Taylor Decides to Leave Cambridge; Will Coach Yale Varsity Next Season

Tim Taylor was beginning to become a permanent fixture at Harvard, until last weekend. After four undergraduate years here and seven years as freshman and assistant varsity hockey coach, Taylor announced Saturday that he has accepted the challenge of becoming head hockey coach at Yale.

"I did a lot of soul searching," Taylor said yesterday about his decision to take over a program that has produced only two victories at the varsity level in two years. "I had to resolve in my own mind that I wanted to be a head coach. And I think Yale is a good place to launch my career."

This is not the first time Taylor has considered becoming a head coach. He applied to Boston College for the job Len Ceglarski eventually got, and tried last year for the Dartmouth and Colgate positions. "I guess I wasn't positive enough about wanting the jobs," he reasoned.

Taylor's initial reluctance results from a life spent mostly within slapshot distance of Boston--he does not really want to go. "This was part of the decision that I had to make. I have to leave Harvard and a lot of friends," he said, "and I don't feel good about it. But if you did everything because of where you live, you'd miss an awful lot."

In the parlance of Boston hockey circles, Taylor is a "Local." A native of nearby Natick, he went to Milton Academy before entering Harvard to play three years of hockey under former Boston Bruin and Harvard coach Cooney Weiland.

Political Protest

As a senior in 1963, Taylor captained a team many people believe was the best to put on Crimson jerseys, compiling a 21-3-2 record and winning the ECAC championship. Unfortunately, Harvard at the time was protesting the recruiting practices of the Western colleges and told Taylor and his teammates that the school would not accept the bid to the NCAA tournament that the squad was offered.

"We knew it was going to happen," he recalls. "We were upset but it was explained very rationally to us. At that point, there was such a gap between East and West, we wouldn't have had much of a chance anyway."

Reunion

Like present coaches Billy Cleary and Bobby Carr, it was inevitable that Taylor would return to his alma mater, and in 1969 he took a postion as assistant to Weiland, working on a small salary supplemented by his work for the city by organizing the Boston Neighborhood Hockey League (BNHL) with former teammate Gene Kinasewich. He has been at Harvard ever since.

This is not to say that Taylor is provincial. Between graduation and his return to Cambridge, he tried out for the Olympic squad, and, failing that, wound up with a semi-pro team in Waterloo, Iowa. The U.S. Hockey League, which produced NHL players like Bill Masterson and Lou Nanne after the first expansion, gave Taylor a chance to start his coaching career.

"Hockey was a foreign sport to Iowa," Taylor said. "I was hired to teach the kids the game and develop interest there. I ran the program for four years."

Taylor has broadened his coaching base since then, by taking kids familiar with the sport to foreign countries. In the spring of 1973, after the Team Canada-Russia series, he and old pal Kinasewich took 17 high school players to Czechoslavakia and Russia.

Russophiles

Like Fred Shero and the recent wave of Russophiles, Taylor liked what he saw and returned to the Soviet Union for more seminars in 1975, along with 150 Canadian coaches.

"Watching the Soviets play gave me some ideas," Taylor says. "It is the style I would like us to play in this country. We're in a rut now, with the pro influence."

When Billy Cleary took over the head coaching job from Weiland in 1971, assistant coach Taylor found himself a friend and an ally in coaching styles.

"Billy and I have sort of influenced each other over the past five years, we've grown together and changed each other. We're very much akin in our philosophy, and we developed our style together.

"I can't say enough about him," Taylor goes on, "as a person and a coach. He's been a great supporter of mine."

The Best

Cleary will certainly miss Taylor's assistance both with the varsity and the freshman teams. Taylor took over as head freshman coach in 1970, and has become, as former football star Dick Clasby said at this year's hockey dinner, the best freshman coach in the country because he's the only college freshman coach in the country.

While most of the other Ivy schools, Yale included, are abandoning their freshman programs, Harvard has stood by its first-year squad. But with plenty of players coming in each year and a coach of Taylor's calibre, who has a six-year record of 79-29-1, to instruct them, Harvard has no reason to even consider abandoning its freshman skaters.

Yale, on the other hand, is not so lucky. Former Eli mentor Paul Lufkin has left Taylor with only two teams and a varsity squad that has amassed a 2-41-1 record the past two campaigns.

"A lot of people wondered why I took the job," he said. "But they told me at Yale that they'd cooperate with a coach that did his homework. Everyone seems to be committed to turning the program around. It's a good time to get in."

Losers

Initially, Taylor will have to work with what talent he has inherited from Lufkin, a group that has gotten into a "losing frame of mind." That is just the first hurdle.

"I think I can turn around the attitude pretty quickly and get the kids wanting to play. Then, I have to get more kids to come to Yale. That's the challenge--to get them to choose Yale over Harvard."

Taylor knows all too well the advantages of playing hockey in Boston. "Harvard has the Beanpot, Cambridge and all," he comments, "versus New Haven. There will be a lot of things to overcome, but not everyone wants to go to Harvard."

No Move Yet

It may be a while before Taylor himself can get over some of the prejudices that a lifelong association with the Hub and Harvard has produced. He is not planning to terminate his ties around the area, and doesn't plan a move to scenic New Haven until next fall.

In the meantime, he will continue to help out the Harvard golf team this spring and run his hockey instructional camp in Natick in the summer. For the time being Tim Taylor can continue to enjoy being a "local." Then he must think about becoming a fixture at Yale.