Networking, as we all know, is a crucial skill and the research on happiness shows the more we are engaged socially, the happier and healthier our lives will be. Most of us are also familiar with the Six Degrees of Separation game that gained popularity because of actor Kevin Bacon.
According to the blog New Hope Investigations: “It all started in 1994 with a Kevin Bacon interview. Bacon said he had ‘worked with everybody in Hollywood or with someone who’s worked with them.’ His statement sparked a newsgroup thread entitled, ‘Kevin Bacon is the Center of the Universe.’ The average score of the game, it turns out, is 2.9 degrees!“
Well, I believe that the number for degrees of separation for Penn Staters is even lower. I have adapted the Six Degrees game with a Penn State twist and call it “Three Degrees of Separation, Penn State-Style.” Using my incredibly anecdotal research, I believe that every one of my readers can quickly find someone related to Penn State with just three contact points.
Need a little proof? Read on!
I’ve just returned east from my annual Sun Valley, Idaho Overspeed Hockey Camp experience at the Campion Ice House, where every year some new adventure takes place and new friendships and memories are created. In our first week of camp out in the land best known for its potatoes, I worked with two of my former Penn State Icers assistant coaches: Matt Bertani (former New York Islanders assistant coach), who now lives in Pittsburgh, and Ty Newberry (former coach-in-chief for the Southeastern District of USA Hockey), who hails from the Washington, D.C. area. In case you need extra proof of my ironclad research, former PSU women’s ice hockey assistant coach Celeste Brown, current head coach of the Rochester Institute of Technology women’s hockey team, also worked the camp.
More proof needed? Please continue.
After the camps ended, I was traveling from Sun Valley through Denver into Pittsburgh with Coach Bertani. On the connecting flight from Denver to Pittsburgh, I was seated next to this younger guy who was clearly an athlete in his day, and we started chatting. Turns out he’s former wrestler Chris Taylor, from… Penn State! We had a great talk about our days in Happy Valley and I realized how mature and respectful he was, as I would expect a former Nittany Lion athlete to be. He is now in law enforcement, and I will just say that I wouldn’t want to mess with him.
During our chat, I discovered one of his best friends is current Lock Haven wrestling coach Scott Moore, who also wrestled at…Penn State! Coach Moore and I worked together at Lock Haven in 2016. Chris wrestled at Penn State during my final years as coach of the Icers. Reminiscing about our time at Penn State helped make a rather bumpy ride into Pittsburgh more manageable.
During a short stay over in Pittsburgh with my parents, we went to my old church for the Saturday service. The priest saying mass was parish favorite Father Thom Miller, who just happens to be the brother of Mary Lou Martin of State College. Her husband, Bob, who at one time was the PA announcer for the Penn State Icers, is an associate dean at Penn State. Their son Zach has been best buddies with my son Ryan, and they were roommates at Penn State. You can’t make this stuff up!
Sunday morning, I departed my parents’ home to begin the trek to Happy Valley. I can almost put my car on autopilot while driving east from Penn Hills on Route 22 to Altoona to I-99 to University Park, as I’ve made this trip hundreds of times since 1978. I passed plenty of cars with Penn State decals, although I’m pretty certain mine was the only one sporting a South Carolina license plate with a Savannah Ghost Pirates hockey team decal along with a Penn State decal. I even stopped at the ever-familiar Ebensburg Sheetz for gas and an MTO ham and cheese cold sub. The guy beside me in the checkout saw my Penn State shirt and gave me a hardy “We are!” Ah, life’s little joys. Never, ever take them for granted.
My reason for this trip “home” was to speak at the Pennsylvania Association of Municipal Administrators (PAMA) conference on Monday at the Wyndham Garden Hotel. After I checked into the hotel, I joined long-time friend and former Penn State placekicker Chris Bahr for a beer after he competed in the Mountain View Senior Golf Championships. Of course, I knew a good portion of the participants in the bar including the winner, Dan Swanson, my dentist Aaron Roan, and former Penguin employee Mike Hughes. Mike just happens to be great friends with the Coach Bertani mentioned above
Just when you think it couldn’t get any more coincidental, I ran into College Township administrator Jennifer Snyder at the conference welcome reception. Jennifer is the sister of the Sun Valley Idaho Campion Ice House Operations Director Bryan Speth. Nope, can’t make this up!
After delivering my “Pragmatic Passion” speech and workshop, I was off to lunch with Penn State friends and golf at Toftrees with my good friend and Penn State alum Steve Smith. Steve refers to Happy Valley as “The vortex of all that is good in the world.” I first met Steve and his wife, Eileen, also a Penn State grad, at a Penn State alumni function in Phoenix when they joined 30 other Penn Staters to host our Icers hockey team when we played Arizona and Arizona State back in the late 1980’s.
After a Tuesday morning breakfast at The Original Waffle Shop with a few more long-time Penn State friends it was off to Washington, D.C. to have dinner with my daughter, Brianna, and my oldest son, Jonathon (both Penn State alums of course!).
In the meantime, my wife has been minding our South Carolina homestead with our dog, Barkley. It’s good to see that his namesake, former Penn State running back Saquon Barkley, recently signed a new contract with the New York Giants. While I was away my wife got together with former Nittany Lions Brian and Nina Hand, former State College residents Bob and Karen Snyder, Stephanie Dobis-Dennis, who was a Lion Ambassador with me in the early 80’s, and Marge DeLozier, who is a Penn State alum from State College and lives just down street from us in Bluffton. See, my undeniable research reaches even into South Carolina.
I am looking forward to getting back to Bluffton after three weeks of travel. A one degree of separation of Penn State relationships will happen immediately upon my return as my neighbor and Penn State alumnus Andy Wllkosz and I will be teammates for the fall senior softball league, and we practice on Thursday. Appropriately, our team sponsor is Cornerstone Physical Therapy and Wellness. I’m counting on a team discount for the inevitable Sun City Senior Softball “hat trick” – pulled calf, hamstring and quadriceps muscles.
I won’t be away from “The Vortex” for long as we’ll travel north in a few weeks for a wedding between Penn State grads, then back again for the Whiteout Game with Iowa in September, followed by another Penn State wedding the next weekend.
Six Degrees of Separation, Penn State-Style? Ha! For me it’s usually no more than 1.5!
