Eddie Jeremiah Celebration: A Reunion of Jerry's Teams

The following was written by former Dartmouth Sports Information Director Jack DeGange for this weekend's game program. Saturday night's game vs. Yale was the program's Eddie Jeremiah Celebration, honoring the Dartmouth coaching legend by bringing together more than 40 players from his 26 seasons behind the bench.

It was 45 years ago that the last of Coach Eddie Jeremiah's teams took to the Davis Rink ice. Jeremiah coached Dartmouth hockey teams from 1937 until 1967. Excluding three years during World War II when Jerry was an officer in the U.S. Navy, he coached 26 teams that won over 300 games, 10 Ivy League titles, and finished second in the first two NCAA tournaments in 1948 and 1949.

This weekend, roughly 45 members of Jerry's teams are returning to Hanover for a three-day reunion. The gathering includes players who competed with Olympic and U.S. National teams as well as earning All-America and All-Ivy honors.

In addition, Jeremiah and Jack Riley '44 (the oldest of those returning for the reunion) are among nine from this great era of Dartmouth hockey who are enshrined in the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame.

Jeremiah, who succumbed to cancer three months after coaching his last game on the old Davis Rink Ice, was an All-America on Dartmouth's 1930 hockey team. He came to Hanover from Somerville, Mass., via Hebron Academy and won seven letters with Big Green hockey, football and baseball teams.

Jerry played pro hockey for five years, including a year in the National Hockey League, before Dartmouth gave him a "trial contract" to coach hockey in 1937. His first team posted an 18-4 record and won the Quadrangular League (forerunner to the Ivy League) title. He got a new contract and a raise.

His 1941-42 team had a 21-2 record and was recognized as the mythical national champion. That team won its last 19 games, launching a record unbeaten streak of 46 games (45-0-1) that continued for four seasons.

Said Jack Riley, like Jeremiah home from wartime service and co-captain of the 1946-47 team that was 16-2-2, "Playing hockey at Dartmouth was a wonderful experience and being a member of a Jeremiah-coached team meant you were playing for a winner."

"Jerry was an old style coach," said Warren Cook '67, his last captain 20 years later. "He was as interested in the kid as he was about winning or losing."