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Asbury Park Press from Asbury Park, New Jersey • Page 49

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Asbury Park Pressi
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Asbury Park, New Jersey
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D8 Ashury Park Press Wednesday. September 23. 1992 LL'U Md Tom Wj SLATER Holik makes an impression as Devils knock off Islanders Randy McKay wore the captain's, 'C" for the Devils. However, the hon- did not last long, as McKay was ejected for being the instigator of a fight with David Chyzowski at 4:37 of the second period. The Islanders were held without a shot for the entire second period (the Devils had 14) and did not get another shot on goal until Brian Mullen's two-on-one goal at 3:09.

Left wing Jeff Christian, a longshot to make the team, had two assists for the Devils but fanned on a backhander with an open net on a third-p b. iod power play. Holik later scored. Devils scored on their first two power plays and finished four for 10. Islanders were one for five.

Mark Titz-patrick started in goal for the Islanders and gave up three goals on 18 shots in 30:08 before being replaced by Glenn Healy, who gave up two on 23 shots. Before the game, the Devils returned three players to their junior teams; defensemen Cale Fulse, top draft pick Jason Smith, and right wing Yanick Frechette were sent back to Regina (WHL), Portland (WHL) and Granby (QMJHL), respectively. Nikolai Borschevsky had two goals and was a scoring threat all night as the Toronto Maple Leafs tied the New York Rangers 4-4 in a penalty-filled exhibition game. Brandon Convery and Guy Larose also scored for the Maple Leafs. Darren Turcotte, James Patrick, Doug Weight and Peter Andersson scored for the Rangers.

By COLIN STEPHENSON PRESS STAFF WRITER UNIONDALE, N.Y. If preseason games are all about making impressions, Bobby Holik made a good one in his first appearance in a New Jersey Devils' uniform. Holik, the hulking 6-foot-3, 220-pound left wing who came to the Devils from the Hartford Whalers in the Sean Burke DEVILS 5 tra(e 'ast montn ISLANDERS 3 pretty much had mhhmmb his way in the Devils' preseason opener last night, scoring two goals and adding an assist in the Devils' 5-3 win over the New York Islanders at Nassau Coliseum. "One game a season doesn't make, especially in a training camp situation," said Devils' coach Herb Brooks, the fourth coach in the last four training camps for New Jersey, "but he's really a fine prospect." Holik came to the Devils on Aug. 29 along with two draft picks for estranged goaltender Burke and' de-fenseman Eric Weinrich.

Playing on a big line most of the night with center Janne Ojanen (6-2, 200) and right wing Bill Guerin (6-2, 200), Holik ran over people all night and was a force on just about every shift. "I always do that," he said with a laugh. "I like (hitting), it's part of the game. It's a big part of my game, it helps me to get my intensity up." Some early power plays helped get all the Devils' intensity up. De- Gretzky From page 1 "When I was hurting in March and April and May, I had no idea where I got hit, how long ago," he said.

"When the season ended, I went on a holiday with my family. I spent some time in a clinic in Hawaii. I thought I had sore ribs." Gretzky said at times the pain went away, and added that he felt very good at training camp. He also felt a lot better yesterday than he did last Wednesday. "I'm in the best care possible," he said.

"We're very optimistic. There are a lot of factors ahead of me. We have to take it one day at a time. "I woke up Tuesday morning with this soreness and checked into the hospital Wednesday. The only thing I'm dealing with right now is getting rid of the pain so I can walk down the street with you guys.

I'm going to be as aggressive, as hard-working on this, as possible. "For those people who said 'Wayne Gretzky never gets I'm up here proving that it's a lie." Gretzky called for the NHL to enforce rules on hitting from behind. Al That By TOM SLATER PRESS STAFF WRITER IT'S BEEN about 30 years but Les Konyhas can still remember picking out his goalkeeper 30YEARS for the first Toms Kiver High school soccer team. He went for the longest and leanest kid he had. At that time, it was a sophomore named Ed Graichen.

