hockey team for the last 30 years. Photo courtesy of Minju Kim
ANGELINA DOHRE
Photo Editor
When walking into Fredonia head hockey coach Jeff Meredith’s office, two walls immediately stand out. One is scattered with coaching awards gathered from 30 years at Fredonia, and the other is covered with photos of families of past hockey players.
These walls represent Meredith’s two most important things to him: family and coaching.
Growing up in Rochester, N.Y., Meredith stayed there until he went to Monroe Community College for two years as a criminal justice major.
“I thought I wanted to be a cop but got into it and realized that was not for me,” he said.
He decided to take a year off and spent his time unloading railroad cars full of 50 pound bags of dog chow.
“I knew I did not want to do that,” he said. “Those train cars came in from a place I never heard of before called Dunkirk, New York.”
After the year passed, Meredith attended SUNY Brockport as a physical education major.
“I thought I wanted to be a P.E. teacher but realized I didn’t really want to do that,” he said.
He first thought of coaching college hockey when attending Ohio State for graduate school.
“I was very fortunate to meet some really good people along the way and people that helped me get to where I am,” he said.
Meredith returned to Brockport as an assistant coach and ice rink manager.
“I thought at the time that if I really wanted to get into college coaching, I needed to get in with somebody that knew what they were doing,” he said.
That person was hockey coach Phil Grady at Hamilton College. Meredith spent four years with him there before being presented the opportunity at Fredonia.
According to Meredith, what made Fredonia stand out was its beauty.
“It had very nice facilities and very friendly people,” he said. “At the time I got offered the job here I had a couple of opportunities, but I think the biggest thing was the opportunity to take over a brand new program at the time and be able to build it into something that I wanted to build it into.”
When it came to hockey, Meredith was considered a “late starter” and didn’t start playing until he was 15.
“I wasn’t a player that was going to help anybody,” he said. “Maybe I could be a good teammate, maybe I could be a hard worker, maybe I could be a disciplined person, but I wasn’t going to help anybody win any hockey games with my limited ability.”
Being at Fredonia for 30 years, Meredith has countless memories to go with his career.
“Waking up in 1995 on a Saturday morning in March and playing for the national championship that night was pretty exciting,” he said.
Three out of the four seniors this year started on the team as freshmen during the season with the worst record in the history of the program.
“For those guys to be such a huge part of turning this program around and kind of reclaiming the culture is a great moment right there,” Meredith said. “For them to persevere through that and all the hard times and doubters to then get to the conference championship their senior year is a great moment.”
Meredith believes that there is a lot more that goes with coaching hockey other than the actual on-ice coaching.
“You get to work with good quality young men who want to work hard and be successful,” he said. “You have a front row seat to four years of amazing personal development for those people, and maybe even closer than their parents would see.”
Meredith recalls his role model growing up and how it shaped his own career.
“My college coach, a guy named E.J. McGuire, took a lot of interest in me, and I wasn’t a very good player,” he said. “He was really good to me and I saw the impact that kind of role could have and that’s something I wanted to do.”
One of the hockey players under Meredith is senior finance and political science major James Young. According to Young, Meredith truly cares about his players on and off the ice.
“When coaching is your career, your life and your players’ lives can sort of get lost in the shuffle of wins and losses, which isn’t the case with Coach Meredith,” he said. “Coach is always asking players about their families, how their school work is going and doesn’t forget that there is a lot of life that happens away from the rink. Coach is someone who cares about your complete overall success, not just your on-ice success.”
Meredith stays involved in the Fredonia sports community and it seems as though everyone in the department knows him.
“I am not sure about everything he does in the Fredonia sports community, but I know it is pretty expansive. Not only is he quite involved here on campus, but his efforts to connect with the community, in general, are pretty impressive,” Young said.
“Any time we’re chatting with coach and mention we need to get an errand done he always has a contact for it,” Young continued. “Coach also treats his players and colleges with respect, and I think that is why he is so well known around the community.”
Outside of coaching, Meredith said the only other thing he really focuses on is family. He and his wife have been married 26 years and have three boys, all of which have played hockey at one point.
“Spending time with my family is pretty much it,” he said. “I don’t have a lot of hobbies. This hockey program and my family are my passions.”
According to Fredonia assistant hockey coach Mike Lysyj, one word to describe Meredith would be: “legend.”
“People kind of look at him as being at the top of the totem pole,” he said. “I learned in college [from] taking sports psychology classes and coaching courses that most coaches have a shelf life, and that shelf life is at most five years. To surpass that six times really says a lot about his character and his ability to relate with people and see the bigger picture.”