Coach Ed Athey embodied Washington College athletics for the entire second half of the 20th century. Coach, with his six-decade mutual love affair with the college, was a man who represents the best of what graduates of that time remember about their alma mater.
When I was a student at Washington College in the early 1970s, Coach Athey was the Director of Athletics as well as the head soccer and baseball coach. I remember thinking that Coach was old then, as he was over thirty.
In fact he was in his fifties at the time, was in great shape, and still a competitive athlete. Whenever we passed through Cain Gym and happened upon the noontime badminton matches between Coach Athey and Coach Don Chattellier, we dropped everything to watch, as these were spectator events of extraordinary athleticism, and not to be missed.
Coach was still the basketball pick-up player of choice (along with Coach Tom Finnegan), but the special treat was when he would show us his two-hand set shot from mid-court. Making these shots straight-up was routine for Coach.
The interesting shot was when he would call it “through the rafters and nothing but net.” Somehow he would weave the ball up through the metal rafters and find the way down through the net, without it touching anything. This seemingly impossible shot was twenty years before the famous Larry Bird ad on TV, and was real. Coach would make more of these than he missed, and when I stand at mid-court today I still can’t see how he did it.
Coach Athey was my first real boss. How lucky was I? As a twenty-five-year-old head coach at Washington College, I was fortunate enough to work under him as the Athletic Director. Needless to say, I was spoiled for life.
As challenging and emotionally taxing as coaching can be, especially for a (too) young head coach, it is indescribable how fortunate I was to have had a mentor with the wisdom, compassion, perspective and love for people and life that Coach Athey had. His spirit has always been truly infectious.
Athey’s Field is a wonderful collection of many of the stories of Washington College heroes, history and traditions that Coach Athey was a part of. A set of stories is framed around the coaches, teams and athletes that, like Coach Athey, chose to make this College their home. His mentors: Tom Kibler and Charley Clark; his friends and peers: Don Chatellier and Don Kelly; his coaches: Tom Finnegan, Penny Fall, Fred Wyman and Holly Bramble; and the countless athletes who loved him because they were fortunate enough to play for him and those who loved him only because they knew him.
For any who experienced Washington College between the late 1940s and the late 1980s, it is all still Athey’s Field. Some of us are just lucky enough to be keeping his seat warm.
Over the last fifty years no man has managed to touch and inspire more members of the Washington College family.
And, next time you are in Cain Gym, go to mid-court and see if you can figure out how he made those shots.
[By Bryan L. Matthews, Washington College Director of Athletics, Excerpted from Athey’s Field, from Literary House Press]
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