SHORE CONFERENCE longest neck any CVftpcp kid I can remember OUvvCK an(j was a skinny kid," said Konyhas, who started the Toms River program at what is now Toms River South. "And he wasn't bad. He did a good job in there from what I recall." But Graichen didn't take any chances on pure enthusiasm. He figured emulating the no-nonsense Konyhas couldn't hurt. So he went out and got himself a crew cut the kind Konyhas had and still sports today.

"I knew I didn't have the skills to have a lock on the team and I knew there was going to be tough competition to make the team," said Graichen, now Lacey High School's head coach. "I knew I had to do something to make an impression. I don't know if that was the reason, but I made the team." Graichen wasn't unlike many of the players who decided to try soccer as a sport in the early 1960s. They were athletic but had little or no experience in organized soccer. Kick From page Dl went out of bounds.

And state tournament games that were tied were decided by comer kicks. "It was lot of fun back then and it was certainly different than today," said Les Konyhas, who started the program at Toms River High School (now Toms River South) in 1961 and again at Toms River North in 1969. "The players we had back then obviously weren't as skilled as kids are today. But they really weren't too bad, considering a lot of players at that time didn't know too much about the game. Most of them never played before.

There were no youth programs, no soccer camps. But they learned and the coaches learned with them. And we did have pretty good rivalries." Konyhas was one of the few coaches familiar with soccer in the early days. He played on two New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association Group III championship teams as a midfielder at Hamilton High School, Mercer County, and was a junior varsity coach at Hamilton East for four years before coming to the Shore in 1960 for his first coaching job. "Where I came from, they didn't have a football program," said Konyhas.

"Up in Mercer County, everyone played soccer. We had a lot of work to do to catch up to the Trenton area and other parts of the state." While Konyhas came in with a working knowledge of the sport, Ted Schloesser of Monmouth Regional was at the other end of the spectrum. He started as a volunteer assistant in 1962 when the Golden Falcons were starting a program. But before the season even began, he moved up to head coach. "It happened so fast, I really didn't know what hit me," said Schloesser, who has been with the Falcons for all 30 years.

"I went out and bought as many books as I could find, went to some games and tried to learn as much as possible. The style, if you could call it that, was a lot of kick and run. The technical styles of todayf were definitely not there. But there was a lot of interest by the kids." And there were the early powerhouses and superstars of the games. Neptune, Long Branch and Point Boro dominated the first few seasons with the Scarlet Fliers winning the first three Shore Conference playoffs.

George and Bob Tiedemann and Len Renery, who later played for the New York Cosmos, were the mainstays of that team. "We had players who had played soccer before," said Bob Tiedemann, the long-time wrestling coach at Neptune whose three sons now play soccer. "My brothers and I were born in West Africa and had grown up with the game and Len was born in England and had come over here when he was 13. That gave us a big advantage." Monmouth became the first team from the Shore Conference to win a state championship. The Golden Falcons upset Vailsburg, 3-1, in November of 1965.

Bob Dugan scored two goals to pace Monmouth over heavily favored Vailsburg in the championship game. "It was great for the team but not "A lot of us wanted to play football and were fairly decent athletes but I was a skinny kid, so football was out," said Graichen, who was also a three-year starter on the Indians' state championship baseball team in 1963. "I just gravitated towards soccer. I played a little wing back in my first year, but because I had pretty good hands from baseball, I ended up in the goal." Graichen got thrown into the fire immediately as the Indians participated in the first round-robin tournament sponsored by the Shore Soccer Officials Association. The Indians were scheduled to play the second game of the day against Neptune, already established as a powerhouse.

While the Indians watched Long Branch play Brick in the opening game, Graichen found out exactly what he might be in for. "We're sitting there watching this game, never having seen a high school game before, and not knowing what to expect," said Graichen, who has coached 19 years at Central Regional and Lacey. "Then these two players collide and one guy shatters his knee right in front of us. The bone is exposed and he's in excruciating pain. We just looked at each other in shock.

We figured this might happen every game. But luckily, nothing serious like that happened." Most of Graichen's memories center around Konyhas, the tough coach. "He was God-fearing," said Graichen. "Here we were just little high school kids who didn't know anything and there was Les, an imposing figure with that crew cut. He was like a giant to us.

But even then, he made soccer fun. He let us have a good time with it." too many other people knew about it," said Schloesser. "The only spectators we had were an injured player and our athletic director. But that's the way it was back then. The casual sports fan really didn't know about soccer, except ihat it was a foreign sport." Along with the teams, there were the early stars.

Point Boro had Harry Wolfersberger, Toms River had Richie Staats and Val Frenzel. Monmouth had goalkeeper Bruce Forsythe and Dugan while Long Branch had Charlie DeSan-tis and Mike D'Ambrisi. The only thing they didn't have was equipment. "Nobody had soccer shoes," said Ed Graichen, who played goalkeeper for Toms River in 1962. "Kids either wore sneakers or these reconditioned shoes that were like football training shoes.

They were so uncomfortable nobody wanted to wear them. And there were no elaborate uniforms. We had T-shirts the first year. In goal, I just wore an old sweat suit." The lack of equipment didn't bother Neptune, however. They used their foreign connections to import decent shoes.

"You have to remember that sporting good stores didn't sell soccer shoes back then," said Bob Tiedemann. "There was no reason to. But Len Renery's father would get us shoes from England and give them to us. We were the only guys to have shoes." One of the biggest influences of the early years was the Shore Soccer Officials Association. Anchored by Brick's Harold Handchen, Neptune's Reginald Renery and the late Jack Schrumpf, the association not only refereed games but its members were educators, promoters and even competition for the local talent.

"We started with 10 officials and most of us had played before," said Handchen, who played at Slippery Rock College in Pennsylvania and still officiates today. "We knew the game and wanted to do something to get it started in the Shore. One of the biggest things we did was to sponsor the round-robin tournament. We started with four teams at Long Branch High School and increased it to eight teams the following year. It kept getting bigger and finally 34 teams were playing at three different sites." The officials also attended team practices at coaches' requests to explain rules, sponsored the annual all-star banquet, picked the All-Shore team and even played an exhibition game the first couple of years against the All-Shore team.

"They were a godsend," said Schloesser. "There were a lot of coaches like me who were new to the game and they patiently explained the calls and helped the players out. The officials association supported soccer very strongly." Still, some things never change between officials and coaches. "One time in the round-robin tournament, one of the coaches came up and said he was new and knew nothing about soccer," Handchen said. "He asked me to help him out during the games and I said OK.

In the third game that day, I made a call against his team and here comes this guy, running on the field and screaming at me. I told him he was amazing. That morning, he knew nothing about soccer and three hours later, he knew more than me. He must have been a fast learner." fenseman Myles O'Connor opened the scoring at 1:39 with the Islanders' Jeff Finley sitting out a holding penalty and Doug Brown scored a rare power play goal to make it 2-0 when he batted a backhander out of the air at 8:46, shortly after the Devils' Todd Cope-land returned to the ice after a four-on-four situation ended. David Volek's power play goal at 10:38 cut the lead to 2-1, but Holik's first goal 1:11 later made it 3-1.

The entire line of Holik, Ojanen and Guerin was impressive especially Ojanen, who skated and passed well and ended with two assists. Also impressive for the Devils was the speedy line of Brown, Jarrod Skalde and Tom Chorske. Chorske added a third period power play goal and Skalde had two assists. Goaltender Craig Billington, whose season ended with knee surgery last spring, played the entire game for New Jersey and stopped 22 of 25 shots, including a sensational, reaching-behind-and-over-his-head catch of Marty Mclnnis' rising slap shot that would have tied the game at 4-4 with 6:01 left in the third period. Billington, who had surgery to repair a torn meniscus (cartilage) in his right knee, said he doesn't think about the injury anymore and the knee feels as good as it ever did.

