The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
Montco Coaches Hall of Fame inducts new class
EAST NORRITON >> Bob Ayton, Neil Buckley, Steve Carcarey, Pat Manzi and Bill Zimmerman were inducted into the Montgomery County Coaches Hall of Fame Tuesday night at the 20th Annual Induction Dinner at Presidential Caterers in East Norriton.
BOB AYTON >> Ayton coached track and field and cross country at Hatboro-Horsham for more than 40 years. From 1970 to 2011, Ayton’s cross country teams went 411-73, including a 110-5 stretch from 2000-2010. Ayton’s teams won a combined 28 league championships and one district championship while he coached seven individual state champions.
“I really had no rules,” Ayton, who’s teams never finished lower than second in the league standings, said. “Coach (Mike Krzyzewski) from Duke (mens basketball) said you don’t need rules. When I heard that, everybody is rule crazy. Since we’ve gone to no rules, the kids run because they love it.”
In 2011, the Brooks Shoe Company voted Ayton into “Top Ten Most Inspirational Coaches in America.”
NEIL BUCKLEY >> Buckley joined the staff at the Haverford School in 1946 after serving in World War II. He led the wrestling team to 646 wins, 37 Inter-Ac titles and a National Prep title in 1973. He coached nine National Prep individual champions and numerous state champions. In 1957, Buckley and his team were featured in Sports Illustrated.
He also coached varsity track and 135-pound football. For 30 years each summer, he led boys from Haverford School and many other schools on “Western Safari” to various back-country destinations in Wyoming, Colorado and other states to experience the camping rigors and splendor of the West.
Womack died in 1994. A group of his wrestlers created a website (BuckleyMen.org) and produced a film honoring his impact.
STEVE CARCAREY >> Carcarey was the head baseball coach at Kennedy-Kenrick Catholic High School for five seasons and at Widener University for eight seasons. His teams went 85-46 at Kennedy-Kenrick and 185-124-2 at Widener.
“This is fantastic,” Carcarey said. “This is unbelievable. This
a point out of a trip to Montreal, back in the Wells Fargo Center for a game against Calgary, a pretty good team from the Pacific Division but nothing special. It would take them less than five minutes to fall behind and less than 14 to trail by two. They needed Tanner Laczynski, rescued from Lehigh Valley that afternoon, to score his first career goal to avoid a steamrolling, received just pedestrian goaltending from Carter Hart and saw a losing streak hit seven.
“We were flat,” Tortorella said.
Just a little.
That hardly as all the fault of the head coach. The Flyers were ill-constructed to begin with, and have been made recently to play without almost every decent player they are paying. James van Riemsdyk is out. Travis Konecny. Scott Laughton. Wade Allison. Sean Couturier, their best player, hasn’t played all season. Cam Atkinson is out. Ryan Ellis is still waiting to play his fifth game in two years. The team Tortorella was assigned to coach Monday was barely of majorleague quality, too slow, too timid, too unable to zip back on defense, too “Who’s-he and where-didhe-come-from?”
It has been mentioned that Chuck Fletcher is the wrong general manager for the wrong team at the wrong time in the wrong city, and the sooner he is blown out of Voorhees the sooner something can be done about a franchise so lacking in depth that it wouldn’t have a decent candidate for a bobblehead night. But that’s later. What about now?
That’s a theme Tortorella has been confronting of late. He knows he doesn’t have the players to compete for anything but the No. 1 overall draft pick, but he was hired not for a long-term project but for a short-term one. “An aggressive re-tool,” is what Fletcher promised.
So maybe it begins Friday, when the Penguins visit, in Game No. 20, a customary point for a little self-reflection?
No?
“It’s hard for me to make a judgment on the team,” Tortorella said, “because of all the injuries,”
So, he won’t, and instead will look for hope, even if it takes deep squinting. After the shootout loss in Montreal, Tortorella made one of his infrequent postgame visits to the locker room to spread some feel-goods. He would try to cherish the point. But what about that “be harder” jazz?
“It was probably one of our best games,” Tortorella said. “And we find a way to lose.”
They lost, then lost again, and are nearing the kind of consistent losing that had Alain Vigneault fired. The difference is, the Flyers are so injured and so lacking in skill that not even a $4 million a year coach with an edge is low on solutions.
“You want me to give you a judgment on who we are,” Tortorella said. “I can’t. I said. ‘Maybe talk to me in December.’ I can’t, because I don’t have enough players that I feel ‘is’ our team with us. But I respect how hard they played in Montreal.”
So slap it on tee-shirts — “We almost beat Montreal” — and drop them as gifts over the seats, including the many going unused anymore.
“It’s a long season,” Travis Sanheim said. “There are just certain games you aren’t necessarily going to have that energy. We got to find a way to stick with it. We just have to find some ways to win hockey games.”
It is a long season.
The injury wave will recede. Tortorella is making faces at some veterans, a hint that changes are nigh. Eventually, the fall will end.
At least that’s what the big-shots keep promising.