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After my son graduated in 1988, I agreed to be Jim's assistant Hockey Coach. At that time, hockey referees had about 15% tolerance. Jim and I made a great combination, as I usually kept him from shouting one of his great one liners when he had reached the referee's 14% tolerance level.
Last week, I called Coach Miz, to tell him that my son Dan was named head coach of Downers Grove South High school. Jim generously offered to give Dan a box full of his best coaching books, so I met him at a near by teacher's hang out, and we shared a few stories from the past. Jim warned me that referees have 0% tolerance today and teachers usually teach the way that they were taught. That is a handicap for Dan since he has a volume full of one liners that are guaranteed to get a referee to the 15% level.
On that day, Jim was feeling great, and he told me he was ready to start playing hockey with "The Duffers" (my old friends that have been playing together for over 30 years). Coach was looking forward to getting Our 1992 Kennedy Cup Championship team together for a ten year anniversary reunion. I hope we can carry out his final wish and get the boys together. I know Jim will be there spirit ready to drop one of his "One Liners" on us.
One my favorite memories that I have of Jim came when we were seeded 8th in the State and Fenwick was #1. We were engaged in a heated battle after 2 periods. Jim's one liners were not hitting Fenwick's coach's funny bone. Jim realized that their coach was ex-Black Hawk enforcer, "King Kong Korab", so in between periods, He went over to the officials in the scorers box and asked them to please stop him if he gets angry and tries to go after King Kong. We beat the number 1 team with a goal by sophomore Darcy Parsons.
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