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He started skating at age 10, and was homeschooled through high school. Now 6-foot-3 and 197 pounds, he performs alongside Madison Hubbell. This is his first Olympic appearance, and he placed ninth with Hubbell in last year's World Championships. Off-ice endeavors include learning Russian, Japanese and French.
“Jim Johannson was telling me how excited he was to make these phone calls,” Gilroy says. “It is going to be a pretty fast team. I think we’re a smaller team, but the guys they have can really move up front and the defensemen can get the puck up to them. I think that’s what we went with, speed for sure.”
Plans are being made; shifts are to be decided. Gilroy has spoken with head coach Tony Granato once a week. Videos have been exchanged about system play.
“It comes back to I’m playing this game I’ve played since I was eight years old and it has taken me everywhere,” he says. “That’s the craziest part about it all. I get to have my dreams come true.”
lll Frank Gilroy Jr. holds one rule above all in the basketball league he runs. It is emblazoned on the front of his players’ reversible jerseys, above the image of a gym rat dribbling a ball. It reads: “No Zone.” He looks out at his second and third graders.
“No zone defense ever,” he says. “Ever.”
He is in the gym five nights per week, and demands perpetual motion. To start, there are 25 children — 21 boys and four girls. Each one has a rubber ball. He harps on fundamentals. Kellie, the nursing student, is the league’s commissioner.
“You’re not supposed to be a robot,” he says. “At the end of the day, it’s supposed to be, in my mind, a game.”
He pauses before explaining Matt’s time in basketball.
“I’ll put it to you this way,” he says. “Matt played soccer, and the coach said, ‘You guys play fullback, you play forward. Matt, you play the field.’ He just ran and ran and ran. Same thing with basketball. He was too crazy for basketball. It just overloaded his senses. He just never stopped.”
Frank Jr. considers his family’s path to representing the country on
An Eagle scout who works for the Lake Placid Volunteer Fire Department, Krewson will be riding doubles with Andrew Sherk in South Korea. He is no stranger to the international scene. His World Championship experience includes races in 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016 and 2017. the international stage. His grandfather, John, came from Roscommon, Ireland, and grandmother, Nora Breslin, immigrated from County Leitrim, Ireland, as an indentured servant. They had nothing when they arrived in the U.S., and their son, Frank Sr., wound up serving in the Korean War. In combat, he ended up in a river and broke his neck. When he came back to the U.S. he spent three years laid up in the VA Hospital on Kingsbridge Road in the Bronx. His right hand was a claw.
“He was finally able to get around enough to where he could walk on two feet,” Frank Jr. says.
Frank Sr. had five kids. He raised his brood in the Whitestone section of Queens, and drove Frank Jr. to gyms around the city, including Riverside Church in Manhattan.
“He was a tough guy,” Frank Jr. says. “What he lost in being able to move, he made up for in his mouth. He could rip you to shreds.”
There are 54 cousins in Frank Jr.’s generation. He was the first to go to college. The rest were cops and firemen. The one who got a job at the phone company “was God back then,” Frank Jr. says. He met Peggy Ann while both were students at St. John’s, and he works as a bond trader on Wall Street, commuting into and out of Manhattan on the Long Island Railroad
A month ago, along with Team USA's Erin Hamlin, Tucker West and Jayson Terdiman, Mortensen combined to claim the team relay silver medal in World Cup competition in Koenigssee, Germany. He is back in the Olympics after debuting in Sochi, where he finished in 14th place. everyday before reporting to the gym in the back of the Nassau BOCES Elementary School on Jerusalem Avenue each night at 7:15. He jokes that he isn’t telling Matt to give up the hockey life anytime soon.
“What do you want me to do, tell him to get off the chartered flights and on the LIRR?” Frank Jr. says. “What are you out of your mind?”
The family business is a summer basketball league. It is named in Timmy’s honor, and has been running since 1994. The Timmy League is for boys and girls in second through 12th grades. Last summer, there were 1,965 players, a record.
A New Year's baby, West is looking for a singles gold in the Far East. He first saw luge on television during the 2002 Winter Olympics, and his father, Brett, then built a backyard track at home. Tucker finished 22nd at the 2014 XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi. Four games run simultaneously each night in a back lot between St. Elizabeth Ann Seton school and St. Barnabas Parish Church. All of the kids assist.
“This is my life now,” Frank Jr. says.
Kellie is instructing an older group in the gym as her father watches. She wears a sweatshirt that has an American flag on it. “Property of USA Hockey” is pressed across the front. They know Matt is marching with the American contingent in South Korea at a time when tensions between the United States and North Korea are running high. President Donald J. Trump and his advisers are said to be considering a “bloody nose” attack or pre-emptive strike against North Korea.
“You see what’s going on, but I don’t think that will take away from the games,” Matt says. “Athletes are coming from all different parts of the world. A lot of pride. The biggest honor is being able to represent your country in the Olympic games.”
Frank Jr. can’t believe his son’s highest peak may come where his father was leveled in battle.
“It’s pretty weird. Pretty surreal,” Frank Jr. says. “Wild, right? Pretty wild.”
lll “This is my first passport,” Peggy Ann says in the kitchen. “I’ve never gone anywhere out of the country. The passport people were like, ‘Where are you going?’ I’m like, ‘South Korea.’ They’re like, ‘Why? Really? Who’s going to South Korea?’ Me!”
“We got excited when she went over the Throgs Neck Bridge,” Frank Jr. says.
Peggy Ann tries to calm Bob, a Great Dane rescue that the family added recently.
“You’re going to get sent to Siberia if you don’t relax,” she says.
The Gilroys of North Bellmore are ready for their Olympic moment. They will depart their house, which has Irish and American flags flying from a pole on the front lawn, take a left out on their street, then a right and pass the memorial for townsfolk killed in the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Eighteen Nassau County firefighters lost their lives that day. Kennedy Airport is 16 miles west via the Southern State Parkway, and their plane tickets are booked for Valentine’s Day. They are bringing Noreen and Caitlin. Matt’s wife will meet them in South Korea. They are all staying until Feb. 26, one day after the hockey final.
“Hopefully we have something to do on the 25th,” Frank Jr. says.
He stands in the foyer, where a baby grand piano is set up. All of the family’s kids can play.
“I scared away too many teachers,” Matt says. “Not for me. I ruined some peoples’ lives. They weren’t too happy with me. I just couldn’t sit still anymore. I just wanted to go outside.”
Photos of the kids hang in frames a few feet from his Hobey Baker trophy. Timmy, forever captured as a smiling youth growing into his teeth, is among his siblings in the lineup. They also lost a brother, Bryan, in 1990 when he was about a week old. Both maintain a presence in the house. A plaque on a side table reads:
“Because someone we love is in heaven
There is a bit of heaven in our home”
I’ll put it to you this way. Matt played soccer, and the coach said, ‘You guys play fullback, you play forward. Matt, you play the field.’ He just ran and ran and ran. Same thing with basketball. He was too crazy for basketball. It just overloaded his senses. He just never stopped. FRANK GILROY JR., FATHER OF MATT AND FORMER BASKETBALL PLAYER AT ST. JOHN’S (R.) IN LATE 1970s-EARLY 80s