On Hockey: Mazzoleni, Harvard in for Long Haul

If Mark Mazzoleni were an SEC football coach, he would’ve appeared with his family at a neatly-organized press conference this summer, enjoyed a made-for-TV handshake with the athletic director and smiled in front of a dozen microphones. He would’ve told the hundred or so people assembled in a thick-aired room that this was, without a doubt, the place for him to be.

“I’m very pleased to sign this contract extension,” he would say before a smattering of flashbulbs.

But Mazzoleni isn’t in his glory on autumn Saturdays in Tallahassee or Tuscaloosa. He’s a hockey coach. Our hockey coach. And at Fair Harvard, athletics news that might be trumpeted at the Michigans or Stanfords of the world gets little play—or none at all.

Here in Larry’s Learning Land, the buzz centers on what could happen on our property in Allston, rather than what has been there for a century (like that Coliseum-looking thing you might’ve seen before).

So it is only now, months after the terms were finalized, closed-door meetings concluded and the last i dotted (literally), that we learn this: This summer, with Harvard’s 10,000 scattered to their respective corners of the nation and world, Mazzoleni agreed to a multi-year contract extension. Both Mazzoleni and athletic director Robert L. Scalise declined to enumerate either duration or dollars, but it is clear that the deal will keep him as Harvard’s head hockey coach for at least the next several seasons.

“It’s a commitment both ways,” said Mazzoleni, who will likely win his 300th career game this season. “I’m very happy to be here, and the school has been very supportive of the hockey program. And they must be happy to have me, too.”

From the athletic department’s standpoint, the move was a no-brainer. This season would’ve been the fifth and final year of his initial contract, signed in July 1999.

It’s standard practice to give a coach who has performed well a vote of confidence, in the form of an extension, going into the final year. And with back-to-back NCAA tournament appearances, an ECAC title and a 20-win season in the past four years, Mazzoleni had clearly earned that.

“We’re proud of the progress we’ve been making with the men’s hockey program,” Scalise said this week. “Five or six years ago, we were in a turnaround situation, and now we’re competing regularly for the ECAC championship, which is very encouraging to us.

“The program seems to have gotten a lot of support on campus, and it’s instilling a lot of spirit and pride in the Harvard community.”

Mazzoleni’s previous head jobs numbered six years (Wisconsin Stevens-Point) and five years (Miami). The renewal will likely make his tenure here longer than both of those.

A Different Sort of Campaign

Another important news item somewhat lost in the shuffle of the new season: the NCAA Division III Presidents Council voted last week to keep a piece of legislation in its reform package that would end the ability of its member schools to “play up” to Division I and offer athletic scholarships.

If this legislation is supported by a majority of the Division III membership in January, eight schools will be affected. Four of them play Division I college hockey, and three of them—Clarkson, Rensselaer and St. Lawrence—are in the ECAC, along with Harvard and the other hockey-playing Ivies. (The fourth team is Colorado College of the WCHA.)

This would be bad, bad news for these institutions and the greater good of college hockey, a closely-knit, tradition-rich sport that has shown a maternal instinct toward these embattled hockey programs.

That’s to be expected, considering they’re among the game’s most storied, with four NCAA championships and 57 NCAA tournament appearances between them.

They are also vital to their respective communities, from the standpoint of both die-hard fans and small businesses set up around having good business on Friday and Saturday nights during winter. (I mean, do you know anything better to do in Potsdam, N.Y., when it’s 15 below?)

And though these athletic scholarships are seen as a mechanism to neutralize the Ivy schools’ “brand-name” recognition during the recruiting process, it’s in the best interest of Harvard’s national image, ratings percentage index (RPI) figure and chances for at-large NCAA tournament bids, that its opponents—Clarkson, Rensselaer and St. Lawrence included—be strong on the ice.

With that in mind, how big of a hit would these programs take if they stopped offering scholarships? Consider that, taken as a group, Clarkson, Rensselaer and St. Lawrence averaged 18.42 wins over the last 12 years. That is almost twice the average over the same span for Union, the only Division III school in the ECAC Division I hockey league that does not offer scholarships.

