Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/123805
A By Dan Murphy s the final seconds of the Central Collegiate Hockey Association's existence ticked off the Joe Louis Arena scoreboard in downtown Detroit, Notre Dame's players came piling over the boards. They shucked their gloves and sticks and raced toward their net to celebrate a conference championship. Behind them, Irish head coach Jeff Jackson raised one leg on the vacated bench and watched. He shook a couple hands. One member of the Notre Dame support staff coerced a brief hug. Otherwise his arms stayed at his sides. Mostly he stood and silently soaked in the end of an era, his face plastered in a stoic gaze. "Obviously, we're thrilled," he told a rinkside television reporter with all the chutzpah of a teacher checking attendance. The etymology of the word stoic begins with a Greek philosophical movement in the third century B.C. The Stoics approached the world with an unaffected calm. Their steady disposition was rooted in a belief that all of life's events are dictated by a higher natural order with the best intentions in mind. Jackson's final trip to "The Joe" — this man accepting this conference's last curtain call in this city — would have made the Stoics smile, or at least peacefully nod in agreement. The CCHA officially came to an end on March 24 when Notre Dame beat Michigan 3-1 to claim the league's 42nd conference championship. It was Jackson's seventh title and his third at Notre Dame. Michigan's Red Berenson and former Michigan State coach Ron Mason, the only two men who have won more CCHA Tournaments, were both on the ice to congratulate him. Jackson isn't one to show his emotions, but the moment for him was poignant for many reasons. Detroit is where Jackson fell in love with hockey. The coach was born in Davisburg, Mich., a rural town dotted with lakes halfway between Flint and the Motor City on I-75. In the winter, the lakes would freeze and the kids would learn to skate. When Jackson was 9 years old, his father passed away and he moved with his mother to Roseville, a suburb of Detroit. She wanted him to have a male influence in his life, so Mrs. Jackson signed her son up for a Big Brother. His name was Larry, and Jackson remembers him as a kind, middle-aged married man with children of his own. Larry brought Jackson to his first Red Wings game at Olympia Stadium and introduced him to the sport. "That was the first time I had ever seen hockey," he said. "We would skate. I grew up on a lake, but we never thought about hockey. I didn't know anything about hockey." He followed the struggling Red Wings religiously through his teenage years, lining up for $5 mezzanine tickets with his high school buddies until the team left Olympia. He took a chair and a brick when they shut its doors and he stills has them today. The Wings moved a few miles to the east into Joe Louis Arena in 1979. Jackson says he was there on opening night. He was one of the 21,002 fans in attendance when a 51-year-old Gordie