When Warren Gelman was inducted into the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame in November, he was introduced by a surprise guest.
Growing up in western New York, Gelman was a three-sport athlete who excelled in soccer, baseball and hockey at the Nichols School before taking his athletic talents to Yale University, where he captained both the undefeated 1963-1964 freshman hockey team and the 1966-1967 varsity squad, which was one of the top ranked teams in the East.
It was during his time at Yale that he met an incoming freshman who would go on to do great things in his own right.
“In my second year at Yale, after joining the DKE fraternity, I was assigned a big brother from Buffalo,” said President George W. Bush, who taped a special message for the occasion.
“At 5-6, 140 pounds, Warren Gelman wasn’t that big of a brother. But he was a giant in stature and one of Yale University’s most illustrious hockey captains.”
Gelman’s stature as a giant in the game only grew over the years during a hockey career that would shape the lives of countless area boys and girls for the next 36 years.
It was a journey that was preordained by the hockey powers that be. Not long after returning to home to pursue a career as a lawyer, Gelman met with Bill Russell, the founder of the Shamrock Amateur Hockey Association, now known as the Bison Hockey Association, and was presented with an offer he couldn’t refuse.
“[He] told me I was coaching the Bantam boys’ team,” Gelman recalled. “He didn’t ask me to do it. He told me I was coaching. And I ended up coaching the boys for almost 20 years.”
But it was his contributions to the growth of girls’ hockey in the region where Gelman has made his biggest mark. The father of three daughters, Gelman’s girls were on skates by the time they were three. His two oldest daughters, Susan and Lisa, were born 11 months apart and played on the same boys’ team through Squirts. But as they approached Peewee hockey and the introduction of checking into the game (at the time), the concerned father went searching for an alternative.
“I looked around for a girls’ hockey team, and there were none in Western New York,” he said. There may have been one earlier in the 1970s, but in 1986 there was none. So, I put together a hodgepodge of girls anywhere from 10 to 14 and started a girls’ hockey team.”
Over the years the Bisons have become one of the top girls’ programs in the country, consistently representing New York at USA Hockey National Championship tournaments.
While Gelman has been lauded over the years for his initiative and vision to expand opportunities for girls in the game, at the time not everyone was onboard with the movement.
“We had enough girls that were interested, but we certainly had some resistance, families that would walk into the rink with their little boys with a little girl tailing along, and I said, ‘where’s the little girl skates?’ They would say, ‘hockey’s not for girls,’” he recalled. “That’s changed a lot although I think there’s still some of that sentiment around today.”
Despite the pushback, Gelman powered ahead, coaching girls’ teams even after his three daughters had moved on. After 31 years of coaching, Gelman finally hung up his coaching whistle. Or so he thought.
After his youngest daughter, Sarah, finished her playing career at Colby College, she took a job as an assistant coach back at Nichols. When presented with the opportunity to take over the reins as the head coach, she told the headmaster at the school she would do it on one condition that her father would be her assistant.
“We fought like cats and dogs all the time, but we had a great time,” dad laughed.
In their third season together, Sarah announced she was pregnant with twins and her doctor told her she was not allowed to travel or even go on the ice during her pregnancy. Once again, Gelman found himself serving as a head coach, a position he held until he retired for the last time in 2006.
“At that point I had coached 36 years out of my 61 years of being on this earth,” he said. “That tells you a little bit about how important hockey and coaching were to me.”
Gelman also made his presence felt on the state and national level, serving on various boards and committees with the goal of growing girls’ hockey across the country.
But hockey wasn’t Gelman’s only interest. An accomplished three-sport athlete as a youngster, Gelman also coached softball and baseball at his alma mater. He was a local legend on the golf links and was a founding member of the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame, serving as an integral part of the organization’s growth and success since its inception in 1991. His efforts have helped carve out Buffalo’s place as one of the great sports towns in America.
As President Bush pointed out in his short video introduction, Gelman’s induction into the Hall he helped create was long overdue. Still, the hockey coach was thrilled to see so many of his former players show up to honor him at the ceremony.
“It was a great feeling. I had almost 200 of my close friends and family that were there that came from all over the country,” Gelman said. “The most important feeling that I had was that all these people that I loved thought enough of me to be there that night.”
Gelman doesn’t go to the rink as often as he once did, but he still enjoys watching his granddaughters play. Sitting among the other parents and grandparents in the bleachers, he takes pride in how far the game has come thanks to the growing opportunities for girls and knowing that he played an integral part in all of it.
“It’s a lot of pride and good feelings when I walk into the rink or when I watch the USA team play on TV,” he said. “It’s a great feeling to see the girls game thrive. It’ll always be an important part of my life.”
For more information on the New York State Amateur Hockey Association, click here
Source: usahockey.com