Canisius College - Azuwur Yearbook (Buffalo, NY)

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Dr. David B. Dietz, a Classics professor in his tenth year at Canisius, is the Canisius club hockey coach. He is also the AZUWUR Coach of the Year. Dr. Dietz emerged from a host of other candidates for the honor, including,' John McCarthy, who guided the basketball team to a stronger showing than the experts deemed possible: Al Stumpf, who led the wom- en's gymnastics team to a second straight State title,' Jim Decker, who piloted the swim Griffs to the first winning record in their seven year historyf and Bill Brooks, who coached the first varsity football unit at Canisius in a quarter of a century. Call me a cook, not a coach, protested Dr. David Dietz with an amiable smile after his designation as AZUWUR Coach of the Year. I make sure all the people come together who want to play, then mix up a recipe so that everybody is happy. As far as the term coach, that's really not used properly. Because, techni- cally, I am the faculty advisor of a club on campus. 'Coach' is only an analagous term for my position with the hockey club. But cook or coach, Doc Dietz is the fellow who stands behind the bench at Canisius hockey games calling the shots: sending out lines, pulling goaltenders, and exhorting his forces. Still, if he insists on the culinary tag, he might as well have been the author of the l Hate To Cook Book because he claims: In short, I'm a reluctant coach. For years I've been asking around to see if there's anyone else on campus with a hockey background, either to be an assistant or to take over all together. The burdensome part is not the coaching. Only about Il3 of the time I spend on club hockey is on the ice. 206 It's the scheduling, the book balancing, the administrative chores which become more and more burdensome since I do have a full teaching load. The time has been the biggest problem. But when there's a vacuum of coaching people and a job to do then I feel I have to do the best job I can. I honestly think it's important because we have a lot of dedicated kids who really vvant to play. I've learned as I've gone along. If he calls it learning, then he can add another doctorate to his Classics degree. Canisius won its second straight Finger Lakes Collegiate Hockey League championship under his tutelage this year. This is only the third year that the Golden Ice Griffins have been a part of the FLCHL, one of the state's more established leagues. But it wasn't as easy this time around. This was a dangerous year because we had a set team, Doc Dietz explains. We had an easy time last year when we swept through the league undefeated. This season we had all kinds of complacency as a result. For awhile there we hit the skids and lost a few in a row, but we came out the better for it. When you start losing two things can happen: you can either fall apart or pull together. Fortunately, it worked out in our case. Canisius has not lost any Little Three matches under Doc Dietz. Those games do have a special little edge to them, he admits. But really, Bona and Niagara haven't had real good s ss ii af

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3 Q teams. The real special team for us has been St. John Fisher. The first really bad loss we ever had was to them, 17-2. But we beat them 3-2 the next year, the first established team we beat. And we haven't lost to them since. Last season the scores were 8-1 and 50 in the regular season and 7-0 in the championship playoff. But the hockey club consists not only of the A team, which is the one out there garnering all of those championships. There is a B team and intramural hockey, too. These varied ingredients are what prompts Doc Dietz to insist he is more cook than coach. Whatever the budget is, we have to accomodate everyone who comes out, he asserts. We get S7700 and raise about S3000 on our own. If we only had to spend it on the 20 guys on the 'A' team I suspect we could waltz over everyone in our league. We buy five days of ice time a week, but the 'B' team takes it for two of those days. This a club. We spread the budget, the ice time and our resources around 50 guys, lt would make things easier just to work with the 20 guys, but that has not been our goal in the past and l'd be reluctant to change that now. Doc Dietz sees nothing strange about a Classics professor doubling as a hockey coach. lVly tradition places an emphasis on excellence in all things. Anyone who is dedicated to doing some- Coach of the Year: Dr. thing well is an artist, whether he's writing an essay or shooting a puck. The Greeks said that a person who makes a vase, a person who writes a play: both are artists. Socrates was a stonecutter and many Greek writers were also generals. But this is the age of specialization. We have a way of compartmentalizing where we have to choose one certain career. lt's not good. ln Plato's Republic we find the classic concept that music should be taught for the body and gymnastics for the soul. Remember now, though, I didn't just sit down one day and conclude, as a rational decision, that l would like hockey. I've played it all my life. I've been a player, coach and administrator. lt's a lot of fun. Doc Dietz did cite one intriguing parallel between his two areas of expertise, mythology and hockey: lVluch mythology revolves around the 'quest', which is just another way to say victory or championship. The championship is the Golden Fleece that every hockey team strives to capture. Dr. David Dietz has his professional life neatly balanced be- tween the Classics and hockey: with his Aenefd in one hand, his Victoriaville in the other. David B. Dietz 207