Riches to rags, and carrying their hockey bags

Author: Jeff Patterson

It is Mark Messier night at Madison Square Garden and John Dawson '04 is sitting in the upper deck. He is the only one wearing a suit in the nosebleed section and he sticks out like a broken nose.

Earlier that morning Dawson was hard at work at Morgan Stanley. Now he is looking down at Lord Stanley's Cup, which was sitting on a table next to the man who is about to be honored for helping the New York Rangers win it in 1994.

Fast forward to Wednesday, Jan. 17. This time Dawson is a lot closer to the ice - no more than a couple of feet away. He is standing up on the platform, behind the Middlebury Junior Varsity team's bench. He can see everything, and just about everything happens according to his commands.

When George Baumann '08 is in the penalty box, and his infraction time is winding down, the defenseman looks toward Dawson and asks, "Coach, where do you want me?"

You heard it right, Dawson, the captain of the '04 national championship team is back as an assistant coach and he coaches the JV team. And no, he does not make the commute back to the Big Apple to his desk job. He has left the rigors of Wall Street for College Street and he does not regret it.

Dawson's decision to leave the financial world to go into coaching was a surprise to many of his co-workers. "I received shocked looks, but by the end, so many people said they were so envious, and they gave me handshakes all around," he said. His one claim to fame, he told Coach Bill Beaney's Coaching Young Athletes J-Term class, was that he was the only non-Morgan Stanley employee invited to the Christmas Party.

Dawson compared his having to get out of bed every morning, while working in the City that never sleeps, to the guy in the NyQuil commercial. "I didn't want to get out of bed," he said. "I didn't want to read The Wall Street Journal on the way into work."

The youngest in his family, John had always followed what his siblings did. He never really had to make a "major" decision before - before he would just "follow the norms."

Even at the end of his four years of college he was not set on what he wanted to do. When he sought advice, the people he asked suggested that he work on Wall Street. "There are a lot of former athletes there," they said, "and it's really competitive." But Wall Street was not for him.

"It wasn't something I wanted to do long term," Dawson said. "I don't think it was the right fit for me. I think being involved with and helping younger people achieve their goals in a hockey sense is much more beneficial for me and suits me better."

Instead of a suit, Dawson is wearing a yellow tie, a sky blue button down shirt and a charcoal colored fleece behind the JV team's bench. Middlebury is playing the Green Mountain Glades of the Eastern Junior Hockey League, the same organization that beat the U.S. Women's Olympic hockey team 8-6 a year and earlier in a scrimmage before they won the bronze medal in Torino. On the back of each Glades' players' jersey, below their surname and number is a patch bearing the logo and slogan of their sponsor, Windjammer, "an upper deck pub."

Dawson has come full-circle since the time he was in the upper deck at the world's most famous arena, and the reason is none other than a hockey puck. On that Thursday night just over a year ago, Dawson listened to former Ranger teammates talk about Messier's legendary generosity, and watched number 11 get raised up to the rafters and closer and closer towards him. He realized that he had to get back into sports.

"Coach Beaney and I had talked about coming back [as an assistant coach], but I thought it was too soon to come back after graduation," said Dawson. With two years having passed since Dawson's commencement, he was not going to pass on this offer any longer.

He realized that his love of sports could not be suppressed. Growing up in Connecticut, Dawson was always out in the neighborhood playing pick-up games. "Mom had no idea where I was 95 percent of the time," he said. "She would ring the dinner bell and I'd find my way back."

Now Dawson has found his way back to Middlebury - perhaps Mead Chapel's bells had something to do with it - and his JV players appreciate having a coach who knows what they are going through as they face the challenges of a Middlebury education. "He definitely understands if people have to miss practice," said Shane Spinell '08.5. "He knows what goes on here." Practice times are communicated through e-mail. "Our times vary," said Spinell, "We find out that day when practice is."

Since the men's varsity team has a game against Williams, the day before the game with the Glades, the JV team does not get out on the ice to practice until 9:49 p.m. After just about everyone has left the rink, the JV players go through drills and finish practice with a shoot-out. Spinell skates in and scores on his first try only to be denied on his second attempt by goalie Kent Cabatingan '07. The practice will pay off in the next day's game. Just wait until the end.

During the game, Dawson told a lot of his players (just like he did Baumann) - seven, to be exact, over the course of 11 penalties - whether he wanted them back on the ice or to come to the bench after they served their penalty time. At one juncture four players waited simultaneously in the penalty box together. It was cozy, with Kyle Koziara '09, Richie Fuld '07, Garrett Salpeter '08 and Shane Spinell '08 in there all at once.

Even playing a man or two down for most of the second half (a JV game consists of two 25 minute halves, as opposed to three 20 minute periods), the Panthers won 4-3. Middlebury had jumped out to a 2-0 lead, only to have the penalties penalize them. With 3:54 remaining the Glades scored to take the lead 3-2.

With only 44.1 seconds left Jeff Schneider '07 scored the tying goal. Seconds later, Spinell, who admits to "not really know[ing] that there was a JV team, a couple of guys on the team talked me into it, 'come down,' you know," received a pass from Bobby Ocampo '07 (see below) and beat the goaltender high to the stick side.

The Glades did not have enough time to mount a comeback and Coach Dawson recorded his first career win as the head JV hockey coach. In the team's first three games - losses to the Boston Bulldogs, St. Paul's and Hudson Valley Community College - the team, according to Spinell, "was not together." But "we're stepping it up. I was pretty impressed today," he said.

Minutes after the 4-3 win, Dawson was out on the ice helping to run the varsity team's practice. He had swapped the charcoal colored fleece that he wore during the game for a Middlebury hockey warm-up jacket, but his yellow tie and sky blue button down shirt remained on underneath. Suffice it to say, Dawson and the tie fit perfectly.