Pages

Saturday, February 22, 2014

The Little Rink Around the Corner

Every four years, the Olympics turn me into a couch potato.  Of course, I look forward to the skiing but I live for the ice hockey. In my odd sports path to the mountains of New Jersey, I've take the strangest of routes. Hockey is my favorite sport to play and the Olympics, my favorite showcase for the sport. I have a weird, connected history there.

I sometimes imagine how different my life would have been if my parents had raised me rebuilding car engines or sailing or cycling. But they chose to drag me out on the ice, on a pond in Dauberville, Pennsylvania, sometimes kicking and screaming, but always freezing in the cold. The given with skating is to have ice thick enough for skating it has to be bone-chilling cold. I remember the attempts, well-intended I’m sure, when my parents tried to get us to take a sip of brandy because it would “keep us warm”—that was like forcing castor oil on us.  But I also remember that we always refused the stuff and wound up on the ice anyway—chilled to the bone.



The building that housed the rink—2008 photo

 
Where we played hockey in Reading was just a few blocks from the original Boscov’s store. Now it’s a giant chain but then it was a short turn from the corner diner. Turn right you’re at Boscovs. Turn left and just before you hit Albright College, you had to pass McKellen’s rink. The McKellen’s were interesting people. Leila and Gorden, Sr.—nobody called him Gordonopened the rink in the 50s. I was stunned to find a 1955 photo on the internet of Tuffy standing in front  of the “ice skating studio.” There was no truth to the rumor that he was a Munchkin in the Wizard of Oz but then you couldn't help wondering when you saw his underwhelming, less-than-five-feet-of-him-stature. But he was called “Tuffy” for a reason. Devilishly handsome—and you never saw him not smiling—you knew, deep down, that you didn't want to meet him in a dark alley. He seemed to be one, huge, muscle and he gave off the aura that packed in that smallish frame was immense stored power.


Tuffy met Leila, his beautiful wife, when she was skating in the Ice Follies and he was an acrobat act with his brother, Gil. They could do a hand-to-hand handstand on ice. Let’s think about that a moment. Picture Gil on skates, his hands strait up in the air. Now picture Tuffy upside down his hands straight down, “standing” on top of Gil’s hands. On ice, moving. Whaaaaaat?
In this photo they are not doing their handstand, but that trick is listed in Ripley's "Believe It or Not."


Tuffy and Leila settled down in Reading (for God knows what reason) and they opened a small rink. Their son, Gordie, became our Men’s National Champion figure skater and represented the US at the 1972 Sapporo Olympics where he came in fourth.
The rink in 1955- that's Tuffy in front


Sometime in 1962, the McKellens decided to start a youth hockey program and put an ad in the Reading Eagle which my mother saw and immediately signed up my older brother. He was three years older at 14 and, for a winter, my younger brother and I ate our hearts out watching Phil play hockey. The following year, Dennis and I were primed for the “world’s fastest game” (I laugh when I hear lacrosse called that—my apologies to my lacrosse friends). In the rink there was a large, framed photo, of Gordie with blades on his baby shoes. He must have been 11 months. He was being held up between his mother and father as they squatted on the ice. I think that photo put ideas in my mom's head. We were all on skates by our third birthday.
In 1976, the sign read "future home" and we were thrilled.

We played from October to April, every Sunday (except holidays) There were four teams, each with six players. Every sixth week you had to play goal, which I hated and proved myself to be worthless. I once gave up 14 goals, most on breakaways by John Dillingham, a 3-year older and very skilled player. If I hadn't given up 14 goals to John, I believe the most goals I would have yielded would have been 8-10. The goal had yellow tape 15 inches up each post. Shots above the imaginary line were disallowed. John didn't need to go high on me—I had enough holes already close to the ice.

During the winter of 1963, we played every Sunday—figure about 28 Sunday games and we also played on a road team that went 15-1-2. If you don’t count road team practices, we played 46 games and traveled all around southeast Pennsylvania. My favorite games were the ones played in Hershey Arena and at the private prep school in Pottstown, The Hill School (think Choate and Exeter).

 Our team, with 16-year-olds and 13-year-olds trashed their high school prep team.


