A Hall of Fame street in the Buffalo area

And what about Hall of Fame Lane?

It’s just 6 miles from Chateau Terrace to Dave & Adam’s Card World, located on Sheridan Drive in Amherst. That’s where the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame will introduce its new class and new home next Wednesday. Members of the Class of 2024 include Bridget Niland and the late Norm Foster, who were next-door neighbors on Chateau Terrace at the time.

Bridget’s late father, Joe Niland Sr., is already in the lobby, as is the late Herb Mols, who lived in the house behind them. The Mols also lived in Château, a street that winds in a circle.

That’s four halls of fame in three houses on the same street, all with shared property lines. What was in the water?

“I don’t know,” Joe Niland Jr. said. “When I heard Bridget and Mr. Foster come in, I started thinking about it, because I knew my dad and Mr. Mols were there. And then I thought, “Well, how about this!” »

Niland Jr., 65, lives in Mobile, Alabama, where he is the athletic director at Spring Hill College. He coached men’s basketball there in the 1990s, then coached at the University of Mobile for 20 years. Five years ago, he returned to Spring Hill to administer its athletic program. Today, his son Patrick is an assistant basketball coach there. It’s no surprise: coaching is the Niland family business.

Niland Sr. coached Canisius College men’s basketball in the late 1940s and early 1950s. John Beilein, a nephew of Niland, coached Canisius in the 1990s before moving to Richmond, W.Va. , Michigan and the Cleveland Cavaliers. Niland Sr.’s brother, Tom, coached LeMoyne from 1947 to 1972, and as athletic director, he hired Beilein to coach there. Dave Niland, Joe Niland Sr.’s other son, coaches Penn State Behrend in Erie, Pennsylvania.

Beilein is in the Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame. Tom Niland is in Syracuse. Dave Niland is at Erie. And now, Bridget Niland is joining her dad as part of a rare father-daughter combo in the Buffalo lobby.

“Oh, my God,” Niland Jr. said. “Dad would have loved that.”

Bridget broke records at Williamsville South and the University at Buffalo. She later worked as director of academic and membership affairs for the NCAA in Indianapolis.

“When people hear my name, especially in NCAA circles, they ask, ‘Are you related to Bridget Niland?’ ” says Niland Jr. “I used to have that with my dad all the time, but most of those people are gone now.”

Most recently, Bridget worked in athletics administration at Daemen College and as director of Project Play Western New York, a collaborative effort with the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Youth Sports Initiative.

“Bridget has excelled at everything she’s done,” says Niland Jr.. “She’s like the Energizer Bunny: Wind her up and she goes and goes and goes.”

She is now dean of the College of Hospitality, Sports and Tourism Management at Niagara University. Niland Jr. thinks their dad would have loved it too.

“Dad went to Niagara after high school to play football, but he hurt his shoulder and stopped going to class, so they asked him to leave,” Niland Jr. says with a laugh . “He worked at the steel mill with his father, and that’s when Canisius came calling.”

Niland Sr. played basketball at Canisius and later coached there from 1947 to 1953. He was replaced by Joe Curran, who is a good candidate to one day be chosen for Buffalo Hall. (He took Canisius to three NCAA tournaments in the 1950s, twice making the Elite Eight.) And guess where Curran lived: in Chateau Terrace, of course, across the street from the Niland and Foster families.

“We used to see (Buffalo Bills voice) Van Miller coming all the time to pick Mr. Curran up to go play tennis,” Niland Jr. said. “Our little street was like that.”

Joe and Lois Niland had seven children. Next door, Norm and Nancy Foster had six. “We played together all the time,” says Niland Jr.. “Everyone knew everyone. It was a great little place to grow up.

Norm Foster coached wrestling at Iroquois Central High School, where his teams won 143 consecutive meets, a national record. He later coached at Amherst High School. He died last November, at age 92.

“I wish he lived to see this,” Nancy Foster said of the call from the room. She is the only one of the old guard still living on the streets.

“We’ve been here since 1966,” she said. “It was a wonderful place to raise children. And it’s still a great neighborhood.

Park School adjoins Chateau Terrace, and local children played on the grassy fields as if it were their own private park.

“Mr. Mols was a teacher, coach and athletic director – a little bit of everything at Park School,” says Niland Jr. “Sometimes he would open the gym and let us shoot.”

Herb Mols was a local Amateur Athletic Union leader who became a national AAU leader. He was a member of the U.S. Olympic basketball committee in the 1960s and a traveling coach for the men’s national team in the early 1970s. Mols was on the court when the United States appeared to beat the Soviet Union in the final seconds of the 1972 gold medal game in Munich, but three seconds more – twice – before the Soviets finally won, 51-50, in the most controversial final. in the history of the Olympic Games.

Niland Jr. was watching the game on TV with his father: “I remember seeing Mr. Mols at the scorer’s table and my father saying, ‘Herb will fix it.’ »

He tried. Mols wrote the official US protest against the game. Alas, to no avail. The American players – including Tom McMillen, who later played for the Buffalo Braves – did not accept their silver medals, which remain in a vault in Lausanne, Switzerland to this day.

Despite all this, Mols greatly loved the Olympic movement and sought to replicate it statewide as co-founder of the Empire State Games. He first brought them to Buffalo in 1985, and then again in 1986. The day before the closing ceremonies of the 1986 Games, he died suddenly of a heart attack. A procession of uniformed athletes from across the state led the funeral.

Mols happened to bring the Soviets to play games in Western New York before and after the 1972 Games. In 1971, Niland Sr. coached a U.S. team that played the Soviets. (He was a scout for the Braves at the time.) The team included Randy Smith, Darnell Hillman — and, as Niland Jr. puts it, “a guy named Julius Erving.”

Niland Sr. was also a longtime coach at Buffalo’s Bishop Ryan High School, where one of his players was Kevin Cadle, another new member of the Buffalo gym. (When Ryan closed, Cadle transferred to Baker Victory High School in Lackawanna to play for coach Joe Corey, who had been manager of Niland Sr.’s Ryan teams.) Cadle, who died in 2017, became the coach the most winning. in the history of British professional basketball and a commentator on British television.

Think about it: Buffalo Hall’s newest class includes one of Niland Sr.’s daughters, his former next-door neighbor and one of his former high school players. It has that kind of gravitational pull in Buffalo sports history. Niland Sr. covers eras from the Little Three’s heyday to the Braves’ brief reign to the Bills’ Super Bowl years, when he was aide-de-camp to general manager Bill Polian — who, of course, is also member of the Buffalo Hall.

Niland Jr. is a strong candidate for the Mobile Sports Hall of Fame one day. After all, he won 474 games as a coach at two mobile colleges. However, he dismisses this idea.

“Hank Aaron and Satchel Paige are among them,” he says. “I would feel embarrassed going in. I’m just a coach.”

Well yes, but a coach who grew up in the family business – on Hall of Fame Lane.

It turns out that the homes at Chateau Terrace aren’t really castles. Such grand mansions are commonly found in the Bordeaux wine regions of France.

So, let’s raise a glass of fine wine to the newest class of the Greater Buffalo Sports Hall of Fame – and to this sweet little street in Amherst where fame is the name of the game.