Seabury to be called to SHS Hall of Fame
Published on February 22nd, 2006
STONEHAM, MA - In every great player's career, there's a village full of coaches, parents and teammates that help support, prod, challenge and mold that athlete into the finished product.
For Stoneham High School Class of 2006 inductee Bill Seabury, there were a wide cross-section of personalities from his father - who used to take him as a youngster to the Boston Arena to gleefully watch a Saturday of GBI League hockey and introduced him to the game he would come to love - to the older teammates he looked up to while starring as a high-powered center for the Spartans, but none might have been more crucial from a timing standpoint than his Middle School hockey coach John Fawcett.
Seabury played three years of both ice hockey and baseball at Stoneham High School before graduating in 1961, earning Boston Record American All-Scholastic honors and skating in the prestigious GBI during his sophomore season with the varsity - showing off skating and shooting skills honed on the frozen water atop Buckman's Pond and Dikes' Pond during his youth.
"I used to get up at 6 or 7 in the morning before school started and go out and skate on one of the ponds or go down to Rec Park when they used to have the frozen surface down there and I would just skate," said Seabury. "I used to end skating around with some of the older guys when I was a sixth-grader at the East School, and I remember - when they saw me play -- they asked me to try out for the Junior High team."
"I told them that I couldn't because I was still at the East School, but they convinced me that nobody would ever find out," added Seabury.
So, the 12-year-old showed up at the Rec Park tryouts and kept surviving to skate another day when cuts were announced from the original group of 50 or so kids trying out for the team. Eventually the cuts got the number of skaters down into the twenties, and Seabury continued to make the cut - until the fateful day when Fawcett approached the young Seabury.
"He said to me 'How come I haven't seen you in the classrooms or the hallways at the Junior High?" said Seabury. "I told him it was because I was still at the East School. He said to me 'Son, you can't be on this team if you're not at the Junior High.' But he'd seen me skate and the way I could play, and he told me I could be on the team as long as I didn't tell anyone I was still going to the East School."
Seabury was a member of a different generation of hockey player in the 50's, 60's and early 70's - skaters and shooters that honed their skills on the surface of frozen ponds rather than indoor rinks and hockey facilities.
"Guys would work more on their stick-handling, take a lot more wrist shots and would try to be more accurate with getting their shots on net, because if you wound up and missed the net you'd be chasing the puck half-way across the pond," said Seabury. "Nowadays, guys just blast away at the side of a rink wall and see how hard their slapshot can be, but back then the environment you played in really helped you refine your skills."
Seabury played with other SHS hockey greats including Bob Antonucci, Steve Camuso, Ken Cataldo, and Tom Muise while playing for several coaches during his three years at Stoneham High School, including former Olympian Frank O'Grady and Frank Mattareese, and got the biggest thrill out of playing with the older skaters during his rookie season in the legendary GBI League.
"Playing in the GBI League my sophomore year against teams like Arlington, Medford, Melrose, Newton and those teams, and being able to compete with them was a lot of fun," said Seabury, who scored five goals against Winchester and give goals against Melrose in single games during his senior year . "We played a lot of games in the Boston Garden my junior and senior year, which was also nice. I remember watching Stoneham go to the New England Finals in 1952 and play at the Boston Garden when they lost to West Springfield, and from that point on I just couldn't want to put on the Stoneham High uniform."
Seabury also donned the baseball uniform for three seasons, playing second base and batting in the heart of a strong Stoneham line-up. The talented athlete played on some good teams and had personal success on the diamond, but was never too far away from his first love: ice hockey.
Seabury took his skating and stick-handling skills to Northeastern University after high school, played in Beanpots - including a loss to Boston University on a bad call in overtime that still continues to chafe Seabury and his teammates - and ended his career scoring 114 points on the strength of 65 goals - a career that was kick-started once he found himself skating with a pair of American wingers.
"There was still a little bit of a hockey rivalry between Americans and Canadians back then, and I remember being on a line with a couple of Canadian guys when I first got there," said Seabury. "They were good kids, but I remember approaching the coach one day and I said 'coach, I'm having trouble playing with these guys...when I pass them the puck I never get it back from them," recalled Seabury. "The coach switched me to an American line after that, and my career was off and running from that point on."
Seabury was recruited by the baseball coach to play that sport for the Huskies as well, but couldn't work it into his busy schedule already filled with hockey and a co-op job. Seabury graduated from Northeastern and played seven seasons for the Eastern Concord Olympics in the old New England Hockey League - a competitive minor league system filled with former Division I hockey players from all over New England.
Seabury played an 80 game schedule with the Olympics while also maintaining a teaching job in the Stoneham School system, but was among a large number of skilled Americans that never really got a shot at the NHL.
"There were barely any Americans in the NHL at that point, and they only had the six teams - so there wasn't much of an opportunity there," said Seabury. "By the time the WHL came along, I was a little too old to be trying to make it in pro hockey - but that old New England League was some great hockey. Those rinks used to be packed every night, and played in tournaments all over the Eastern United States and Canada."
Seabury retired two years ago from teaching physical education at the Stoneham schools and also recently stepped down as the SHS golf coach, but just finished his second season as the varsity hockey coach and has been a fixture as the baseball coach at Stoneham High. A member both the Massachusetts State Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame and the Massachusetts State Hockey Coaches Hall of Fame (as an assistant coach), Seabury currently sports a career record of a staggering 406 wins and 213 losses - including a Division II State Title in 1995.
"It's a great honor to be included with all these other great athletes in the Hall of Fame, and it's also a real treat to join my daughter Kristin (a member of the inaugural Stoneham Athletic Hall of Fame Class) as an inductee," said Seabury.
The Third Class Inducted into the Stoneham High School Athletic Hall of Fame will be honored at an induction ceremony at the Montvale Plaza on Saturday, April 1 at 7 p.m. For more information about the inductees or to purchase tickets or tables for the ceremony, please call the Stoneham High School Athletic Department at 781-279-3806.
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