Then we moved to hockey’s wasteland—New Jersey. I left a system where we played about 50 times a year to a place that had two ice rinks in all of northern New Jersey and no hockey programs. To boot, nobody seemed to know how to skate. That was obvious the first winter we found the local ponds filled with kids who could just barely stand up, let alone play hockey. To us, it was a joke. Kids had heard of hockey and they owned sticks purchased at the local hardware store but they were clueless how to dribble or carry the puck.


In this waste land, taking your skates to a hardware for sharpening was making a death wish for your blades. Skates not sharpened at a rink were doomed to the ignorance of whomever wasn't busy selling snow shovels and nails to waiting customers. My first sharpening at the hardware store in Hillsdale was my last and it almost cost my high school a victory. I spent two periods scrapping the edge off my blades on the wooden boards until I could dull them enough to get on the ice to tie and then score the winning goal, both in the last two minutes of the game.
My hockey-rabid family moved to a hockey wasteland and had to wait three years for hockey to catch on. The New York Rangers were on television every Saturday night so the locals had no excuse of not knowing the game. In Pennsylvania we did not have hockey on TV but were lucky that the McKellens came to town. There were lots of hockey programs in Pennsylvania in places like Hershey, Philadelphia, Lancaster, Palmyra, Middletown, Pottstown, Wyomissing, Conshohocken and Wissahickon - that was our road schedule. Northern New Jersey had a rink in Westwood (small and square) and another in South Orange. The next closest rinks were Morristown (an hour to the west), Brick Township, down the Shore, and at Low Tor, near Haverstraw, a 45-minute drive to the north.

We became big fish in a very small pond. It was like we were playing basketball, seven-footers against midgets. My younger brother and I would go on a pond with at least 40 kids playing hockey, and he and I could play keep away. Nobody could take the puck from us. It was weird. This was our sport. Hockey was year-around for us. During the summer we varnished and waxed wooden boards so we could practice “lifting” the puck and honing our shot. A friend of ours, a very good lacrosse player, moved to Colorado. One of his first days at high school, the football coach asked him in the hall what sport he played and he answered “lacrosse” and the coach said, “what’s that?” We understood that and empathized.

The McKellens moved to Lake Placid the year after we moved from Reading. Their son outgrew the Reading rink and commuted to Philadelphia every day to practice his figures. The McKellens opened a lodge where they boarded skaters and other training Olympians since Lake Placid had all of the facilities from the 1932 Olympic games still in use. We traveled there every year for the days after Christmas until New Year’s skiing, tobogganing, X-country skiing, and bobsledding.


My brother, Phil, survived his ride in 1967.

 My brother Phil was the lone bobsledder, deciding to take a chance and put his life in the hands of a brakeman and a steer man, who agreed to take two passengers for ten dollars. Phil said that was better than any roller coaster ride he had ever taken before and I imagine that has held up to this day.

Part of the fun of staying with the McKellens was meeting the Olympians-in-training. We could extract all sorts of trade secrets from ski jumpers and bobsledders. We also met several nationally-ranked skaters. By Sapporo, we knew or met most of the national team. The TV room of the lodge had an entire wall of glass casement displaying all of Gordie’s trophies. Of course, the best one was the huge cup he received as National Senior Champion.

When Lake Placid placed the successful bid for the 1980 games, we were ecstatic. Lake Placid was (and is) the perfect place to stage the games. Our favorite Olympic sport to be played in our favorite place. Hockey and Lake Placid, to that point, was our family’s guilty little secret. Our friends had no idea of the special meaning for us of  having the games in Lake Placid. When you consider the Miracle on Ice occurred during that Olympics, our enjoyment was taken to  a whole new level.
This is how we all felt about the Russians in 1980
Every four years, all these memories get dredged up. When memories are so deep-rooted, how could they not surface? I don’t care now about the hockey games  as deeply as I did when Russia dominated North American hockey with their skewed rules and unfair competitive advantages. True. I do prefer gold medals to silver or bronze, or in this year, no medal at all.



