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.”

Maine hockey enters 15th year as a key cog for MAAV

Chase Pearson (Photo by Tutuny, courtesy of Maine Athletics)

 

For members of the University of Maine’s Male Athletes Against Violence (MAAV) initiative, numbers stick like preseason statistics. That is if the experience of its two most recent hockey ambassadors is any indication.

“I can’t remember many specifics,” junior Chase Pearson told Pucks and Recreation. “But I know they shocked me enough to really get interested in the class.”

And so, every week last fall, Pearson, along with classmate Mitchell Fossier, joined a smattering of Black Bears from the other six men’s athletic programs. Together they constituted the 14th iteration of a unique domestic violence awareness class.

Dr. Sandra L. Caron, who teaches family relations and human sexuality, established MAAV for the 2004-05 academic year. The club’s mission statement reads, in part, “Violence is a way of asserting power, privilege, and control. Men perpetrate the majority of violence, and yet this issue is usually framed as a ‘woman’s issue.’ Change will come when we challenge the social norms and institutions that actively or implicitly condone and promote violence. MAAV is an effort to involve men so that we can begin to understand that violence is very much a ‘man’s issue.’”

One product of MAAV’s first go-round, James Henry, soon penned a six-line poem on the matter. Of those lines, the lede stands out for Pearson. Scripting everything in lowercase, Henry begins by stressing, “female abuse on a scale can’t be measured.”

For Pearson, that “shows that we have a problem in our society that is greater than we know. Abuse occurs daily, and we cannot stop it every time. But we can inform people, and the more informed people are about the issue, the more chance it can be put to a stop.”

The fifth line, “mutual respect is rich like a blank check,” proposes the remedy. That message resonates the most with Fossier, who will wear an “A” on the ice in this season.

“I think too many people walk around without a sense of respect for others, as well as themselves,” Fossier told Pucks and Rec. “A very large root of this issue is a lack of respect. The poem is a great depiction of this.”

Despite Henry’s first statement on quantifying the problem, data will continue to flow in. Last week, The Nation’s Miguel Salazar submitted a study on domestic violence pervading Latin American soccer communities.

The article’s subheading articulated one statistical finding. “In Colombia, cases of intimate-partner violence against women rose by 33 percent during the past two World Cups.” In between those FIFA festivals, one of the nation’s stars faced domestic battery charges in Miami Beach, only to return to the pitch within a year.

Similar patterns have plagued the NFL, NHL, MLB and NBA alike. The reason for such uncomfortable publicity is nothing new, but certainly more prominent on the 2010s media landscape.

That system has captured and covered incidents much closer to Pearson and Fossier’s current circle. MAAV was half its current age when the Black Bears became a footnote in an on-ice rival’s dark weekend.

On Saturday, Dec. 10, 2011, Alfond Arena entertained a Hockey East tilt with Boston University. Maine fell flat in a 5-1 final, with Terrier senior Corey Trivino’s two goals fetching him first-star status.

With that, Trivino, then a New York Islanders prospect and BU’s scoring leader, extended his production streak to four games entering the holiday break.

Barely 24 hours after that game, back on his own campus, Trivino took his dive into infamy. On that night, a female student told police Trivino had forcefully entered her dorm room and made unwanted physical advances.

As it happened, two months prior, Trivino had been featured in a long-form BU Daily Free Press feature. Besides highlighting prior troubles, the piece naturally focused on his hockey potential. It ran under the headline “Trivino Suave,” and noted his expressed commitment to “improving his behavior off the ice.”

His violent indiscretion later that fall was his final strike. Before the midseason break, