Hockey Coach Obtains Record

Katey Stone already had a lot of hardware in her trophy case. But on Friday night, she added what might be the most impressive accomplishment yet.

When her No. 4 women’s hockey team soundly beat Princeton, 5-1, in the opening game of the ECAC quarterfinals, Stone earned her 338th career victory—pushing her past former Colby and Minnesota coach Laura Halldorson for the NCAA Division I coaching record.

“I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t important,” Stone said after the game. “I’m a very competitive person, I want to be the best. We have so many things we want to do, but I love the fact that I work at Harvard, with the highest academic standards in the country, and we can get it done [at] the hockey rink.”

Stone has been behind the Crimson bench for 16 years and boasts a .693 winning percentage (338-142-27) in her tenure. But what she has done for Harvard—turning it from a middle-of-the-road hockey team to a perennial national contender—speaks volumes about the respect she garners as a coach.

When Stone arrived before the 1994-95 season, she inherited a program that had spent most of its history hovering near .500. Four seasons later, the coach stood by as her team hoisted the 1999 AWCHA national championship—the culmination of a spectacular 33-1 season.

Since then, the Crimson has appeared in seven NCAA tournaments since the NCAA started sponsoring women’s hockey in 2001, making it to the championship game three times. Harvard’s won six ECAC regular-season titles and five tournament crowns. And the team hasn’t finished under .500 since 1997-98.

It helps, of course, that Stone has proven herself to be one of the top recruiters in the sport. Nine Olympians, including five who medaled last week in Vancouver, 21 All-Americans, and six Patty Kazmaier Award winners have skated for the Crimson in her tenure.

Three of those such stars—Kazmaier winners and Olympians AJ Mleczko ’98-’99, Jennifer Botterill ’02-’03, and Angela Ruggiero ’02-’04—anchored the 1999 championship squad.

“Something that I think she tells every player is they want kids who want to be here,” senior Randi Griffin said. “She doesn’t promise anyone anything… She tells you exactly what she wants you to do, and if you get the job done, she puts you out there. And I think everyone on this team has a lot of respect for her and confidence in her coaching. And that’s obviously big for her success too—I think every kid on this team really buys into what she’s doing.”

Those stars have led Harvard to some of its most momentous games, including three-straight appearances in the national championship game from 2003-05. But Stone’s talent isn’t limited to bringing good players to Cambridge—she takes good players and makes them great.

Caitlin Cahow ’07-’08 is the poster child for Stone’s talent development. Cahow came into the program as a forward who struggled to find playing time as a freshman. Stone moved her back to the blue line midway through her first season, and a year and a half later, Cahow made the 2006 Olympic squad as a defenseman.

“There’s just something about Harvard,” junior Kate Buesser said. “There’s a high level of respect for everybody in the league, but [Stone] is here to push us as hard as we can go and make us better as a player. Coming into college, yeah, you’re all good players, you’re in D1 college, but the point is to get better over your four years, and that’s what she does with players here.”

The success of the Crimson team this year can largely be attributed to Stone’s coaching as well. The task of redeveloping an offense that had graduated its three top scorers was daunting enough, but throw in injuries to key contributors like junior Liza Ryabkina and senior Christina Kessler, and you have a recipe for a season that could have ended in disaster.

Instead, Harvard sits ranked fourth nationally and, with a good performance in the late rounds of the ECAC Tournament this weekend, is in position to host the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

“That’s where the discipline comes into play,” Stone said. “We’re not out here screaming and yelling at our kids—our kids are very self motivated.”

“We’re just trying to make our kids better and stay on those things, and at the same time have them be so excited to come down to the rink every day,” she added. “And I think that’s amazing. They have a blast together, they’re dying to get here every day, and to me, that’s huge.”

It’s clear that Stone, a three-time ECAC Coach of the Year, is widely respected throughout the sport. She was one of three candidates to coach the US women’s Olympic squad in Vancouver and has experience coaching a variety of national teams, from the U-18 squad on up.

Although Stone was ultimately passed over for the Olympic job, it’s clear that she has a passion for the sport as a whole—not just the success of the Harvard program.

“I think there’s been a lot recently on the big divide in women’s hockey, because you get the U.S. and Canada, and then they feel that everybody else is sort of dragging behind,” she said. “Finland, China, Russia, four years ago were not playing that kind of hockey. They just weren’t… And you look at the college game, you look at how competitive it is—three years ago it wasn’t like that. There were plenty of days you could think, ‘Oh, it’s probably going to be okay tonight.’ You can’t go into a game anymore that way.”

There’s no question that Stone is responsible for some of that progress. But for the coach, personal accomplishments have always been the icing on the cake of her team’s success. Her Crimson takes on No. 6 Clarkson in Potsdam, N.Y. on Friday as it continues its march towards that elusive NCAA championship.

“To have all the kids and coaches and administrators [here]—you don’t do this by yourself,” Stone said. “And if it weren’t for their support, it would never happen. But this is for all the kids who played for me and listened to me rant and rave every once in a while. And it’s just, I said to [the team], I was happy that they were all here to be a part of it.”

—Staff writer Kate Leist can be reached at kleist@fas.harvard.edu.