Lucas Punkari
After it was announced last Tuesday that he would be inducted into the Northwestern Ontario Sports Hall of Fame in Thunder Bay this September, Fort Frances native and former U.S. college hockey head coach Bill Selman almost immediately began to receive messages of congratulations from those who have known him over the years.
“When you have been out of the sports scene, and certainly the sports marketing scene, for the last 11 years, you don’t tend to get much recognition and you are certainly not in the limelight anymore,” Selman, 73, said from his summer residence on Rainy Lake earlier this week.
“I’ve gotten a few phone calls here with people congratulating me, such as one from Terry Ogden the other day, along with some other people that you don’t get to talk to on a regular basis,” he noted.
“So that has been kind of refreshing.”
Selman, who now lives in St. Louis with his wife, Anne, is one of eight inductees who will be officially enshrined in a ceremony Sept. 29 at the Valhalla Inn in Thunder Bay.
Also entering the hall this fall are former NHL player Mike Busniuk, hockey coach Alex Dampier, curling coach Dick Henderson, water-skier Terri Gibbons, and rowers Barb Kukko and Helen Fleming.
In addition to going into the hall with his fellow inductees, Selman also is honoured to be included with those he has known from Fort Frances.
“Naturally, Bob Peters is someone that I’m excited to be joining as a member of the hall of fame, as I followed him as the head coach at North Dakota after working together with him, so he was a major influence,” Selman remarked.
“Art Berglund is someone I grew up and he has all kinds of honours for the great deal of work that he had over the years in being involved with USA Hockey.
“And, of course, the members of the ’52 Canadians were someone that myself and many other kids in my age group looked up to as we grew up,” he added.
After playing minor hockey in Fort Frances, Selman enrolled at the University of North Dakota in the fall of 1959, where he played for the Fighting Sioux and won a national championship in 1963.
After sitting out his freshman year (first-year players were not allowed to play in college until the 1970s), Selman played for three years at North Dakota, where he also started to help out the team in a few different aspects.
“During my last two years, I called myself the fifth man in four-man group,” joked Selman, referring to his little ice time during his junior and senior years.
“In the old arena there, they had the old circular clock, so someone had to yell out how much time was left in the penalty, so I was doing that for the last couple of years,” he recalled.
“I also got a chance in practice to organize the penalty kill when they would go up against the power play, and the All-American would kind of complain a little bit to the coach about that,” he laughed.
That experience during his playing days is what Selman believes led then head coach Barry Thorndycraft to bring him in as a graduate assistant with the Fighting Sioux following the 1963 season.
“I never would have thought of doing that myself,” Selman admitted.
“More than likely, I probably would have planned to return home to Fort Frances and teach in the schools.
“But instead, I got the chance to coach there—and the rest is history.”
When Thorndycraft left the program a year later, Selman became an assistant coach under Peters for two years. He later would become the head coach of the team after Peters took the head coaching job at Bemidji State.
In his two seasons behind the bench, Selman took the Fighting Sioux to two-straight “Frozen Four” appearances, losing in the 1967 semi-finals to Cornell and then falling in the 1968 championship game to Denver.
“That Cornell team had Ken Dryden in goal for both years when we played them, but in ’68 we had Michael Curran from International Falls, who played great for us in that semi,” Selman recalled.
“But that Denver team that we played in the finals was very strong, and they were very tough to beat that year.”
Following that season, Selman moved to Duluth, where he coached the Minnesota-Duluth Bulldogs for three seasons, before travelling to St. Louis, where he became the bench boss for the Billikens’ hockey program in 1971.
While in St. Louis, Selman played a key role in the formation of the Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA) in 1972, which featured many schools that had been unable to gain entry into the WCHA.
“At that time, schools like Lake Superior State, Bowling Green, Western Michigan, Ohio University, and Ohio State were all ready to move into the Division I ranks,” Selman explained.
“We all sat in a meeting at that time to talk about forming a league, and I remember clearly saying, ‘Well, if they are the Western Collegiate, we can be the Central Collegiate.’
“Soon after that league started, Michigan and Michigan State both moved over from the WCHA back into the CCHA, and everything moved along from there,” he added.
After seven seasons with St. Louis, where he won three-straight CCHA tournament titles from 1974-76, Selman spent time in the scouting ranks for a couple of years, with a one-year stint coaching the IHL’s Dayton Gems during the 1979-80 season.
In 1981, Selman became head coach of the Lake Superior State Lakers, where he would stay until January, 1983, when he returned to St. Louis to work for Anheuser-Busch in its sports marketing department.
“During my time there until I retired in 2001, there were very few sports that I wasn’t involved with at one time or another, and that made for some exciting times,” Selman recalled.
“We had a wonderful NASCAR program that I did some work with, and I was involved in the boxing side of things for about 18 years, and you still see those old corner mats with Bud on them when they show all those old fights.
“One of the things that I was involved with near the end, that I was proud to be a part of, was the formation of the PBR [Professional Bull Riders] circuit and it’s been something to watch them progress over the years,” he noted.
Prior to moving into the sports marketing side of things, Selman was involved with USA Hockey in a few aspects, including coaching the American men’s team at the 1982 world championships in Helsinki, Finland.
“That was a big thrill as I loved that big sheet of ice and the speed of the game,” Selman said.
“The big ice threw a lot of the guys off that never played on that surface before when they came over, and especially some of those defenders from the NHL, so they had to make a big adjustment,” he stressed.
Prior to that, Selman was involved with the process of selecting the 1980 U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team, which would become known as the “Miracle on Ice” following their upset of the Soviets in the semi-finals.
“They had a summer festival in Colorado Springs in 1979, and I was the coach of the Midwest team that ended up winning the tournament,” Selman noted.
“On that team, there were two players . . . that were no longer in college, and those were Buzz Schneider and Mike Eruzione, who were both playing in the International League.
“[Coach] Herb [Brooks] didn’t want to have a lot of the older guys around on the final team, as he was knew how we was going to handle the team and how tough he was going to be on the college kids, but I noticed the qualities Mike had as a leader and I was really forceful in the meetings about having him on the final team,” Selman stressed.
“Herb ended up riding Mike pretty hard, and Mike tells a lot of wonderful stories about that to this day, but the end result saw them winning the gold medal.”
Though now retired, Selman still is involved with USA Hockey with its marketing council.
“I just advise them a little bit on some things,” he said.
“We meet with them at their winter meetings in Orlando and their summer meetings in Colorado Springs, and we listen to what they are doing and try to be of any help to them,” he explained.
