 BC hockey head coach Jerry York, perched behind the team, directs his Eagles to success both on and off the ice.
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Two national championships. One Spencer Penrose trophy. One Walter Brown trophy. Those are the awards on the résumé. The titles and championships could speak for themselves. You could hold them as the glistening symbols of a lifelong journey to the hockey hierarchy, but that would not be fair.
To know the true person, the true coach, you need to look past the accumulated end results. You have to look past the résumé and beyond the legend that has been created. The awards tell a story, but his career has been so much more. It's been a journey of success and leadership for Boston College head hockey coach Jerry York.
He would have been happy being a high school guidance counselor. Just going back to teach in a local school district and guiding the youth would have sufficed his ambitions. Having graduated from the BC community as a triple Eagle (BC High '63, BC '67 and a master's from BC '69), he was ready to settle down with his master's degree in education and head down the noble path of teaching.
"The BC education offers you the ability to do a lot of different things. I was interested in going into teaching. I really didn't plan on making coaching a lifelong career," said York on the decisions he had to make concerning a career path.
Yet there was something that stopped him from selecting a career as a counselor. It was not a fear of failure or an anticipation of struggling in the profession. Rather it was an opportunity that precluded his visions of leading the youth through the halls in their high school years of life. Instead of meeting with high school students and assisting with their issues, York chose to accept an offer to become an assistant hockey coach at Clarkson University in upstate New York. It was another way of guiding and leading. Better yet, it incorporated his passions: guidance and hockey.
With that acceptance began a career. Thirty-two years later and with the hockey community's respect, York stands secure in the history of BC hockey. From his youthful years on the BC ice as a three-year letterman and a senior team captain, to the past 10 years of planning plays and balancing lines, the coach from Watertown. has offered a paradigm for stewardship here in Chestnut Hill.
Spring Break
delorus0
delorus0
posted 11/04/03 @ 8:35 PM EST
"UNMATCHED CLASS" does not begin to describe the person that Jerry York is! As an observer of Jerry York from his freshman season and on to his three-year varsity career, (I had the pleasure of seeing Jerry score his first varsity goal at Harvard at Watson Rink) I can attest to his hockey and leadership skills. (Continued…)