If the legislation goes into effect, the schools would have to decide between altering their athletic profile to Division I or Division II, a costly and bureaucratically uncomfortable option, or not offering athletic scholarships for hockey players beginning with the 2008-2009 season (the senior year of next year’s recruiting class).

In other words, the stakes are high. Very high. We’re talking potential lifestyle changes for people and institutions.

These schools are going to fight this to the hilt, and it’s taking the shape of a national campaign. It has to, really, since the votes of our close personal friends at Maranatha Baptist Bible College and Valley City State University matter as much as Clarkson’s or Rensselaer’s.

Thus, the presidents and athletic directors at the eight schools (the four hockey schools, along with Johns Hopkins, SUNY-Oneonta, Hartwick and Rutgers-Newark) embark on a quest to educate all of the Division III membership—a daunting 424 schools—about the details of this proposal.

“We’re doing everything we can,” Clarkson athletic director Sean Frazier said this week. “There is already a lot of community support, both local and national. There’s a lot of interest in getting this taken care of, and voted down.

“Every hockey chat line has something on there about this. There are a lot of folks out there who are quite concerned, and a lot of people who would be directly affected. We need people to understand what these effects can be, so we need to get in the information out.”

We trust the telephone lines will be burning. Please be courteous if you get a call from the Campaign ’03: Ice the Vote office.

Nate the Great

In case you lost track of Nate Leaman in July, when he left his post as a Harvard assistant to become Union’s bench boss, here’s an update.

He is alive, well and off to a 5-1-1 start in his new job, with the only blemish a frightful 9-2 loss to No. 3 New Hampshire on Halloween. The Dutchmen were 4-0-1 after five games, which set the longest unbeaten streak in program history, according to USCHO.com, and prompted ECAC Commissioner Phil Buttafuoco to phone Leaman with his congratulations.

“It’s not bad. I’m not unhappy about it,” Leaman said. “We’ve played seven games and won five, but I told the guys that we’ve only crossed the plains. Now comes the mountains, with the league season coming up. This league is a challenge. Anyone can win on any given night, and Harvard learned that [last] weekend.”

Union, picked to finish 11th in the league by the coaches, plays its first ECAC games this weekend at St. Lawrence and Clarkson. Leaman’s varsity boasts two solid goaltenders, sophomores Kris Mayotte and Tim Roth, not to mention the ECAC’s leading scorer, sophomore Scott Seney (11 points).

“We don’t have that one player who’s going to change things for us, but the guys realize that they’re going to win and lose as a team,” Leaman said. “That’s really impressed me so far.”

Brains Behind the Bench

After a busy off-season that included coaching the US Under-17 National Team at the Five Nations Cup in Slovakia and a hectic first couple weeks as a Harvard assistant that included recruiting stops in Central Canada, Gene Reilly has finally unpacked his bags in Watertown and is hanging his skates and whistle at Bright Hockey Center.

Reilly is a well-traveled coach, with extensive experience at both the professional and college levels, not to mention a national championship ring from his work as an assistant at Maine in 1999.

Already, the Harvard players have noticed his expertise.

“He knows everything, and he’s been everywhere,” senior Tim Pettit said last week. “He knows so much about the game. He’s so good with the details, and the little techniques. It’s going to start showing over the weeks in our offensive strategy.”

Former Harvard winger Chris Bala ’01 has a unique perspective on Reilly’s coaching abilities, since he played for him during each of the last two seasons, with Ottawa Senators affiliates in Grand Rapids, Mich., and Binghamton, N.Y.

“I think he’s a great fit for that program,” Bala said. “The team really seems to be moving in the right direction, and he’s got a ton of experience to bring to the table. He’s very good with player development—I know I benefited from that. He’s going to be really good for the kids there. I hope they really buy into what he says.”

Bala said Reilly worked almost exclusively with forwards during his time in the Ottawa organization, which allowed him to tap into his expertise even more.

“He’s the kind of guy who’d grab you after practice and have you stay to work on a certain skill to use,” Bala said. “He knows a lot, and he loves passing around that knowledge.”

—Staff writer Jon Paul Morosi can be reached at morosi@fas.harvard.edu.

Editor’s Note: This column will appear regularly on the Harvard Hockey page.