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Our latest Glace Bay Minor Hockey Association profile is on Ken Tracey. Anyone who has spent any amount of time at any Cape Breton rink knows that the name Ken Tracey is synonymous with coaching excellence and experience.

Currently during the 2014-15 hockey seasons, Ken is wearing a couple of coaching hats which keeps him very busy while he tries to stretch his spare time between the hockey towns of Glace Bay and the Northside. In addition to his hockey coaching commitment in Glace Bay he is also the head coach for the Cape Breton Jonel Jim Cougars Major Bantam AAA team which is based out the Emera Centre in North Sydney. During the past five years with Tracey at the helm, his team has been successful in winning two silver medals at the League Provincial Championships. In fact Ken’s team will be pursuing league top honors once again as the Cougars embark upon the start of their playoff season. The Cougars will be facing the visiting Cole Harbour Red Wings this Sunday March 1st at 11:15am in North Sydney to open the playoffs.

For Tracey, a lifelong Glace Bay resident, he finds himself in his third season designated as GBMH’s Hockey Development Professional. Ken’s responsibilities include developing guidelines for all our association coaches so that they can use and implement them during the year. Ken schedules and runs a couple weekly hockey clinics for every association team where he focuses on defense, goaltending and individual skill development. Various weekly hockey clinics are made available to all players and teams throughout the entire season specializing in areas like defense & goalie clinics as well as skill development. In addition to on-ice instruction he provides off-ice mentoring as he regularly attends most team’s games to monitor player’s progress during the season. Based on his feedback and assessment Ken offers our coaches round-table discussion opportunities and invites various guest coaches and speakers in for further off-ice advice and instruction.  

When Ken was asked how he got started into coaching? Surprisingly, his reply was not connected to hockey. In fact Ken, reflected back “my coaching career started with Little League Baseball when I was 15years old coaching the Lighters Yankees. I Coached the Section Two Little League All Stars in 1977 at the Canadian Little League Championship in British Columbia. Actually Ray Ferraro, currently TSN hockey game analyst, played for Trail B.C at that same tournament”.  In 1977 Ken got involved in ice hockey coaching for GB Minor Hockey at the Bantam “A” level helping out the late Shelly Syms and Bruce Campbell who were co-coaches. The following year he took over the head coaching job for Glace Bay’s Midget “A” Miner’s team for the next three hockey seasons. As he acquired a taste for stronger competition and a greater challenge Tracey moved up to the higher competitive junior and senior levels. He enjoyed coaching stints with the Sydney Junior Millionaires and the Cape Breton Junior Alpines which won two Nova Scotia Provincial titles as well as an Atlantic Cup Championship in 1997. From 2000-02 he coached the Cape Breton Tradesmen of the Nova Scotia Major Midget Hockey League. Ken also spent a couple of years coaching at the High School Hockey level as he shared the bench with Kent and Barry Verbeski helping the Glace Bay Panthers claim back-to-back CBHSHL Championships.
 

Although Ken Tracey can be considered a journeyman hockey coach his start into hockey as a player was rather humbling. Growing up in the Bay, Ken came from a rather large family nucleus of fifteen siblings. As a youngster he stated “Keith (Fess) Anderson and I grew up together playing on the ponds like the Beacon St. Dam and the Sugar Bowl (now the site of OVEC)”.  He continues “I was walking home from the dam one cold winter day when he was approached by Keith's dad Fess Sr, who asked me if I would like to play in Bugsy Seward’s Hockey Clinic. With a resounding “yes, Fess Sr drove me to my house, told my mom and dad that he was taking me to the Miners Forum to play”. At that time all Ken owned was a plastic blade stick and a pair of skates. Fess rounded up some extra gear which gave to Ken and away they went to the forum. From that point on Ken got hooked into hockey a game that he got to love, as he played Common School Hockey, Minor Hockey and then advanced to playing junior hockey with both the Miner’s and the New Waterford Jets. Ken tends to be a tad modest when asking about his playing skill. Most hockey fans from both Glace Bay and New Waterford recall plenty of junior hockey games when Tracey excelled as a slick playmaking forward who scored more than his share of game winning tallies.

Ken says there were plenty of others along the way who had a positive influence on his involvement in playing and coaching sports. He recalls Bobby Morrison (who he still sees at the rink watching his grandson play) who coached him on the Flyers team in the Seward’s Hockey Clinic. He states “during one game I scored two goals playing with my old plastic blade. The very next game coach Morrison showed up with a brand new stick for me, it was a straight blade wrapped in black electric tape”. This moment in time appeared to be an impact moment for Ken during his youth, as he still cherishes Morrison’s kind gesture to this very day.  
 
Tracey also credits a couple of baseball coaches for teaching him some fundamentals insofar as personal discipline was concerned. He recalls being at a Little League practice with coaches Zackie Cormier and Johnny MacIsaac. He says “me and Johnny Conron were clowning around during ball practice, when all of a sudden coach MacIsaac walked out on the field, grabbed us by our heads and banged them together. Of course we weren’t hurt, except for our pride as we were more shocked than anything”. He was then sent home early from practice and immediately knew he had to answer to his dad as to why he was home early from ball practice. After explaining what had happened Ken said “ I was only home long enough to have a piece of my mother’s homemade bread and molasses and then my dad yanked  me by the ear and told me to get back to practice”. That was that!.
 

As Ken looks back both on his playing time and coaching time he knows that although he has accumulated plenty of experience in sports he is realistic that the art of coaching is and always will be a learning piece especially when you combine sports skills with human dynamics. Ken closes off his profile with a piece of advice that the late John Junior Hanna passed onto him. He said John once told me “the day that you think you know it all, is the day you should quit because as a coach we learn everyday”.
 

Our Glace Bay Minor Hockey Association, coaches and players want to thank Ken Tracey for his on-going dedication and commitment of helping to grow and strengthen our hockey development programs.

(article: Charlie Campbell GBMH website)