The Third Team: The ISL Connection of Harvard and BC Women's Ice Hockey

The No. 4/3 Crimson, recently crowned as ECAC champions, will claim one half. The No. 2/1 Eagles, regular-season Hockey East winners, will occupy the other. On Friday night, when the locker rooms empty at the start of the Frozen Four semifinal between the two squads, three different teams will take the ice.

But in between the local competitors, or rather among them, there will be a third squad, invisible to the casual eye but patently obvious to anyone who knows a thing or two about high school hockey in New England.

In Friday’s matchup between Harvard and BC, the winner is the ISL.

A TEAM OF THEIR OWN

Formally known as the Independent School League, the ISL is a consortium of 12 New England prep schools that boasts some of the most intense girls high school hockey competition in the nation. Over the past decade, ISL alumnae have earned spots on an impressive array of hockey sides—from professional teams to Olympic squads and back again.

Or, more regularly, they have played for the Crimson and the Eagles.

“I have some really good friends on the BC team, which makes it fun playing against them,” said Harvard junior forward Mary Parker. “A lot of those local kids…play together over summer and then go off to the schools during the year. It creates a fun atmosphere.”

Between the two semifinalists’ rosters, 13 players hail from the ISL. This is no collection of slouches, either. Even at the Frozen Four, an event designed to showcase the cream of college hockey’s crop, the New England league stands out for having produced so many impactful players. Consider this lineup of ISL talent:

Goalie: BC freshman Katie Burt. The first-year net minder owns the stingiest goals allowed average in the country at 1.07 scores conceded per contest.

Defense: Harvard senior Michelle Picard; Crimson senior Marissa Gedman. A former Olympian, Picard leads Harvard as a co-captain. Throw in Gedman, who is the only Harvard defender to see action in every game, and you have a formidable line.

Offense: Eagles junior Alex Carpenter; Harvard junior Mary Parker; BC freshman Kenzie Kent. This is a first line with three of the most dangerous players in Division I competition. Carpenter leads all other athletes in goals (37) and assists (44), while both Parker and Kent rank in the top-20 nationally in points.

Bench: a full second team, highlighted by an Eagles co-captain (forward Emily Field) and a Crimson goalie (sophomore Brianna Laing) who started nine games this year.

All 13 will march into Ridder Arena for Friday’s matchup, and yet, months or years before that, all 13 marched out of an ISL school. In some ways, this Minneapolis semifinal has already been played years ago—in a homey high school rink in the middle of Massachusetts.

HOME LEAGUE ADVANTAGE

To be specific, there are 10 rinks: 10 rinks owned by 10 individual schools. Thayer Academy and Roxbury Latin School, the only two members of the ISL without on-campus facilities, make do by driving to a nearby center.

The availability of playing surfaces is the most obvious explanation for the success of ISL players at the next level. Not every high school has the means to build and operate a functioning ice rink. The 12 ISL schools do, for the most part.

However, Harvard coach Katey Stone pointed to a different factor as the reason behind the athletic success of ISL graduates.

“They’ve got real good coaching,” Stone said. “That’s why a number of kids have come from there—because those kids are well-prepared, and they’ve got a leg up on the coaching.”

Just as ISL schools produce talented hockey players in bulk, they also retain high-level coaching talent. Years before coming to Lawrence Academy in Groton, Mass., Kevin Potter earned All-American honors as a senior skater at Bowdoin. He now serves as the school’s athletic director and girls’ varsity hockey coach.

As in most matters related to ISL girls’ hockey, however, Noble and Greenough leads the pack. Tom Resor, the girls’ varsity head coach, has worked at the school since 1986, and three assistants join him to train the Bulldogs.

Two of these assistants once had National Team experience; one, namely Sara Decosta-Hayes, won a gold medal in the 1998 Olympics as the Americans’ goaltender. True to past form, she now instructs Nobles’ goalies.

The impressiveness of the coaching staff translates to obvious results. In the past 14 years, this boarding school with a population just over 600 has won 14 league titles. Eleven of the 13 ISL players who play for the Eagles or the Crimson once attended Nobles.

“The ISL has been strong, but certainly Nobles has carried that flag for a long time,” Stone said.

So much time has elapsed that current Bulldogs can look up to a graduated rank of players that has found success on a national or even global stage. During Resor’s 14 years with the girls’ varsity, the team has graduated 11 National Team members and 35 college players, including 19 in the past four years.

However, former Bulldogs insist that Nobles, and all other ISL schools, do more than just pump out superior athletes.

“The ISL schools do a great job [of] preparing you both academically and athletically to take the step into these great universities, especially in the Boston area,” said Parker, a one-time Nobles student. “Going through the ISL program and seeing the older girls work hard…is something that you strive to do yourself.”

So the recruiting wheel turns. Players transform from awestruck youngsters into bona fide college stars, and the process repeats with another class of skating talent. This winter, Nobles captured its 14th consecutive conference title; the Crimson and the Eagles already have three ISL players locked up with official commitments.

Spanning the length of decades, this long migration of ISL hockey stars from prep school ice rinks to the Harvard and Boston College arenas shows no signs of abating. But the line of people will stop, if only for a few hours, in Minneapolis this Friday.

Mary Parker will be there, along with 12 of her ISL peers. They may wear new colors, but some of the old high school familiarity still lingers.

“It definitely adds a new friendlier element,” Parker said. “You never want your friends to beat you.”

—Staff writer Sam Danello can be reached at sdanello@college.harvard.edu.