Albert I. Prettyman was the man who brought ice hockey to the Utica area in 1917, founded the N.C.C.A. ice hockey rules committee in 1925 and coached the United States Olympic hockey team in 1936. He was born in Virginia and graduated from Springfield College in 1906.
 
After three years at Columbia and five years at Nicholas School, Buffalo, N.Y., he came to Hamilton College as its first full-time physical education teacher and coach. He worked tirelessly at the college and in the village of Clinton to promote ice hockey as a sport. At Hamilton, he introduced six other new sports and developed a program featuring a large number of intercollegiate teams, vigorous intramurals and heavy emphasis on "carryover" sports such as golf and tennis.
 
He coached Hamilton's ice hockey teams for 25 seasons to a winning percentage of .643, and coached 27 seasons of other sports, including football, basketball, baseball, track, tennis and golf.
 
He served the N.C.A.A. as its ice hockey rules committee chairman for 18 years, and brought the United States Olympic hockey team to a bronze medal at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

A statement from the American Hockey Coaches Association on the occasion of his death in 1963, called him "the father of college hockey." It also said, "During his active years, there was no more respected name in hockey circles the world over than that of Albert I. Prettyman."