Garry Kearns is a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

retired

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice h ...

head coach and player who was in charge of the program at Rensselaer for five seasons.

Career

Kearns joined the Rensselaer program a year after it won its first national title in 1954. After sitting out his freshman year (a standard practice at the time), Kearns joined the varsity squad for the 1955–56 season and led the engineers in goals (26), assists (32) and points (58), finishing in a tie for second in NCAA scoring. despite his superlative campaign the Engineers finished third out of four teams in the

Tri-State League The Tri-State League was the name of six different circuits in American minor league baseball. History The first league of that name played for four years (1887–1890) and consisted of teams in Ohio, Michigan and West Virginia. The second leagu ...

and were left out of the NCAA tournament. The following year Kearns scoring prowess declined but the Engineers managed to win their conference title. Unfortunately they were once again passed over as second-place Clarkson had a superior record (18-2 compared to RPI's 14-6-1). For his senior season Kearns was named as

team captain In team sport, captain is a title given to a member of the team. The title is frequently honorary, but in some cases the captain may have significant responsibility for strategy and teamwork while the game is in progress on the field. In eithe ...

and responded with a resurgent 56 points in 21 games. Despite this the Engineers were left out of the tournament yet again after finishing second to the powerhouse Golden Knights in their conference. After graduating Kearns pursued a short professional career with Milwaukee of the United States Central Hockey League then turned to coaching high school hockey. In 1964 Kearns returned to

Troy, New York Troy is a city in the U.S. state of New York and the county seat of Rensselaer County. The city is located on the western edge of Rensselaer County and on the eastern bank of the Hudson River. Troy has close ties to the nearby cities of Albany ...

to become the head coach for his alma mater. Kearns became the fourth head coach in the span of three years and was entering as the program was in its nadir. After three years with virtually no recruits and no athletic scholarships available the ice hockey program was in jeopardy of becoming an afterthought. The team struggled to a 10-10-2 record in his first season but once the last recruited senior class graduated the Engineers slipped to dead-last in the ECAC the next year, finishing 3-19 and being outscored 42 to 161. Kearns' team again finished last in 1966–67 season but almost tripled their win total (8) when his first batch of recruits began hitting the ice. By his fourth year with the program Kearns had gotten the Engineers back to .500 with an 11-11 record and followed that up with a 12-8-1 mark. In 1969 Rensselaer made their first appearance in the ECAC tournament since 1964 and provided the first of only two losses to the dominant

Cornell Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach a ...

team headed by Kearns' former coach

Ned Harkness Nevin Donald Harkness (September 19, 1919 – September 19, 2008) was an NCAA head coach of ice hockey and lacrosse at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and Cornell University and of ice hockey at Union College. Harkness was also head coach ...

. With program no longer in dire straits, Kearns left to start a career as an architect. He was inducted into the Peterborough & District Sports Hall of Fame in 2010 and the RPI hockey ring of honor the following year.

College Head Coaching record

Awards and honors

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kearns, Garry 1935 births Living people RPI Engineers men's ice hockey players RPI Engineers men's ice hockey coaches Ice hockey people from Peterborough, Ontario Canadian ice hockey forwards AHCA Division I men's ice hockey All-Americans