Back then, during the 70s, it was sweet to triumph despite all odds. It was great when the Philadelphia Fliers crushed the Soviet Union after they were having their way with the rest of the NHL. Only the Canadians and the Buffalo Sabers put up any kind of fight—the rest of the NHL got outright embarrassed. Being from the Philly area, you can imagine our chests being puffed out when the Fliers won. When the Fliers seemed assured of victory,  a fan held up a sign I’ll never forget. It read “Bring on the Martians.”

 But Lake Placid, our winter home away from home, and our favorite sport—that was the absolute best. Of course we believed in miracles; where else could the greatest upset in sports history occur?

__________________________________
Author’s note: Lake Placid has an interest in the 2026 Olympics. Cross your fingers.


Monday, February 17, 2014

The Loyola Legend—A Man Among Greyhounds

Before there was Cousy, before Pistol, Magic and Michael Jordan, there was Jim Lacy.
I have little doubt that most people have never heard his name and most underclassmen at Loyola University Maryland have no idea who he was or of his importance to their basketball program.
My first brush with the name came my freshman year at Loyola. My best friend, John Davis, pointed out Lacy’s son, then a sophomore.  John, or “the Dude” as we all called him, told me that when Lacy’s son played on the freshman team the prior year, the gym would pack out to see him just because his name was “Lacy.” That made an impression on me. Without knowing any details, by osmosis I understood the importance and impact of his father. I could try to understand how hard it was for that sophomore to live up to a famous father, but I had no true idea then that the senior Lacy was a once-in-a-lifetime talent. I know his history now.
Scoring 1,000 points is an arbitrary benchmark schools give their best basketball players. But if you've scored 950 points and don’t make a list of 1,000-point scorers, you've still had a great basketball career. While I was in college, in the 1972-73 season, the NCAA changed the rules to allow freshmen to compete on the varsity. Until then, a player had to reach that 1,000-point threshold in three years, so that achievement has been watered down since that rule was enacted. Further eroding the benchmark has been the addition in 1986-87 of the of the 3-point shot from 19’9” and extended by a foot in 2008-09.
If scoring is a major part of the makeup of a great player, largely because it can be measured, then the other facets, durability, playing time, scoring in the clutch, drawing the foul, have to be also considered in determining greatness. Jim Lacy would be a legend for scoring alone. Consider that he scored 2,199 points in his career, that his career was only three years, and that he played before the 3-point shot rule. Lacy was not a scoring hog; he didn't call for the ball. His teammates knew, when the game was on the line, whose hands they wanted the ball to be in and Lacy didn't disappoint. In 1949, Lacy was the highest scorer in the country and is said, in one game, to have scored the highest amount of points ever scored by one player in a game. His 44 points is still a school record. He was the first player in NCAA history to score 2,000 points.

                                   The Loyola Legend

         For people who like nice round numbers, and 2,199 is bothersome because he didn't reach 2,200 points, there is this notion: In several games, Lacy had points taken off the scoreboard. One of the memorable ones was a buzzer shot that the refs claim was taken too late. Back then, there were no replays to get the call right, so normally you gave the refs the benefit of the doubt. I would, too,  except that it occurred at the Mt. St. Mary’s in “The Hangar,” a facility with known electric lighting and scoreboard issues. I remember one game while I was at Loyola when the Mount hit a buzzer shot to beat us and the clock at one end of the court read 00:00 and the other 00:01. The refs pointed to the 00:01 and said “that’s the official clock.” Really? Why was  I not surprised?
Before he passed away in 2007, Father “Wish” Galvin, who played with and against Lacy, would always speak with such reverence when he discussed Lacy, his life and his legacy. And when he referred to Lacy’s scoring record, he would pronounce it “2…1…9…9,” emphasizing each numeral. Father Galvin also attested to Lacy’s character, saying that the pre-game warm-up for the Loyola Legend started in the chapel. Lacy was a Christian gentleman.
I was privileged to meet Mr. Lacy at the pre-game Basketball Alumni luncheon in 2012 before he was presented at the halftime with induction into the MAAC Honor Roll. The night before I traveled to Baltimore, I called the Dude and told him that Lacy was being honored at the half and that I'd finally get to see him. John reminded me that his father, Bill, had played with Lacy at Loyola High School and then with him on Loyola’s 1943-44 wartime team. I had forgotten that John had mentioned that on several occasions.
              
                  The crowd on it's feet honoring Lacy in 2012

           At the luncheon, I was surprised that I was actually going to be introduced. The school’s media staff was walking Lacy from table to table introducing him. When my turn came, I told him how honored I was to be able to finally meet “The Loyola Legend.” He grinned when I called him that. And then I told him about the Dude’s father playing with him and a warm smile spread across his face. ‘I remember Bill well,” he said and the look was of the fondness only a teammate has for one another.
                
Middle row (l to r) Jim Lacy third, and Bill Davis, fifth

The passing of Jim Lacy this week at age 87, does not end an era in Loyola basketball because Jim Lacy was a once-in-a-school’s-history type of player and transcends eras. Someday, Loyola could have a player who’ll score many points and win some championships, but Loyola will never again see someone as gifted and well-rounded as Jim Lacy, a man among boys, a Greyhound among pups.

NOTE: During my senior year at Loyola I enjoyed being the sports editor of the Greyhound (February through May, 1973). Freshman and sophomore years, I was a manager for the JV basketball team and worked the scoreboard for varsity basketball games. Links to my book website:  www.amishandbaseball.com       and my writing website:  http://gregbmiller.webs.com has links to my other sports and science-related articles.



Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Falling With Style

Like many people riveted to the broadcasts of the Olympic downhill runs, I am amazed at how these skiers perform, all the time perched on the edge of disaster. Bode Miller, for one, is almost too exciting to watch, especially if I want to relax and randomly view what event NBC was dishing up that particular night. When I watch him carve into those icy turns, the sense of disaster is heightened by the sound of steel grinding an edge-hold into an icy slope.
I enjoy watching the Olympics because these exciting images bring back memories of the thrilling moments of the past. In 1976, I was working at my first job in Manhattan and the Olympic coverage was expanded for the Innsbruck games in Austria. Comparing notes with fellow workers around the proverbial water cooler, I was shocked to learn that for many, this was the first time, they had ever seen a downhill race. They were city dwellers who lived their entire life in the self-proclaimed paradise of Brooklyn, as flat as stretches of Kansas and Oklahoma. Scheming every week just where and how I’d get to which New England ski slope was something I did as a matter of routine. They couldn't imagine that at all. They had no idea how a ski attached to your feet or how you might dress. To them, the competitors were “sliding down the hill,” or as Woody put it to Buzz Lightyear, “falling with style.”
Life at the top of a ski lift, especially at Stowe, Killington and Whiteface is a completely different world. I liken it to when Dorothy opens that farmhouse door and steps into Oz and provides commentary to Toto along the lines of not being in Kansas anymore.
After skiing all the major eastern slopes in the East, I arrived at the conclusion that there is no slope that comes close to Whiteface, the scene of the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics. I traveled there with my family for years before the 1980 Olympics, when the original 1932 Olympic facilities were still being used. The tiny little town and surrounding venues was probably the best kept secret of winter sports.
Every year, the first question we asked when we arrived in Lake Placid was “Is Chair 2 open?” There was a lift, used only when snow conditions were perfect, that took skiers to the peak, to a run that was left natural, where they hadn't ventured with machine grooming equipment, and tree stumps, rocks and other hidden goodies were disguised by 30-40 inches of snow. After a stretch of being shut out for several years, our patient wait was finally rewarded and my older brother and I could not believe our good fortune one year: Chair 2 was open for business.
Eagerly we took the two lift rides to be able to get to Chair 2. We noticed that no other people were going up in Chair 2 and there was no lift line. We were to find out why in a few moments. At the top, at the end of the lift, there was a sign that read something to the effect of “if you are not an expert skier, please go back down.” Naturally, my brother and I laughed that off. We didn't need no steenkin’ sign to tell us we were probably in “over our heads," figuratively and literally.
There was no trail, just a wooden sign with an arrow pointing the logical way along a deceivingly flat cut through evergreen trees, so laden with heavy snow they must look deformed in the summer. We followed the break in the forest until we came to a huge, wide-open area the size of a football field, but one stood on its edge at an angle that made us wonder how snow stayed on the slope.
