Meet the Press: Mark Binetti goes from bands to booths

Photo by Mike Wolforth, submitted by Mark Binetti

 

Mark Binetti did not stay in his first sports-related trade long enough to experience ludicrous geographic misnomers. Nor did he come to his new calling in time for the most outlandish of the same in another game.

In South Dakota since 2013, he joined the rest of the Rapid City Rush in transferring from the Central Hockey League to the ECHL in 2014. By then, it had been 11 years since their new abode ceased to answer to the name East Coast League. Although, the sport’s topmost “Double-A” entity had stopped living up to that exclusive-sounding moniker ages prior.

Come what may, the former pep-bander and current play-by-play broadcaster is living his share of carry-overs. He is living the bus life for 12 of the 26 weeks on the 2018-19 regular-season docket. The majority of those road trips are the culmination of a week’s worth of preparation.

The Rush’s destinations for 2018-19 are Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah. They will also entertain visits from the Atlanta Gladiators and Florida Everblades, but not reciprocate the journey.

Travel-wise, this regimen evokes Binetti’s football marching-band days at the University of South Carolina. Besides his school’s own state, he saw action in seven others: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee.

Entertaining the throngs of the sinewy Southeastern Conference, he made it to eight of 11 opposing stadiums. (He graduated two years before Missouri and Texas A&M upped league membership to 14.) He only missed out on Auburn, Louisiana State and Mississippi State.

“It was a blast,” he told Pucks and Recreation with maximum emphasis. “Seeing how different stadiums and bands did things was eye-opening. And as long as the Gamecocks didn’t have a rough go, the football wasn’t bad either.”

By comparison to what Binetti has now, neither was the mileage. Spared the SEC’s spill beyond the Southeast proper, he joined the Rush for what proved an unexpected CHL swan song.

But barely being in the Mountain, Rapid City itself was one of the circuit’s exceptions to its title time zone. Its 10 teams ranged as far east as Brampton, Ont., for that 2013-14 campaign.

Today’s 13-member ECHL Western Conference boasts a similar geographic spread. Being the third-farthest west, the Rush cannot help charging up four-figure miles one way on some trips.

Contrast that with the 764 miles separating USC from its most distant Binetti-era SEC rival, Arkansas. Or with the fact that the Rush take twice as many annual rides as the Gamecock footballers.

But as with his belated entry into broadcasting as a whole, Binetti benefited from starting small.

“Looking back on it, it really prepared me for what I do now,” he said. “The travel in college football isn’t nearly as rigorous as what we go through in Rapid City. But we bus everywhere with the Rush, and there’s a routine on the road you need to get into to prepare and such. So it prepared me quite well, I think.”

Photo submitted by Mark Binetti

 

Timely crossovers

Binetti was born in New York, the second of three brothers, and lived in the metropolitan area through eighth grade. For the bulk of that time, music was his extracurricular lifeblood.

The piano, which his mother and maternal grandfather both mastered, was a mandated starting point. Two years of that spawned a web of skills, which Binetti transferred to self-taught clarinet lessons.

“It was a release,” he said. “It was something that allowed me to be a part of something bigger in a band, and was just so much fun.”

In his final year living in New Jersey, Binetti was an all-state musician in his newfound specialty. When his family moved to North Carolina, the accolades snowballed at Charlotte Catholic High School. As a sophomore, he cracked the 2004 South Central All-District Band.

He followed that with repeat appearances on the Charlotte Youth Wind Ensemble as an upperclassman. As a junior, he attended the 2005 Winthrop University Invitational Clinic just south of the state border.

Back at Charlotte Catholic, he broadened his horizons and attained the marching band’s drum-major position. In between, he built on his appetite for more of the same in college with another trip to South Carolina.

On Nov. 12, 2005, Binetti accompanied a friend to the Gamecocks football game against 12th-ranked Florida. His first live look and listen at USC’s legendary “Mighty Sound of the Southeast” sweetened a 30-22 upset.

“After that,” he said, “I did my research into the band, and talked to an old high school friend that was there. After meeting with some of the graduate assistants, and taking a tour of the university, I was hooked.

As one of 360 students in the Carolina Band, and specializing in the trombone, Binetti devoted nine hours to rehearsal in a typical school week. At the Saturday culmination, preparation would start as early as 6 a.m., depending on kickoff time.

Binetti would rise to be the captain of his instrument’s section. He also had his major in biological sciences to think about. But the literal payoff for his musical dedication substantially alleviated the cost of the curriculum.

Concomitant with Binetti, Dr. George A. Brozak arrived at USC in the autumn of 2006. A former Star Trek TV writer, Brozak assumed the position of director of athletic bands, and instituted a wave of scholarships and stipends. Among other perks, Binetti garnered a scholarship specific to the clarinet in the university’s concert band.

“Doc’s mindset behind it was to grow the base of the band simply by rewarding them for their sacrifice,” Binetti said. “It seems easy to say that, but to actually follow through with it meant a good deal to those of us in the program in his three seasons.” 

Brozak has since moved on to other institutions, but Binetti attests to his long-lasting mark at USC. Ditto the late Jim Copenhaver, who directed USC’s band program at large for 35 years, retiring the year Binetti graduated.