"They say a knee is never the same as it was (after an injury) but the rehab went well and I really don't notice any difference," Billington said. With Bruce Driver and many other veterans not in the lineup, though he said he wasn't certain how he was injured, it seemed clear he believes that a hit from behind, or more than one hit, caused his current problem. "That's an excellent way to get this kind 6f injury," Watkins said. The doctor said the disk has extracted out into the spinal canal, putting intense pressure on one of the nerves in Gretzky's ribs. There is no evidence of injury to the spinal cord, Watkins added.

"This is something that has the potential for complete recovery," Watkins said. "We're optimistic he will recover. To try to make a parallel to another case would be just inappropriate." Watkins has also treated two other famous backs that of hockey star Mario Lemieux of the Pittsburgh Penguins and baseball star Darryl Strawberry of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Strawberry recently underwent surgery. Gretzky has been on medication and that, along with complete rest, has helped rid him of much of his pain.

Watkins said Gretzky would not have to be put in traction. Gretzky made it clear he wants to return whenever possible. "First of all, it's my life," he said. "Right now, I don't have anything on my plate or on my mind that excites McGinnis, a 44-year-old golfer who played on the PGA Tour in the 1970s, had one of the early tee-off times and he made the most of it, especially on his final nine holes. McGinnis teed off from the 10th hole to start his round, Tiad birdies of 15 and eight feet on his first two holes and then missed birdie putts of 12, 4, 8 and 20 feet on his next four.

His bad hole was on the par-3, 235-yard 17th hole, where his tee shot landed in one of Forsgate's deep bunkers and led to a 5. Birdie putts of five and four feet on the first and second holes got McGinnis back on track. He added a two-foot birdie on the fourth, an eight-footer on the sixth and a 15-footer on the par-5 ninth hole, his final hole. G.S.P. EXIT 98 I 1-195 EXIT 35B NJ 908-681-6400 A player way ahead of his time Bf Len Renery was playing high school soccer today, he'd be a legend.

His flowing red hair, flamboyant, swash-buckling style of play and great sense of humor would have made him a favorite with both the fans and media. His versatility and skill, honed in England for 12 years, would have made him a great player in any era. Alas, Renery was born a few years ahead of his time. He was the Shore Conference's first superstar of soccer when the sport drew few spectators or media attention. He was an All-American player at Columbia University when college soccer was strictly minor league.

He played for the New York Cosmos before Pele blessed the North American Soccer League with his approval. Yet, none of this really bothers the carefree Renery. "I had a great time back at Neptune High School and the Jersey Shore," said Renery, who now runs soccer camps in California. "I was there in the beginning, I guess. I came to Neptune when I was just 13 and I had already been playing for 10 years.

I came here and soccer was only recently started in high school. There were no youth programs. It was pretty barbaric, actually. A lot of kick and run, a lot of physical play. There wasn't much here at all soccer-wise." Renery didn't take long to make something of nothing.

With Renery as the centerpiece player, Neptune quickly established itself as the first powerhouse of the Shore. The Scarlet Fliers won three straight Shore Conference championships and advanced to the New Jersey State Interscholas- tic Athletic Association semifinals in 1965 before being ousted by Hamilton East on a controversial call. A starter for four years, Renery was named to the All-Shore team threestraight sea- sons. "I remember that game," said Renery. "We got robbed.

One of their players pushed our goalkeeper (Dan Thome) into the goal. It was incredible. We were very disappointed. In fact, we had a reunion of that team a couple of years ago and we were still talking about that game. "But soccer was a minor sport back then.

I think Neptune did a lot to put it on the map. We had real good teams back then and you could never beat us at home. Point Boro was real good, too, and Freehold and Howell had good teams. There was a lot of rivalries back then that I believe still exist today." Renery wasn't the only real soccer player on that Neptune team. Bob and George Tiedemann learned the game in North Africa while Thome, Rafer Jackson and Ron Aire all were talented players.

