2004 William Thayer Tutt Award June 5, 2004
The Wm. Thayer Tutt Award is presented annually to a volunteer who, during many years of service, has displayed a selfless dedication to the enhancement of ice hockey at the grass roots level in America.
Carl Gray
In 32 years as the founder and director of the Assabet Valley (Mass.) girls’ hockey program, Carl Gray has given thousands of girls an opportunity they otherwise would not have had to learn and enjoy the sport of hockey. At the same time he has developed future U.S. National and Olympic Team Members such as Laurie Baker, Cindy Curley, Kelly Dyer, Cammi Granato and Shelley Looney.
Gray has spent most of his adult life helping to grow and improve the game of women’s hockey. In his time with the Assabet Valley Girls hockey program he has guided his teams to 28 USA Hockey National Championships, including the title in the 12-and-Under and 14-and Under divisions in 2004. His teams have been runners-up in the National Championships 22 times; have won 63 state and regional championships, 46 league championships, and 107 tournament championships.
A passion for giving girls the same opportunity that their male counterparts were given is what inspired Carl Gray to begin the Assabet program. What he created is an all-inclusive yet prestigious program that has helped grow the sport from the grass routs level.
Gray graduated from Northeastern University in Boston, Mass., in 1963 with a bachelor’s of science degree in electrical engineering. He worked for 31 years at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass., and retired in February 1994. While at the Charles Stark Draper, Gray worked on the Apollo Program throughout the 1960s, which measured the Earth’s horizon. He also worked on the Space Shuttle Program in the 1980s and 1990s.
Gray became president of the Valley Sports Arena in Concord, Mass., in 1975, the same year that the Assabet Valley girls’ ice hockey program gained national recognition by becoming the Boston Arena Tournament Champions in only the third year of the program. Just one year later Gray’s team became National Champions in the teen division. From this point on, Carl Gray has seen 28 of his teams crowned National Champions.
Gray’s extensive coaching experience includes coaching Team USA at the first senior-level international women’s tournament in Toronto, Ontario that became the precursor to the International Ice Hockey Federation Women’s World Championship. In 1988 he became a member of the USA Hockey’s Girls’/Women’s Section, where he held a seat through 2004. He served as a camp director in 1991 and 1993 for USA Hockey’s Women’s Development Camps, and was the East Team General Manager at the 1994 U.S. Olympic Festival.
In all, Gray has coached 20 players who have been members of a U.S. Women’s National Team that participated at the IIHF Women’s World Championship or at the Olympic Winter Games. His program has been instrumental in spreading the women’s and girls’ hockey movement across the country. Gray’s dream came about in the early 1970s when a girl wanted to play for the boys Little League team in Concord, Mass. Since then, Gray has devoted nearly all of his free time to giving girls the chance to grow and mature through sports.