Boston College - Sub Turri Yearbook (Boston, MA)

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]tWi t If f -.?» Coaching to me is only an avocation. My real field, after all is education. But for 33 years one man ' s avocation has led B.C. hockey teams to over 450 vic- tories, eight New England championships, seven Eastern Championships, nine invitations to the NCAA cham- pionships and one NCAA title. John Snooks Kelley, the man who can rightly be called the Dean of College hockey, was graduated from B.C. in 1928, at the age of 19. He was born in Cambridge under the shadow of Harvard University, and has participated in anything that involves human- ity, especially youth. At the present time he teaches Social Studies at Cambridge Latin where he has been since 1942. The thing many people don ' t realize is that B.C. had a hockey team before the depression, and it was tops long before I came. I only took the job to see if I could resurrect something that once was great before the Crash. I played in ' 28 and I hated to see it pass out of existence due to economic conditions. Hockey came back with a bang in the ' 40s when B.C. reigned supreme. ' We went to the NCAA from ' 48- ' 30, the first three years of the tournament. We won it the second year with a team composed entirely of American players. The odds of that being done today are a million to one. We reached the pinnacle then, and I was satisfied. But the boys pressured me to stay on and I did. Now each year brings new boys and new challenges.

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Rut times have changed since then. Many of the old-timers couldn ' t compete today. The game is just too fast. There were good skaters in those days, but not as many as there are today. My most satisfying moment came in 1949 when in a little rink in Colorado Springs, B.C. celebrated its first NCAA hockey championship. It was won by a handful of kids who only practiced 3 hours a week. But it wasn ' t so much the victory; you see there was no immediate whooping or shouting. One of the boys took time out to say, ' I think we ought to say a prayer of thanks. ' You ' ll never know how great I felt to realize that their values were straight. Coach Kelley has a definite philosophy about col- lege hockey. I wish to develop American boys in the game of hockey, and see them get a fine education at the same time. I ' m not against Canadian boys, but I resent recruiting them for the sole purpose of win- ning. I dislike professionalism within the college ranks. B.C. is perhaps one of the most spirited hockey schools in the country and is unique in that several gen- erations will attend a game to watch Snooks Kelley and company. The spirit is just tremendous. Their philosophy is that we can do no wrong, and if we lose they always have an excuse, be it exam time, the flu or Canadians. It ' s really a family deal. 221