Copenhaver’s tenure transcended the university’s rise to prominence among pigskin pep bands. To that point, in September 2017, USA Today ranked the “Mighty Sound” third among its top 10 college football introduction shows.

“Mr. Copenhaver was an incredible individual who just loved music, and loved teaching it,” Binetti said. “So many of the people I was in the band program with went to USC just because of him. They knew they’d be world-class musicians or music educators simply because he was the director of bands. He was loved by everyone in the music community.”

Copenhaver died at age 71 in November 2014, Binetti’s sophomore season as the Rush announcer.

“The impact of his passing was felt nationally,” Binetti said.

Besides his collegiate family, Binetti’s bloodline savored finales of their own during his senior season. For his final performances at Williams-Brice Stadium, his grandparents traveled from New Jersey for their first live glimpse of college football.

Business-like as usual that day, Binetti now admits he sacrificed a little enjoyment of family antics at the pre-game tailgate. With a noon game time, it was one of those 6-a.m. last-minute tune-up sessions.

“Sadly, I was blissfully ignorant to my grandfather roasting my dad for everyone cooking in trailers and on mini-grills with these gigantic spreads,” he said. “But hearing my dad recap it all was absolutely hilarious. My grandfather passed away four years after that game, so it was definitely special to look back on.” 

As it happened that day, the Gamecocks doubled up on intrastate rival Clemson, then ranked 15th in the nation, 34-17. Their other home win over a ranked team (No. 4 Mississippi) that year marked the beginning of South Carolina’s “Sandstorm” custom.

In the decade since, the stadium DJ has routinely given the band a breather and aroused a rave-like rally with the Darude classic. The ensuing visual, complete with white towels for every spectator, is not unlike that of a professional hockey playoff crowd.

 

Photo submitted by Mark Binetti

Invincible ambition

Hearing Binetti summarize the story of his rise to the Rush booth vaguely evokes Vince Papale.

Like the unlikely NFL walk-on immortalized in cinema by Mark Wahlberg, Binetti logged a little time on a gridiron. But to crack the competitive ranks of pro hockey play-by-play, one might assume, he must have called action in college.

Yet if someone asked him where he called his college puck, he would say he didn’t call college puck. In fact, he called no athletic action whatsoever as an undergraduate. That is how mighty a commitment the “Mighty Sound” was.

The Carolina Band was also expected to be the grand finale of Binetti’s involvement of sports. After he graduated in 2010, he was supposed to pursue medicine. After all, his mother, both maternal grandparents and one uncle have all worked in the field.

But then there was Jason Shaya, his fellow transplant from the northern U.S. to the Carolinas. While Binetti was a senior in Columbia, Shaya was in his third year broadcasting the ECHL team in Binetti’s adoptive city of Charlotte.

Hailing fron Michigan, Shaya had also gone to a hockey-free university (Madonna in the Detroit suburbs). After working as a sports producer with his local NBC affiliate, he enjoyed play-by-play stints with short-lived Detroit- and Chicago-area teams in the now-defunct United League. With more bountiful offerings at the de facto Double-A level in “non-traditional” markets, he found the Charlotte Checkers in 2007.

Binetti had been in town since 2002, and had taken an easy shining to the Checkers. For the better part of their 17-year ECHL run, they were affiliated with his beloved New York Rangers.

Acting on a belated craving for a sports-oriented career, Binetti reached out to Shaya in 2010. Their initial discussion left him disillusioned, and he turned to Chicago, where his brother works as an anestheologist. But a lack of openings up his presumed alley turned him back to Charlotte and, for a time, back to college football.

“My brother had a friend that was a production assistant at ESPNU,” he said, “and said they needed loggers to watch games and help them cut highlights. After about two weekends on the job, I realized that I loved it too much to not try and see it through in sports.”

By this point, the Checkers brand had been promoted to the AHL. One of the few personalities to withstand the overhaul, Shaya accepted Binetti’s bid for a rebound.

The Checkers’ younger broadcasting brother started as a statistician and storyline builder. He then broke onto the air by filling in pre-game, post-game and intermission segments. From there, he started taking cracks at play-by-play, applying lessons he had absorbed through up-close observation during ESPNU football productions, during the second periods of home games.

“Once I got the opportunity at ESPNU, and got my first air time with the Checkers, I just knew this is what I needed to do for the rest of my life,” he said.

After two years under Shaya’s wing and a slew of go-nowhere applications to teams in Junior A, major junior and minor pro, Binetti received Shaya’s greatest assist for their last shift in Charlotte. While working at a Wells Fargo bank to supplement his income, he heard of Rapid City’s vacancy from his mentor.

In less than a month, he dished up his demos, pressed with continued interest, got the job and moved back north. He arrived in his new South Dakota home the day 2013 training camp commenced.

“The rest, as they say, is history,” he said.

Photo by Mike Wolforth, submitted by Mark Binetti

 

‘…the same between both worlds’

All of the crowds surrounding Binetti have plummeted in sheer volume since he shot up to South Dakota’s Mountain edge. He is apt to note that, at a capacity eclipsing 80,000 spectators, Williams-Brice Stadium at USC could more than fit Rapid City’s population, which is estimated at under 75,000.