But it was Renery who made the team, playing an attacking role out of the defense a style that was about 15 years ahead of its time. "He was the best player of that era," said Tiedemann. "He had about 20 goals a season for three straight years. While the rest of the teams were playing kick and run, Len made us play a more sophisticated game. I know he helped me.

I scored 20 goals my last two years and he must have set me up for 90 percent of them. He could have played at any time." From Neptune, he moved to Columbia and settled in as a defender, making All-American as a senior. He majored in English Literature and toyed with becoming a sportswriter for a while. Eventually, however, he felt he could play soccer better than he could write about the game. He led a nomadic professional career, playing for the Cosmos for the 1973-74 seasons the year before Pele arrived and moved on to the Baltimore Comets, San Diego Jaws and California Surf of the North American Soccer League.

He played a couple of seasons in the Major Indoor Soccer League with the New York Arrows before retiring in the early 1980s. "All the teams and leagues I played in are out of business now," said Renery. "It was sad to see professional soccer fall so low in America. For a while, it looked like it was on the upswing but it never took off. Right now, I'm doing a lot of soccer camps and teaching soccer to a new generation of players.

Hopefully, by the time they grow up, there'll be a pro league they can play in." Tom Slater is an Asbury Park Press staff writer. me to that level. Everyone in life has something they love to do. I have to give it my best effort. From the first day, I've been very positive about it." Kings' owner Bruce McNall said he was less concerned Tuesday than he was a few days earlier, before the problem was diagnosed.

"I'm more concerned about his pain and his health than his return to hockey," McNall said. "He's obviously had some pain for several months. To imagine his possibly playing hockey throughout the (1992) playoffs is absolutely remarkable. "You can't replace Wayne Gretzky, nobody can. I hope the team rallies around him.

It isn't a one-man sped. I think it will be an interesting Gretzky has been nicknamed "Tne Great One" and his number, 99, is a synonym for "great" in Canada, He has also been called the "Babe Ruth of hockey," and for good reason. No player in history has dominated his sport the way Gretzy has. Every hockey fan from Austin to Boston knows of Gretzky's accomplishments a nine-time MVP and nine-time scoring champion. He is the only player in NHL hisiory with 2,000 points, surpassing Gordie Howe's legendary record of 1,850 on Oct.

15, 1989, in a dramatic return to Edmonton, where he had played for 10 brilliant seasons. in state PGA It was one of McGinnis' best rounds since finishing fourth in the Dodge Open earlier this year. "I played well in the Dodge in May, but since then I have played terribly," McGinnis said. "Today, I just turned it around." nicks baseball card show I SEPT. 27th I 9:30 am 4:30 pm I I SHERATON EATONTOWN I I (GSPExit105toRT36EtoRT35SO) I Industrial Way Dir.

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Host pro Billy Ziobro, former state PGA champion Gary Ostrega of Colo-nia, Terry Woodard of Beacon Hill and Dave Laudien of Howell Park were all tied for second at 1-under-par 70. Former state Open champion Steve Sieg of Navesink and Baker Maddera of Rock Spring headed a group of nine players tied at even-par 71. Saturday Night Special! September 26 7 PM Championship Demolition Derby and Championship Street Stock Car Races Plus Qualifying Events For Both Watch Us On Monmouth Cablevision TV 34 Every Fri. at 10 PM and Sat. at 5 PM WJLK 1310 AM Official Radio Station of Wall Stadium WALL BfAMUSill MOTOROLA' BRAVO 9QO MHZ -fl)STATB SERVICES POWER RAOER tkt tte Mm tlma DkjUj faga" I tll-M MwtWy Unfcntod Uw New $99.00 First 3 months AirUme $33.00 QtOTAL $132.00 SfVM MMI am 5 SUM Stntm.

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