Sisters and Linemates Reunite For Another Title Run

Just outside of Minneapolis, in the small town of Wayzata, Minn., a midnight freeze followed an unseasonably warm winter day. In the driveway of Edmund and Harriett Chute, a natural ice rink formed. Their daughters, Katharine and Margaret, moved nets down to the ice and began playing hockey.

“You read about Gretzky and how he just loved hockey,” says The Blake School coach Brano Stankovsky. “The same goes with Katharine and Margaret.”

After playing three years side by side at Blake, Katharine and Margaret Chute—now a junior and freshman at Harvard, respectively—are reunited, skating for the Crimson in the cozy confines of Bright Hockey Center.

Each sister brings something different to the ice, and both will prove invaluable for a Harvard squad with a small roster—the Crimson will manage only three offensive lines this year.

“Katharine does everything at hyper-speed,” Stankovsky says. “She tries to be excellent at what she does...She’s very gentle as a person everywhere else except on the ice—she’s a fire plug.”

“Margaret has a more cerebral quality to her,” he adds. “She thinks things through.”

Despite disparate approaches to the game, the Chutes complement each other well.

“They learned where each other would be, so they could make some really exciting plays,” their father Edmund Chute says of his daughters’ high school days. “I think the most interesting part of that was when they were on penalty kill. Sometimes there’d be just the two of them, and I think the coach told me once that when they were a woman down, they often scored more often.”

“We’ve watched each other play for years, so it’s really nice to be on the ice and know where Margaret’s going to be,” Katharine adds.

So far, Harvard coach Katey Stone has Katharine and Margaret matched up on the same forward line, flanking senior Anna McDonald. How the sisters’ dynamic translates onto the ice for the Crimson remains to be seen, but Stone is optimistic that the pairing will bring good results.

“I know that they’re both happy to be going to school together,” Stone says, “and how that shakes out as far as what it looks like for our team, it’s way too early. Hopefully it’s going to be a real positive for our team.”

“I think that’s going to be a really exciting line that I really want to see,” Edmund says, having followed McDonald, also from the Minneapolis area, since before Harvard. “I think that combination is really exciting.”

But playing on the same line is no new feeling for the Chute sisters. During Katharine’s senior year at Blake—Margaret’s sophomore year—they played together, leading their team to a state finals victory. Margaret repeated the feat her senior year, when she captained the team, and Katharine won her first state title when she was in eighth grade playing for the Blake varsity squad.

“That much poise as an eighth grader is something you don’t find,” Stankovsky says.

For their part, the Chutes are just happy to be together again.

“It’s really nice to have my older sister on the same line because she can offer constructive criticism,” Margaret says. “A lot of freshmen come in not knowing anyone, and I had a built-in network...It’s interesting because I’ve played with my sister and [freshman] Hilary [Hayssen] and a lot of Minnesotan girls, but now that we’re a part of this team, everyone has different roles, and it’s an entirely different team.”

The Crimson will benefit from having seven skaters from Minnesota, a state that, according to Margaret, has good enough competition at the high-school level that she and Katharine never had to double up with a club team.

But the familiar faces extend beyond Harvard for the Chutes, as many of Katharine and Margaret’s former teammates are now playing for rival collegiate teams. According to Edmund Chute, Dartmouth’s Sally Komarek was on the same line with his daughters on the state championship team.

With the 2009-10 regular season kicking off tonight for Harvard, the Chute sisters will be ready to do what they love: play the sport they’ve played since before they can remember—together.

“We grew up with hockey and skating outside, so it’s really been a big part of our lives,” Katharine says.

While they may be playing against former teammates and with former opponents, at least they’ve got each other. And according to Stankovsky, having both Chutes is a recipe for greatness.

“That’s the magic that the two of them bring,” Stankovsky says. “Katharine is just like a racing rabbit out there—she’s quick. The neat part is Margaret will let her go do that, get herself open, and they see each other, find each other. It’s uncanny. A lot of times they don’t talk to each other, it just happens.”

—Staff writer Dixon McPhillips can be reached at fmcphill@fas.harvard.edu.