The difference between those figures almost amounts to the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center’s capacity of 5,119. Naturally, Binetti’s audience is not in that seating bowl, but an unquantified figure beyond the building.

Regardless, the number of people standing by his side has drained from 359 to one. Only a rotation of color commentators will blend another voice in with his output for the listeners.

That aside, he says, “I’d argue that there are more parallels than differences” between the band and the booth.

“If there’s one difference, it’s that you can’t really rehearse broadcasts,” he continued. “Sure, you can have meetings on what you’re going to say and how you’re going to say it, storyboarding pregame shows and such. But you can’t ever really script and practice anything.

“Plus, if you do, it comes across as inauthentic, and it kills your credibility as a broadcaster. So much of what we say, how we react, and the emotion that goes into and comes out of broadcasting is spontaneous.”

Even a reprise of old patterns can catch Binetti off guard. His two years as Shaya’s intern in Charlotte marked an instant immersion in AHL-caliber hockey. Unlike the lower levels, nearly every player is a protected prospect, and arguably matches the skill of overseas major leaguers.

Granted, the preceding Checkers had just logged 17 seasons in Double-A before giving way to the new edition. But Binetti had not seen as much of them since going to USC. While he was there, he was so absorbed in bands and biology that he also missed out on another ECHL team, the neighboring Columbia Inferno.

The Inferno would fold in 2008, after Binetti’s sophomore year. He partly regrets failing to catch their games because their mascot, Blaze, was portrayed by one of his fraternity brothers. In addition, defenseman Justin Sawyer played in Columbia during Binetti’s freshman year, then on the first Rush team Binetti worked with.

About that team: Rapid City granted Binetti a blast back to Double-A, albeit in the Central League to start. He figured he was in for a spectacle a little closer to Slap Shot than the “A” will ever produce.

“I thought I was in for a huge change in pace and speed,” he said, “and was surprised to see how wrong I was. The CHL was very physical, very veteran-laden. But it was a great league to break into the professional ranks with.”

Nonetheless, it was on thin ice at the time. Membership whittled from 10 teams to nine early in the 2014 offseason. Arizona and Denver’s teams, both languishing in the ever-pivotal attendance column, then withdrew for the approaching campaign.

With only seven active chapters to speak of, the Central League gave out and latched on to a welcoming ECHL. The Rush, who had always stayed within the 4,000 attendance range, were properly rewarded by the rescue. And a mere 10 days after the late-coming merger was announced, Binetti was back behind their mic.

Upon stretching his Rapid City tenure to five years this past spring, he has stayed at the same base longer than anywhere else since his days as an all-state middle-school musician and long-term in-the-making medicine man in New Jersey.

In that span, he has discovered gratifying quantities of leisure time and attractions to fill it with. He has taken up adult-league hockey and softball, joined Knights of Columbus and kept his voice sharp in the summer via American Legion baseball broadcasts.

But he has yet to add pure-sport percussions or winds to that mix. “It kills me that I haven’t been able to,” he admits. “I dust off the instruments every now and then and practice, but it’s really been a long time.”

That does not, however, mean he is letting his inner musician log mothballs. His second-nature instincts from the metropolis and the Carolinas get ample new use in his vocation.

“I liken calling a game to sight-reading music,” he said. “The pressure of people listening to you, the amount of preparation needed to be successful at both music and calling a hockey game and the performance ‘game-face’ mentality are all the same between both worlds.”

Clair DeGeorge to the third power: School, sport and Rubik’s on the side

Clair DeGeorge, who likes to take a minute before game time to align a Rubik’s Cube, has also translated her ceberal prowess in more meaningful ways.

(Photo courtesy of BSU Photo Services)

 

It all started when Clair DeGeorge sought a much-needed time-killer.

Fast-forward five years, and open season on her agenda is a distant memory. Free moments are now an endangered species, as they are wont to become for a Division I student-athlete.

Fortunately, the Bemidji State women’s forward and U.S. national team prospect who cites the Rubik’s Cube as her top hidden talent has struck a regulatory compromise. Knowing her limits, she has mastered her personal ceiling with a 58-second completion.

Even on the relatively relaxed 3-by-3-by-3 variant she prefers, that pales in comparison to the world record. This past May, Australian prodigy Feliks Zemdegs revised his Guinness entry by ordering the six colors in 4.221 ticks.

Still, it makes for a perfect pregame routine, one that gives her sticks a longer breather before ice time arrives. When others might squeeze in some last-minute dryland puckhandling rehearsal, DeGeorge organizes the color-coded nine-member teams.

“It’s more to get my wrists a little bit warmed up,” she explained to Pucks and Recreation. “At this point I usually just do it based on supersitition.”

Given the time of the Rubik’s Cube’s arrival in her life, its lasting side role explains itself. An Anchorage, Alaska, native, DeGeorge first came to Minnesota to enroll as a ninth-grade student at Shattuck-St. Mary’s School. There she would test her on-ice potential in the program that produced four gold-medal Pyeongchang Olympians in Brianna Decker, Amanda Kessel, Jocelyne Lamoureux and Monique Lamoureux.

She would also undertake an upgrade in academic rigor at the state’s sole boarding school. And yet, she recalls, “I had a lot of time on my hands” in that 2013-14 school year.

All of SSM’s hockey teams (five boys’ and two girls’) function as a travel program. This entails a six-month schedule split between home dates and coach bus trips to action-packed weekends.

While on the 16-and-under team, DeGeorge found her new road-trip and general downtime diversion. “A couple of my teammates taught me their ways of being able to get the patterns down,” she said. “After a lot of practice, I just got to doing it pretty fast.”

Not that she is prepared to sprint head-on into her boundaries. The conventional variants on a Rubik’s Cube range in six sizes, all classified by cubes per row and column. To date, DeGeorge has mastered the de facto Level II out of six.

The highest basic size, 7-by-7-by-7, is an admitted reach. Moreover, she resists the playful pushing of fellow BSU Beavers who send her viral videos of stunt speedcubers.

“I never want to try it blindfolded,” she said in reference to one of the most common challenge upgrades. Ditto tackling a cube under water, using a single hand, using one’s feet or juggling the toy in the process.

But concomitant with her cubing discovery, DeGeorge found more meaningful ways of translating her cerebral prowess. With SSM running its middle school through ninth grade, she was in contention for that level’s top grade-point average in 2013-14. She was taken aback upon learning she had retained the highest mark at year’s end.

“It was never really on my mind,” she said. Nonetheless, the achievement did impel her to “reevaulate” her capabilities.

By the time she was a high-school junior, the same year she made Team USA’s 18-and-under select squad, DeGeorge was on SSM’s cum laude list. As a senior, she collected one award apiece in academics, athletics and service and citizenship.

Those were all payoffs for substantial investments and sacrifices of time, mind you.

“Balancing the two is the hardest,” she said. “It’s hard to be studying and working on your athletics and knowing that all your friends are out having fun. When the day is done, you realize you haven’t had time to talk to everyone you wanted to.”

Ice-wise, DeGeorge caught her biggest break on the heels of her holiday respite from school in 2016-17. Making the cut for the 18-and-under national squad at the World Junior Championship, she went to the Czech Republic for the first half of January.

She would chalk up five assists in as many tournament games, including the primary helper on the icebreaker in a 3-1 win over Canada for the gold. But with a winter trimester fast folding back at her home away from home, reality waited to hit hard.

“I spent the rest of the semester in the library,” she said. “You just have to pick and choose what your priorities are and figure out the rest.”

Within four months of that whirlwind, DeGeorge was summoned to the stage three times at SSM’s year-end awards ceremony. Among her accolades, the academic jewel came for attaining the highest marks in science. She has carried that credential over to a concentration in nursing studies at BSU.

Since she moved upstate and enrolled in college, a little of “the rest” is the Rubik’s Cube once again. And DeGeorge is not ruling out a future crack at the four-by-four-by-four variant.

“Maybe someday,” she mused, “if I can get a lot of time on my hands.”

Dogged defense still key to Luongo’s job

Photo © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The popular Old Western attitude toward scarce territory rarely applies around the Olde Towne of New England. Even when it does, it is not liable to spark much conflict.

 

Certainly not in any of the parts of Boston where you can find Nicki Luongo. As compact as the city is at 48.3 square miles, it is plenty big for sports and culture.

Luongo’s workplace is the Museum of Fine Arts, housed in a 109-year-old building on Huntington Avenue. Within a five-mile radius are the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Harvard Art Museum and Institute of Contemporary Art.

Together, those could field a broomball Beanpot of company teams, if enough employees were so inclined.

There was a time when, travel-wise, Luongo’s institute was more along the lines of the out-of-town Peabody Essex museum, some 25 miles away. She used to join her University of New Hampshire hockey team in visiting one of three Boston-area rinks in the ECAC women’s league.

It could have been Northeastern’s Matthews Arena, a 108-year-old barn on Huntington. Or it could have technically been outside city limits, but in the same 617 area code. That would have either been Boston College’s Conte Forum or Harvard’s Bright-Landry Hockey Center.

 

Matthews, home to NU’s Huskies and an easy Green Line E subway ride from the MFA, is affectionately dubbed the Dog House. That is not to be confused with the Dog Pound, home of Boston University’s Terriers on another Green Line branch.

Besides the Division I men and women, these venues host their share of lower-level college, high-school, junior and youth action. There is no shortage of opportunity for blast-from-the-past diversions.

The thing is, though, Luongo’s personal planner is as booked as the busiest rink’s.

“Sometimes,” she told Pucks and Recreation when asked if she frequents her old haunts and watches her intercollegiate descendants. “But right now, I’m coaching my son’s youth hockey team from Nashoba Valley (roughly an hour west). That takes up most of my free time.”

Throughout this calendar year, Luongo has been coaching another family member at the MFA. In January, the museum unveiled what is believed to be a never-before-tried dog-sniffing campaign against pests that prey on paintings.

As director of protective services, Luongo has been tasked with training the new sleuth. It helps that she has prior experience fostering K-9 police servicemembers, and that she enlisted her own family’s year-old Weimaraner, Riley, for this innovative initiative.

At the program’s inception, MFA deputy director Katie Getchell told the New York Times, “It’s really a trial, pilot project. We don’t know if he’s going to be good at it. But it seems like a great idea to try.”

Given its stature within Boston’s bountiful arts scene, the MFA is an appropriate testing ground. Compared to neighboring equivalents, it boasts the most quantitative (more than half a million works and artifacts) and varied collection.

And if cumulative visitors are the measuring pole, then it is what the Terrier men were when their Beanpot was waggishly nicknamed the BU Invitational. Between 1986 and 2010, they would go no more than two consecutive years without taking the trophy. In all, BU has won 30 of the first 66 men’s Beanpots.

Art Newspaper reports that the MFA ranked No. 60 among the world’s most visited art museums in 2017. With 1,226,431 guests, it attracted more than all but eight other American institutes. Those that surpassed it were based in the larger cities of New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago and Los Angeles.

Yet no internal employees are keeping score. To that point, Luongo does not declare her Gardner, Harvard, Contemporary Art or Peabody counterparts competitors, but “colleagues.”

“In our minds, more art is a good thing,” she said. “In the protective-services industry, we support one another and consult all the time. It takes a village.”

 

Photo courtesy of UNH Athletics

‘Night and day’ times

Luongo grew up 30 miles northwest of the Hub in Tyngsboro, brushing the New Hampshire border. Her rise as a person coincided with that of women’s hockey as a program at the pioneering universities on each side of the state line.

UNH had inaugurated its program in 1977, followed by Harvard a year later. Northeastern joined in 1980, when the Wildcats were defending their sport’s first conference tournament championship. New Hampshire would not lose a single game in its entire chronicle until Dec. 8, 1981.

By 1994, the Cats owned four titles from the ECAC playoffs plus another four from its precursor, the EAIAW. As the college and international game swam to the mainstream, Luongo was ready to contribute to the era’s definitive program.

She was primarily a defender, but also had decent, if not extravagant, point-producing prowess. Down the road, that was enough to make the newfangled Olympics more than a pipe dream. The Nagano Games would feature the first women’s tournament during Luongo’s senior year.

But a combination of health and academic setbacks tripped her up, for a time anyway.

“I was out for a semester and had some learning challenges and adjustments to make after tearing my ACL,” she said. “I can’t say enough about the support UNH provided during that time. They were great in helping me understand that my education was the priority and hockey was a privilege. They spent a lot of time helping me determine where I fit in, both academically and athletically.”

By the end, she fit into the record book at fifth among UNH’s leading career scorers from the blue line. With 84 points, she tied Shawna Davidson for that slot, and the two rank No. 10 today.

One of those above that mark was Heather Reinke, who graduated with 103 points in 1997. The timing of Luongo’s turnaround was most opportune, as she effectively filled Reinke’s skates as the team’s defensive anchor.

In 1998, Luongo’s belated junior year, the Wildcats won the first formal national championship in women’s college hockey, ousting Brown University at Boston’s FleetCenter. Meanwhile, senior teammate Brandy Fisher claimed the inaugural Patty Kazmaier Award, the long-time-coming women’s equivalent of the Hobey Baker.

“I’ve always said that you have to learn how to lose before you can learn to win,” Luongo said. “That championship season was a great example of that. After facing adversity, things sort of fell into place. We had a close team that stood together no matter what. Winning in the end was a brief moment in time when your childhood dreams really did come true.”

As a senior, Luongo rose to UNH’s captaincy, and flexed an unprecedented two-way prowess. Amidst a 13-0 thrashing of border rival Maine in mid-November, she had a hand in seven of the scoring plays.

But then the short shelf life of the ultimate glory kicked in. After the Wildcats and their representatives spent that calendar year breaking championship ice and setting records, their Crimson colleagues from the Commonwealth south of the border took their turn.

UNH was one sudden-death strike away from a repeat national crown in 1999. But eight minutes into overtime, and spilling over into a ninth, a Harvard team coached by another one-time two-way UNH defensive standout in Katey Stone saw all of its stars align.

U.S. Olympic gold medalist A.J. Mlezcko and Canadian standout Jennifer Botterill were leading a swarm on Wildcat property. Blueliner Angela Ruggiero, another American Nagano veteran, was in the mix as well.

The Harvard Crimson newspaper went on to describe the game’s deciding sequence as follows: “At 8:01 of the extra period, co-captain A.J. Mleczko won the puck in the left corner and raced past UNH’s best defenseman, senior Nicki Luongo, along the goal line. Mleczko slid the puck under the diving glove of Wildcat junior goaltender Alicia Roberts, who set a school record with 48 saves. On the receiving end was freshman winger Jen Botterill, who slammed home the championship-winning goal.”

Two days later, Mlezcko was awarded the Kazmaier. Luongo, a repeat All-American, finished third in the final vote. Botterill would later win it in 2001 and 2003, to say nothing of four Olympic gold medals. Ruggiero earned it in 2004, a decade before enshrinement in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

For Luongo, that would be the end of the extramural showdowns. Two decades later, she insists she does not “remember the play or much of the game at all.”

She does, however, treasure her later opportunity to skate with Mleczko and room with Northeastern standout Hilary Witt on the U.S. national team.

“Our experiences as rivals and teammates were positive,” Luongo said. “More importantly, back then, we had to support one another and stick by each other through good times and bad.”

While Mleczko went on to play one more Olympic tournament in 2002, Luongo was in the running for a roster spot until the preceding August. Injuries had caught up with her. In addition, the opportunity to sustain and sharpen her skills in the two years between graduation and the official tryout was scant.

