LHS grad, SU and NFL football player Chris Gedney died March 9

By Sarah Hall

Editor

Before he was a sports commentator or an athletic administrator, before he played in 73 games in seven seasons for two NFL teams, before he helped take the Syracuse University football team to four bowl games, Chris Gedney was a Liverpool Warrior.

Now the Liverpool community joins those circles in mourning Gedney, who passed away Friday at the age of 47.

“I’m shocked by it,” said former Liverpool football coach and athletic director George Mangicaro, for whom Gedney played for four years. Mangicaro said he and Gedney had kept in touch over the years and met up for lunch every couple of months since Gedney moved back to Syracuse. “He was like my third son. That’s probably one of the problems with coaching, that you develop relationships with a lot of your players. You get very close to them, and when bad things happen to them, it’s like something bad happened to a family member. I still can’t believe it.”

Mangicaro remembered Gedney as “just an outstanding young man” who had been living with his mother in Delaware up until the summer after eighth grade, when he came to Liverpool to visit his dad.

“[He] got involved in all of our summer camps and fell in love with the Liverpool school district and decided that he wanted to stay there,” Mangicaro recalled. “And, fortunately for us, we ended up getting a great person and a great athlete.”

Gedney became a standout athlete in three sports. He was part of the NYSPHAA Section III All-Tournament basketball team in 1988 and represented the CNY Region on the 1988 silver-winning Empire State Games basketball team. He lettered in lacrosse. And his football career is well-known — though it wouldn’t be if not for his basketball skills.

“We were a wishbone team back then, and we hardly threw the ball. He was a receiver, so obviously that did not help him and help his stats,” Mangicaro said.

It didn’t help him with college scouts, either, who never got the chance to see what Gedney could do, either on the field or on film. So Mangicaro told them to watch him play basketball.

“Jimmy Williams from Penn State was the first guy that came in [and] stayed for a basketball game, and after the game told me they were going to offer him a scholarship,” he said. “Just based on what he saw that night in him playing basketball, he felt that [Chris] was going to be the athlete that Penn State wanted. So once that got out, other schools wanted come in and watch him play. So the basketball program helped get him the scholarship to play football.”

Gedney chose to play for Syracuse University, where he went on to become the most productive pass-catching tight end in team history, according to a release from the university. He caught a total of 91 passes in 48 games for 1,334 yards, completing seven touchdowns (that record, made in 1992, was just broken in 2011). He still holds the school records for most receiving yards by a tight end, both in a season (587 in 1992) and in a career. He was a consensus All-American player who helped take the Orange to bowl games every season he played.

After graduating, Gedney entered into the 1993 NFL draft, where he was a third-round pick by the Chicago Bears. He stayed there four seasons then went to the Arizona Cardinals for another three before retiring in 2000. Though his career was plagued by injuries and a battle with colitis, Gedney had 83 receptions during his career, recording 914 yards and eight touchdowns. He was a finalist for the NFL Man of the Year Award in 2000, received the Ed Block and Gene Autry Courage Awards in 2001, was named to the Syracuse Football All-Century Team in 2002, was inducted into the Greater Syracuse Sports Hall of Fame in 2011 and was recognized as an ACC Football Legend in 2015.

Gedney may have left the NFL behind, but his passion for sports remained. He had started his broadcasting career in Arizona in 1996. After his retirement, he moved back to Syracuse and, in 2006, began doing commentary for SU games. At the same time, his then-wife, Kathy, began coaching volleyball at LHS.

“Chris would come or they had a babysitter [who] would bring their kids, if their kids weren’t involved in a game,” Mangicaro said. “Just a wonderful family. He thought the world of his family. He thought the world of his children.”

Mangicaro said Gedney’s kids — Annaleigh, Chase, Montanna and Ellianna — were always a popular topic of conversation.

“Almost every time we went out to lunch, the first topic was what his kids were doing,” Mangicaro said. “He was so proud of what they accomplished in their life.”

Gedney was particularly proud of his children’s ability to follow their own paths. His eldest daughter, Annaleigh, was a standout volleyball player, like her mother, at Westhill, but chose not to play once she started college. His son Chase, who played both football and lacrosse at Westhill, opted to stick with lacrosse once he graduated from high school.

“Two weeks ago Saturday, Syracuse played Army in lacrosse, and Chase was on the [Army] lacrosse team. And Chris went to the game. And he was proud,” Mangicaro said. “He said to me, ‘I’m really proud that my son and my daughter felt strong enough and independent enough to make a decision in not to have to play football because I played football, and not play volleyball in college because Kathy played volleyball in college. I really feel that they’re mature. I’m very happy with their decisions and I’m happy for them.’”

Gedney also served as a role model to the student-athletes at SU, where in 2008 he was hired as the assistant athletics director for major gifts; he was promoted to senior associate athletics director in 2011.

“He always had time for student-athletes past, present and future, and watching him interact with them, you could see the way they responded to him,” wrote Kevin M. Wall on the SU sports blog, “Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician.” “Chris was the kind of person you want at an institution because he wasn’t selling people on something that he himself wasn’t personally invested in. What you heard from Chris was from the heart.”

But Gedney rarely shared his personal pain with anyone.

“I knew he was in pain, because he had some injuries in his shoulder and his knees and his ankles,” Mangicaro said. “But you would never know that he was in such pain because he never showed it. In public, he never complained about it. When we went off to lunch, very seldom did he talk about it.”

Instead, Gedney focused on making everyone else comfortable.

“When he was here in Syracuse, every function that he was at or that I was at, he always had a smile on his face,” Mangicaro said. “Always willing to do whatever it took.”

In addition to his children and his ex-wife, Gedney leaves behind his wife Seely.