Offering the adage “age goes before beauty” I told my older brother “you first.” What he did next was both surprising and hilarious. He  moved about 10 feet ahead on the slope, tripped over the first rock or stump, and disappeared down a rabbit hole, out of sight. Even though I knew that was a preview to what I’d be doing in a few moments, it cracked me up when he popped out, like a gopher, about 10 yards down the slope. Then I followed him and duplicated his accident completely. Traversing that slope, the elusive one that we lusted after for years, took us at least two hours. And it was work. It was a brilliantly sunny day but I am pretty sure that after we finally made it down, we must have either selected a very relaxing intermediate slope or called it a day, exhilarated but exhausted.
During the 1980 Olympics, I was too busy working at the newspaper to get to Lake Placid. My sister, Tina, and my mother went and experienced the mad electricity of the moment known as the “Miracle on Ice.” Towards the end of the games, I had one of the best ideas I ever had, and I can count mine on one hand. I called my best friend, Harold, and suggested that when the Olympic Village was emptied out after the Friday closing ceremonies that we would go to Lake Placid to ski. Like swimming upstream.
Our reward was empty slopes, no lift lines, Olympic–standard groomed surfaces and, something I completely forgot about: Chair 2.
The downside of winning the 1980 Olympic bid was a forever-changed Lake Placid. The cute, sleepy, character-drenched village was transformed into a glitzy ski resort. Real hotels instead of the kitschy bed and breakfasts, tiny stores on Main Street gone forever, and Olympic venues upgraded from the 1932 state they were still in during the 60s and 70s.
Chair 2 was no different. It had become the 1980 Women’s downhill course, which was regarded as much faster, steeper and more dangerous than the men’s course.
Harold and I arrived at the top of a Chair 2 that I didn't recognize. It was like returning to my Model T and finding a Lamborghini. But it was magical. Not a bump in sight. Groomed like a golf fairway at an exclusive course. We didn't see another human being until we got to the bottom. The course was lined with that orange plastic stretch fencing. The hay bales were placed here and there in case of a crash. The markers were there—in fact everything was still there; the whole scene lacked only the cheering crowds.
It was the ski run of my life. Usually on expert slopes (The Mt. Snow trail called “The Jaws of Death” comes to mind), I have to pick out three or four moguls ahead and plan my turns, my escape routes, my emergency stops, in case I miss a turn or get hurled ahead by an unexpected bump and get out of control at a high speed. But there on Whiteface, there were no bumps and as soon as you put your skis into the fall line, the direct straight line down a slope, the acceleration was shocking. The thrill of staying with that speed was exhilarating and the only limiting factor was the heat of the burn in your thighs and quads. At a certain point, when you thought your leg was going to burst into flames, you would turn sideways and slide a hundred feet to a stop and then lean on your poles until you recover, both your breath, your stamina, and your nerve.
After that, skiing was never the same. All my runs would forever be compared to that one Saturday. When I see the downhill on TV now, I am immediately taken back to that day, those runs. I remember; I appreciate.
Just like there can never truly be another “Miracle on Ice” because the circumstances were so unique, personally, I’ll never see another run quite like Franz Klammer in the 1976 Olympics. He was the favorite to win the men’s downhill those Olympics. As an Austrian, skiing on home snow, the pressure was enormous. For Austrians, the downhill is like batting with the bases loaded in a tied seventh game of the World Series, the final putt on the 18th hole in the Masters, the field goal attempt in overtime at the Super Bowl, and the half court buzzer-beater attempt in the final game of March Madness. Klammer was the last skier to compete and had to beat a terrific time. He skied on the edge of disaster and for the two minutes he blistered down the slope, I think everyone watching held their breath. I remember one turn and leap when he went airborne and just barely recovered in the air and the announcer was screaming. He won by .33 seconds. I watched Jean Claude Killy, Bill Johnson, Jean Saubert, and now Bode Miller and Julia Mancuso and admired them all but, for me, Franz Klammer’s 1976 Innsbruck downhill will always be my favorite. As much fun as an un-groomed Chair 2 run with my brother was, streaking down the 1980 women’s downhill was my favorite ski experience.
          Like all great events, I can only experience it once but when I watch the downhill every four years, I get to relive my own “Olympic” moment. In my case, Woody was right—I was “falling with style.”