Playing Cleary was an
All-American hockey player at
Harvard, starring for two years and setting several team records (many of which still stand) along the way, including most goals in a game (6), longest goal-scoring streak (15), most goals in a season (42) and most points in a single season (89). Cleary's scoring prowess was instrumental in Harvard's invitation to the
1955 NCAA Tournament, the first in school history, and Cleary was named to the
All-Tournament First Team after Harvard's third-place finish. While at Harvard, Bill and his brother
Bob played
collegiate summer baseball together for the now defunct
Sagamore Clouters of the
Cape Cod Baseball League. Taking a year away from
college, he won a
silver medal as a member of the U.S. ice hockey team at the
1956 Winter Olympics, after turning down a professional-contract offer from the
National Hockey League's
Montreal Canadiens and
Boston Bruins (Cleary opted to go into the insurance business instead and made more money than he probably would have in the NHL). At the
1959 World Ice Hockey Championships, he won the
IIHF directorate award for best forward. At the
1960 Winter Olympics, in
Squaw Valley, California, Bill and his brother Bob teamed up to win a gold medal with the U.S., with Bill leading the team in scoring through the tournament with 14 points.
Coaching After the 1960 Olympics Cleary retired as a player and became an ice hockey official for several years before returning to Harvard in 1968 to coach the freshman squad. Cleary's teams got off to a fast start with a top two finishing in each of his first four years. Though he couldn't manage to win a tournament in the time (conference or national) Cleary had established himself enough to carry through a down period in the late 1970s. Harvard missed the postseason each year from
1977 to
1981, ending with a losing record in four of those seasons. There was a slight recovery in
1981–82 when Harvard won its division and was able to use it to propel itself into the ECAC title game and receive a subsequent invitation to the
1982 NCAA Tournament despite its rather bland record. The next season saw return to prominence for the Crimson as they won the
ECAC Tournament and made the team's first National Title game, losing 6–2 to
Wisconsin. For the stark turnaround not only did Cleary receive the
Spencer Penrose Award but
Mark Fusco was awarded the
Hobey Baker Award. After a brief dip in the standings for
1983–84, Harvard was a national contender for the remainder of the 1980s, winning at least 20 games each year from '85 to '89. Cleary won four consecutive ECAC regular season titles from '86 to '89 (one shared) and reached the National Championship for a second time in
1986, losing 6–5 to
Michigan State. That season Cleary coached his second Hobey Baker winner,
Scott Fusco, who remains the top career scorer in the history of the program. Three years later Harvard was once again in the title tilt, this time coming out on top with a 4–3 overtime win against
Minnesota, garnering not only Harvard's first (and only) National Title, but their third Hobey Baker winner in
Lane MacDonald (the team's all-time goal scoring leader). Cleary coached the Crimson for one more season before moving on to become an administrator for Harvard's athletic department and formally retired on June 30, 2001. ==Awards and honors==