"There was a basketball coach at my high school who was my gym teacher," said Coleman. "He failed me because I didn't play for his basketball team. There's been a lot of adversity in my life, but telling me I can't do something is going to motivate me even more."
The O’Ree Factor
O'Ree certainly can relate to Coleman’s kind of motivation. People spent a lot of time telling him what he couldn’t do. Besides breaking the NHL's racial barrier he played 21 years of pro hockey with one eye.
"I always was asked 'How did you do that?'", said O'Ree. "I say it was something I wanted to do. I wasn't going to quit until I attained that goal."
O’Ree broke the color line in pro hockey in 1958, just three years after Jackie Robinson’s signing with the Brooklyn Dodgers began the integration of baseball.
"Four or five gentlemen were having a meeting in at the NHL office, including Lou Vairo and Ryan McBride," recalls O'Ree. "They were talking about different sports and Jackie Robinson came up. Lou said we have our own Jackie Robinson in hockey, Willie O'Rea... They called me and said they wanted to open up hockey to every boy and girl possible and let them know there's another sport they can play.
Opening Doors to Athletes and New Fans
Unlike baseball, where the Negro leagues were filled with great talent who had played as long as their peers, hockey didn’t have a deep pool of African American players in an alternate league from which they could draw.
Hockey has drawn from the international ranks of mostly white Europeans, Scandinavians, and Eastern Europeans. African Americans and Hispanics, dominant in most other professional sports, still have very little presence in the NHL. Asians’ presence in the sport remains on the Endangered List, despite the fact that the sport is played at the international level by a growing number of countries.
Willie now serves as the NHL Diversity Director of Youth Development. He is charged with bringing more minority players into the sport, and with making hockey a new way for thousands of other children to develop personal goals and the self-discipline to succeed in life. He has helped hundreds of youngsters attain their goal.
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