at Woodside Elementary School and the Learning Disabilities Teacher Consultant working on the Child Study Team throughout the River Vale system. Lou had a 35-year career as a CPA in public accounting and banking.
In terms of the next generation of Beierles, after graduating Pascack Valley High School in 2000, Cassie attended Columbia University and graduated Brooklyn Law School in 2010. Cassie played for two years on the Columbia University Women’s Basketball team. Currently, she is Vice President/Assistant General Counsel at Investor Bank in Short Hills, New Jersey.
Dana Gilbert, nee Beierle, graduated Pascack Valley High School in 2004 and Fordham University in 2008 with a Bachelor of Science in Accounting. She is a CPA who spent 6 years at EY, Independent Public Accountants in New York, New York. Currently, she is a Senior Audit Manager at CohnReznick, Independent Public Accountants, Hartford, CT. Dana and her husband Matt are the proud parents of daughter, Eleanora (Ellie), who is 23 months old. They are excitedly awaiting the arrival of their second daughter in early May 2020.
Mary Petrovici nee Beierle, graduated Pascack Valley High School in 2008. She then graduated Manhattan College, NY with a double major in Elementary and Special Education in 2012 and a Master of Science degree in Special Education in 2014. In addition, she became a Board-Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA) in 2016. For four years, she worked as a Special Education teacher in the Bronx, New York. Currently, Mary is the Program Coordinator and BCBA for the Park Academy Middle School of the Pascack Valley High School District. Mary and her husband, Vadim, are licensed resource foster parents for New Jersey’s Child Protection and Permanency Agency which protects children who have been harmed or are risk. Mary and Vadim have adopted two daughters who were placed in their care: 3-year-old Skylar, and 2-year-old Emani.
In terms of the Beierle boys, Louis graduated Pascack Valley High School in 2002 and Boston College 2006 with a double Major in Accounting and Hispanic Studies. He is a CPA who spent 12 years at PwC Independent Public Accountants (Senior Manager in Capital Markets Audit Group) in New York, New York. Currently, Louis is Head of Finance, LeafLink Financial, NY, NY; a fintech start up. To this day, Louis plays basketball in NYC leagues, which is no surprise since he played soccer and was a four-year varsity starter on the Pascack Valley basketball team.
Finally, Mark graduated Pascack Valley High School in 2010 and Georgetown University, Washington, DC, in 2014 with a double major in Finance and International Business and a concentration in Mandarin Chinese. Mark is in his sixth year with EY, Independent Public Accountants in New York, New York and is a Manager of Data Analytics in the Advisory Group. Like his siblings, remains a sports enthusiast, having played basketball in high school and being the only Beierle to play football at Pascack Valley.
The Beierle children’s successes both in their careers and the personal lives can be traced back to the many, many life skills that the Beierle family hold near and dear. Among them are loyalty, commitment, discipline, respect for authority, perseverance, trust, and self-confidence. These attributes were undoubtedly instilled in them by their parents, but they were also forged in their various athletic endeavors. As Mary says, “Sports have been an integral part of our family life and we have made so many good friends and been coached by so many wonderful coaches over the years. Being coached by Jeff Jasper and being part of the Pascack Valley basketball team and program has taught us that success is not defined by the number of wins a team has or even how many points you score. Success meant that we were growing and changing even off of the court to become better people from the inside out.”
Carol says, “We are very blessed by the young adults our children have become—independent and self-reliant—but we are most pleased with the kind, loving, and compassionate men and women they are to each other and to their extended family and friends.” As a Christmas gift to their parents, the Beierle kids and spouses teamed up with Catholic Charities of New York to Help-a-Family at Christmastime. With a generosity of spirit, they sponsored a single mother and her eight children, providing Christmas gifts, toiletries, video games, a new bed set, and winter jackets for each family member. Talk about teamwork!
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