Although she attained a degree in English teaching at UNH, Luongo offers a simple summation of today’s women’s hockey landscape versus the one she beheld through her window.

“Night and day,” she said. “Women in the game today are lucky to have so many options for college and to play professionally. The competition is much better than when I played the game, and I think they’ve earned a lot of respect, which is a great thing.

“I wish it was like that when I played. But I hope that my generation helped lay some of the groundwork for women in the sport today.”

Incidentally, the women were not the only Wildcat pucksters to lose a national championship in 1999. The UNH men dropped their own overtime decision to Maine that year. But of the 25 players on that season’s roster, 17 had a chance to play beyond school. Three of them made the NHL, and three were active as late as 2016.

If she had as many avenues as the men and more consistent health, Luongo might have been wrapping up her career in this decade. Or she might have taken her teaching talents behind a college bench. And she may not have had to go far from home to do it.

For three seasons this decade, with the CWHL’s Blades and NWHL’s Pride, two professional women’s teams used the Boston dateline. That only changed this year when the Blades moved west to Worcester. One alumna of both teams, three-time Olympian Kacey Bellamy, leap-frogged Luongo on the UNH defenders’ all-time scoring list in 2009.

The four Beanpot schools remain, jockeying for recruits year-round, PairWise positioning for five months and civic bragging rights on two Tuesdays every February. But in an age where #growthegame pervades Twitter in a women’s hockey (among other sports) context, kinship still transcends competition.

Imagine, then, what it was like in Luongo’s playing days. Two decades ago, her sport was still an Olympic neophyte. Bona fide professional leagues were an afterthought. The collegiate ranks ran not under an NCAA banner, but as the American Women’s College Hockey Alliance. The latter finally changed in the fall of 2000.

The familiar Hockey East conference would not get a women’s equivalent until UNH, NU and four others seceded from the ECAC in 2002, mimicking their male counterparts’ move from 18 years prior. Boston University would not start fielding its modern varsity program until 2005.

What-ifs might find some space in the back of Luongo’s mind. The thing is, they are not invited. It is nothing personal. She would just as soon accentuate the positive, keeping the memory bank pure.

“In the end,” she said, “the experience was amazing, and taught me a lot about myself and my ability to push myself harder in whatever direction the world sends me.”

 

Photo courtesy of UNH Athletics

 

Switching places

Six years separated Luongo’s graduation from UNH and her first inside look at the MFA. Her 2005 arrival culminated the journeywoman phase in a career built around a lifelong affinity for non-profit institutions.

“My parents worked hard to instill values that focused on giving back to the community and others that needed help,” she said. “They taught us to be kind and caring of everyone. As I grew up and learned about the different types of businesses and organizations, I always felt that the non-profit world was where I belonged.”

For her last breath of high-level hockey, Luongo briefly joined old bench boss Karen Kay’s staff at UNH after being cut from the national team. Among her achievements there, per LinkedIn, she “Created computer based evaluations, academic tracking, and recruiting systems with various software programs.” But Kay was fired after the 2001-02 season, and the coaching crew dispersed.

As it happens, while Luongo now works in the neighborhood of Witt’s alma mater, Witt holds the Wildcat reins. A Northeastern Athletic and Massachusetts Hockey Hall of Famer, Witt also fell short of the 2002 Olympic team. She promptly joined the Yale coaching staff, then ascended to the head position a year later.

After briefly shifting to an assistant slot at NU, Witt filled UNH’s next vacancy in the spring of 2014. That move made it easier for her to attend Luongo and Stone’s UNH Athletics Hall of Fame induction that June.

“She has done great things for the game,” Luongo said, “and remains dedicated to continuing to improve the experiences and opportunities for young women playing hockey. I’m happy for her, and think she does a great job at UNH.”

When her own crack at college coaching ended, Luongo had three years of experience as a service technician in Chelmsford, Mass., bordering her native town. She stayed there through 2004. The next year witnessed three job switches, with a stint at Liberty Mutual Insurance as a security manager in between.

But by October 2005, the MFA had opened its door to her inner linguist, learner and leader.

“I feel like I use my teaching background consistently in my current career, and I’m grateful to have had the experience,” said Luongo. “The protective-services team is a large group, and these kinds of skills are important when I’m training them on everything from conflict resolution, medical response, managing high-stress situations and other everyday protection strategies to keep people and our collection safe.”

As the assistant director of security technology for seven years and one month, Luongo made the MFA eclipse her combined tenure at every preceding professional stop. Then she got a helping of the institute’s actively progressive principles.

Balancing work with caring for her young son, Luongo was also expecting triplets in 2012. That was when her dedication and familiarity yielded her elevation to director of protective services. Assuming office in November of that year, she became the first woman to hold the title.

“Without a doubt, my biggest accomplishment is my children,” she said. Professionally, though, her ascent up her division’s ladder “has certainly meant more than I can put into words.”

In the coming month, she will have rounded out six full years in her current post.

 

Photo © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Treasurable talents and promising prodigies

Storm in the Mountains, an oil painting by the German-born, Massachusetts-raised 19th-century artist Albert Bierstadt, hangs in Luongo’s house. It is one of Bierstadt’s many realistic renderings of a given landscape, roughly 20 of which the MFA boasts.

