Post-Epilog 8

The Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame honors men and women who have contributed to the fields of amateur and professional sports in Greater Buffalo by their performance, time, effort, or financial support. Buffalo sports legends who are already in the GBSHOF include Jack Kemp, Ernie Warlick, Gil Perreault and other greats.

On June 23^rd, 2021, the Hall announced the names of the twelve 2021 inductees, to be enshrined at the annual banquet at the Buffalo Niagara Convention Center on October 13th. Among them is the name of Angela Yvonne Coniglio, for her pioneering role in women’s sports. The note below appears in the banquet program.

Thank You from Angela’s Family

Angela’s family gratefully thanks the staff and directors of the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame for her selection to the Class of 2021.

It gives our family great pride, knowing that she’ll be inducted among the other accomplished athletes and sports figures honored tonight, as well as with her greatest sports heroes who are already enshrined, the likes of Gil Perreault, Richard Martin, Roger Crozier, and our beloved neighbor and friend Ernie Warlick.

Angela left us twenty-five years ago and isn’t here to give thanks. If she could, she’d probably (however grudgingly) have to thank her big brother, our late son Angelo, for starting her on her stellar career.

Angelo was four years older than his sister, and when he became interested in hockey, if he couldn’t find neighborhood kids for a game of street hockey, he would practice stick-handling in our driveway. What’s stick-handling without shooting the puck? So he would fire it at the image of Roger Crozier that I had painted on our garage door!

After we let Angelo know that we were getting slap-shot-happy from the constant banging on the garage door, he came up with an ingenious solution: he put his seven-year old sister in front of the door and told her to stop the puck. A goalie was born.

Angela went on to excel at virtually every sport she ever tried, and along the way was helped by numerous mentors and coaches she’d want to thank. They’d include league officials at the old Sabreland on Niagara Falls Boulevard, who with persistent prodding by family friend Tom Fiorella, finally allowed a girl, of all things, to play on a boys’ ice hockey team. She’d thank her Wheatfield Blades coaches, Fred Fleron, Al Margarucci, Bob Maxwell, Bill Burgess, Kurt Bingham and their assistants, as well as her teammates and their parents, for accepting her (a 1.10 goals-against average didn’t hurt).

She’d thank the hockey, track, soccer, field hockey and basketball coaches at Amherst Central High School (even though a coach once told her that her ‘hook-shot’ was “unladylike”). She’d thank Mike McDuffie, coach of her Battlin’ Babes club soccer team, and the organizers and coaches of NY State’s Empire State Games, where, over thirteen years, she played on medal-winning teams, first with the Western and then the Central region. And she’d thank her Nazareth College soccer teammates and coach, Jacklin Randall-Ward.

Finally, she’d thank her Dad, and especially her devoted Mom, who would sit in cold rinks for practices and games at ungodly hours, then drive her from hockey games to basketball games to soccer games on the same day, while Angela changed uniforms in the car.

The Coniglio Family