July will mark the 50th anniversary of my arrival in Canton and while I have been retired for eight years, I still marvel at the attraction St. Lawrence has for its athletic staff.
My original plan was to stay two or three years at St. Lawrence and then move onto something bigger. While I did look at a few other jobs, I never did find the one which would move me out of Canton…until retirement rolled along. It was a tough place to leave, primarily because of the great friends I made among area folk and my compatriots at St. Lawrence, and I am not the only one who has found it that way.
A case, or actually two, in point. Since 1975 field hockey and men’s lacrosse have had just two head coaches. And when I finally settled in an apartment on Church Street in the summer of 1975, I was the tenant of one and an across-the-street neighbor of the other. Men’s lacrosse coach Don Leet was my landlord and field hockey coach Dotty Hall was across the street. Both vastly increased my knowledge of their respective sports.
While I had covered a Middlebury-Dartmouth men’s lacrosse game when I was at the Free Press…comparing it to a street fight with funny looking sticks…Don instructed me in the finer points of the game and had some great teams during his 28-season run as head coach. He took teams to eight NCAA tournaments including six straight from 1978 on. He coached 35 All America players and was also an outstanding defensive line coach in football and was on the coaching staff of some outstanding football teams in the 1970s and 1980s. Upon retirement in 1997, he was named the USILA Man of the Year, completing his career with 253 wins.
Don turned over the reins of the lacrosse program to one of his former players, North Country native Mike Mahoney and Mike remains in the position to this day. He is a seven-time league coach of the year in lacrosse and passed his former coach on the all-time win list and now has 294 heading into the current season.
While I did have the opportunity to see a lacrosse game before my arrival in Canton, I was a total neophyte when it came to field hockey, but Dotty was a patient teacher and I covered the sport for my entire SLU career. I still wonder about some of the whistles (usually for hitting the ball with the wrong side of the stick or lifting the ball too high), but I have a much more solid knowledge now than when I started. Dotty coached both field hockey and lacrosse and compiled 306 wins in the two sports prior to her retirement in May of 2000. Fran Grembowicz took over as head coach of field hockey in the fall of 1998. She joined the St. Lawrence staff in 1991 as women’s basketball coach and was the University’s first softball coach in 1999. Fran is entering her 27th season as field hockey coach and has 217 wins including three of the most successful seasons in program history.
The aforementioned group of coaches aren’t the only ones with longevity on the SLU staff. Mary Dreuding is in her 30th year as head coach of the equestrian program and Cate Wagner is in her 24th year as assistant coach. Chris Downs recently reached the 400 win mark in men’s basketball and is in his 27th season, while SLU grad Chris Wells is in his 26th year as a SLU coach in both men’s and women’s ice hockey and recently won his 300th game in women’s hockey. John Newman, a SLU grad who ran cross country and track, joined the staff of those teams right after graduation and has been head men’s cross country coach for 23 seasons and head men’s track coach for 17. Ethan Townsend, a former Saint Nordic skier is in his 22nd season as men’s and women’s Nordic coach to round out the coaches with over 20-years in the Saint program and Randy LaBrake, a 1980 SLU graduate has been an associate director of athletics since 1998 and joined the staff as director of Appleton Arena shortly following his graduation.
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