With the color, Luongo’s favorite work captures the lavishness of a verdant setting, even as dark clouds creep in. But when Bierstadt opted for grey and grainy portraits, one could swear he was wielding a camera.

“I’ve taught myself how to draw, and I’m awestruck by the artwork on our walls,” Luongo said. “It’s one thing to have talent as an athlete, it’s completely another to be able to draw or paint. I’m fascinated by artistic genius, especially when you look at a painting and think it’s a photograph. To have that kind of talent is incredible.”

To justify Boston’s self-proclamation as the Hub of the Universe, the least the MFA can do is hold a comprehensive swath of that top-notch talent within the same set of walls. Indeed, examples of virtually every medium of visual art from each continent and era is represented there.

“What I love about the museum is that there’s really something for everyone,” Luongo said. “Ancient mummies, Impressionist paintings, Chinese scrolls and American silver are just a few examples.

“We never discuss the value of the collection. In a word, it is priceless.”

The behind-the-scenes exploits of Luongo’s division are equally sensitive. She did, however, allow that ever-evolving technology equals extra encouragement.

While pro hockey has “moneypuck,” emulating baseball’s sabermetrics revolution, analytics keep the MFA’s guards a step ahead in their task. The staff crunches patterns, Luongo said, “to predict human behavior and find new ways to display and protect the art.”

The main difference is all findings are fair game for other museums, regardless of area code or even zip code.

“It’s been great to be able to share our research and findings with colleagues from all over the world.”

Long before Luongo’s time in the field, the neighborhood had its most sobering example of the advancements’ importance. In 1990, 13 works were lifted from the Isabella Gardner, a seven-minute walk from the MFA.

A page on the victimized museum’s website reminds visitors that the case is still “active and ongoing.” It offers a $10 million reward for successful leads on the perpetrators and paintings.

Odds are that, if any memorabilia symbolizing UNH’s 1998 AWCHA championship went missing, the lengths for recovery would exist. But they would pale next to the Gardner’s drive to bring back its treasures.

The woman who could not outwit Mlezcko on her last intercollegiate shift understands the difference better than anyone. Any effort to relate the challenge or strategy or defending of a net or a title to that of safeguarding revered cultural remnants crumbles when you consider the disproportionate magnitude.

 

“There really is no comparison,” Luongo said. “Playing a sport is one thing, but protecting people and artwork is on a completely different level. They are irreplaceable. The consequences are far more significant than losing a game.”

 

If anything can be quantified here, it is the volume of artifacts needing attention. Per its annual report for 2017, the museum procured 5,399 new works, the most in any year since Luongo’s promotion.

But that unprecedented uptick coincides with the team’s new four-legged offensive defenseman. With Riley, Luongo has yet another apprentice eager to tap her teaching instincts.

In January, local and regional media of all forms descended on the MFA for a word on the acquisition. One message was palpable: Boston’s biggest art aggregator is too big for the smallest of visible organisms.

With Riley, the MFA is rephrasing that statement, one that anybody could freely Xerox for their own sake. Of course, the copycat rate will hinge on the hopeful revolutionary canine’s success.

On that note, how has this new breed of Huntington Hound come along since his draft day? How has the scouting report changed in the last 10 months?

 

“Riley has made incredible progress,” Luongo said, “and we’re really pleased with how he’s advanced through his training. He’s completed basic puppy training and is now in the midst of scent training.

 

“We’re using moth pheromones to help him track and identify these insects, which are particularly damaging to textiles. He’s well on his way!”

Ethan Stewart knows the joy of sax

Photo courtesy of Ferris State Athletics

If anyone ever sees a need to make Ethan Stewart feel more at home at Ewigleben Arena, a menu of options exists.

There are public-address system staples like “Livin’ on a Prayer,” “It’s My Life” and “You Give Love a Bad Name.” If Ferris State’s visitors incur a penalty and Stewart is summoned to the power-play unit, there is “Wanted: Dead or Alive.”

Or even, at the last game before a long break, any version of “Who Says You Can’t Go Home.” To heighten the hometown feel, maybe switch gears from Bon Jovi to Cheap Trick.

But the disc jockey need not go it alone. This is college hockey, after all, and FSU’s pep band is rife with saxophonists. Some tenor solos, in particular, could hit the spot for Stewart, who has been in those musicians’ shoes before.

Based on Stewart’s admission, the notion that Plexiglas, helmets and facial cages cancel all outside disturbances at game time is slightly exaggerated. He cannot help taking note of the canned entertainment and seizing a little extra adrenaline from it.

“I do enjoy listening to the music in the pregame warm-ups,” he told Pucks and Recreation this week. “Sometimes a song will come on and I think, ‘Oh, I played that song in high school.’”

The sights, sounds and activity make for pleasant flashbacks to the Stewart household as well. Between playing definitive travel hockey and playing the tenor sax in his school’s band, home time was at a premium. Stewart tended to spend those minutes honing his puck-handling and shooting skills in the basement.

Meanwhile, in the next room, his father would often devote his leisure time to covering classic rock on his guitar. “My dad used to be able to play any song ever,” he says. “Any classic rock song or country song.”

