Sport(s) Ice hockey 1949–1950 Boston Olympics Education Dartmouth College 1947–1949 US National Team Role Ice hockey player | 1946–1947 Dartmouth Name John Riley, 1940–1942 Dartmouth 1950–1986 Army Positions Winger | |
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Born June 15, 1920 (age 103)
Boston, Massachusetts, United States ( 1920-06-15 ) | ||
John Patrick "Jack" Riley (June 15, 1920 – February 3, 2016) was an American ice hockey player and coach. The hockey coach at West Point for more than 35 years, Riley coached the United States to the gold medal at the 1960 Squaw Valley Olympics. He played for the U.S. Olympic team at the 1948 St. Moritz Olympics.
Biography
Riley was born in Boston in 1920 and raised in Medford, Massachusetts. He played prep-school hockey at Tabor Academy and was graduated in 1939. He played college hockey at Dartmouth College (1940–1942 and 1946–47) as well as for the U.S. Naval Air Corps (1942–1946). In 1948 he was part of an American team that was disqualified as two rival teams arrived for the Americans at the St. Moritz Olympics. (See Ice hockey at the 1948 Winter Olympics). He was then player-coach of the national team at the 1949 IIHF World Championship.
Riley began his Army coaching career in 1950, remaining the Cadets' head coach through 1986. During his tenure, he twice won the Spencer Penrose Award for NCAA Coach of the Year. He was replaced by one of his sons, Rob Riley in 1986. Another son, Brian Riley, took over the job from Rob in 2004.
Riley's Americans surprised the hockey world going undefeated in winning the country's first Olympic gold medal and second ever.
Riley was inducted in the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in 1979, and the International Ice Hockey Federation Hall of Fame in 1998. He is a two-time winner of the Lester Patrick Trophy, in 1986 (as a coach) and 2002 (as a member of the Olympic gold medal-winning United States hockey team of 1960).
In the 1960s, Riley ran the Eastern Hockey Clinic (a hockey camp for high school age players) in Worcester, Massachusetts. The camp had many NHL players as coaches, including John Ferguson, Tommy Williams (the only American NHL player at the time), Jean Ratelle, and Charlie Hodge. He died on February 3, 2016 at a retirement home in Sandwich, Massachusetts.
† Army had been admitted to ECAC Hockey but had not begun a conference schedule