Through that, in no small part, Bon Jovi grew to be one of Stewart’s favorite artists. But he is far from finicky in terms of what music he consumes, produces or how.

Raised in Rockford, Ill., Stewart comes from a versatile hockey family. The middle of three brothers, he is the lone forward in the brood. Its eldest member, Hayden, graduated from Cornell this past spring and now tends the net for the ECHL’s Cincinnati Cyclones. The youngest, Harrison, is a defenseman for the NA3HL’s North Iowa Bulls.

Growing up, all three assumed a cornucopia of musical positions as well. While their father, Brad, instilled their guitar hobby, their mother, Kate, enrolled them in piano lessons throughout elementary school.

By age 12, Stewart had more instrumental autonomy, and his music teacher turned him on to the tenor sax. Once again, the variety motif was in play.

“You can play high or low pitches,” Stewart says. “You can be the main part of a song, the main tone or play more of a backup role. There’s a lot of versatility.”

Although primarily synonymous with jazz, the tenor sax also bears broad genre horizons. Stewart kept the classic rock coming in both private and formal performances with his high-school marching band.

It helped to learn, as he did during his sophomore year, that Guilford High School produced three-quarters of Cheap Trick. (The fourth founding member, Robin Zander, went to Harlem High six miles up the road.)

Being Rockford’s musical pride alone made Cheap Trick a natural staple in the Stewart residence playlist. But at Guilford, knowing that Bun E. Carlos, Rick Nielsen and Tom Peterrson fostered the same fundamental interest within the same facilities made it “fun to be part of that same atmosphere.”

Stewart also had the pleasure of mastering a marching-band rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” for halftime at the homecoming football game in 2014.

“We made the formation of his famous glove and his legs to do the moonwalk,” he recalled. “We’d go out every day for weeks prior to get the movements down.”

In those moments, a cliché command from coaches at the rink all but rang in his head. There he was trying to make things happen with a handheld tool while moving his feet swiftly and smoothly.

“I do remember that, at one point during the song, I had to walk kind of at a 45-degree angle to the right and forward,” Stewart said. “Had to rush to get to the new spot to make it look good. Trying to get my feet going in the right direction.

“It’s kind of funny. I had to move my feet pretty quickly to get in position.”

The truth was, in those days, Stewart’s body collectively was just short of a shark’s the way it kept rolling. It needed to.

Besides the marching band, the jazz band and the syllabi at Guilford, he was honing his hockey craft with the Milwaukee Jr. Admirals. That commitment entailed a 90-minute commute to practice three nights a week, usually with academic cramming sessions in the car.

With hockey still his chief long-term extracurricular pursuit, Stewart sacrificed rehearsals “once or twice.” That being said, “My band director was really good about that. He let me write a paper and make up for it.”

Over three seasons in the Admirals travel program, Stewart never missed a game. With their 18-and-under club in 2014-15, he tied for fourth on team scoring leaderboard in league play. Amidst all of that, he landed in Guilford’s National Honors Society as a senior.

“It was challenging,” he admitted. “But it was good for me because it taught me to be responsible at an early age.”

A three-year Junior-A detour between high school and college shelved the academic weight for a time. By that point, Stewart no longer had a sax of his own either.

But during North American League seasons in South Dakota, Alaska and Illinois, he made a point of perusing the local music scenes. His roommate with the Kenai Brown Bears was a fellow guitarist, and he was enthralled by the stores in Aberdeen.

“I just like musical instruments in general,” he said.

Since entering the Bulldogs’ ice kennel, Stewart has found ample company sharing his outside interest. Besides an action-shot profile picture, his lone specimen of Twitter activity this autumn has been a retweet that captured a teammate’s multi-talented essence.

The post, coming from the team’s account, went up on Oct. 7, when FSU claimed a come-from-behind 5-2 exhibition victory over Lethbridge. With a primary assist from Stewart, junior forward Dom Lutz got the offense rolling that afternoon by cutting an initial 2-0 deficit in half.

In response, the team Twitter feed stated, “Dom Lutz. Musician. Goal Scorer. You decide.” The accompanying video clip shows a helmetless Lutz shedding his stick and gloves in favor of a guitar, which he strums while shuffling offscreen.

Last season, Lutz and three teammates — Nate Kallen and Drew and Tyler Dorantes — constituted a rock band, the Don Cuatros. But the Dorantes brothers, who were the group’s backup guitarists, have since graduated.

Without even looking for it, Stewart might have put himself in a position to fill that void. Or to dust off his primary adolescence instrument and bring a new dynamic to the Don Cuatros. On the team’s second day of practice, he casually spoke of his saxophoning history with another teammate.

That was when, as Stewart recalls, the keyboardist Kallen turned his head and cannonballed into the conversation.

“That was the first time I talked to him much,” he said. “Now he wants me to try to get a sax. I probably should. It would be fun to join them."

Given Stewart’s expressed interest in mastering the acoustic guitar, particularly for country music, Lutz is the ideal teammate to feed off of. But whether his hockey skills or in-the-making degree in business marketing form his professional basis, he hopes to keep his whole roster of instruments intact on the side.

“I always want to have a piano in my house,” he said. “Guitar and saxophone too. I want to be able to play them for my family when I’m older.”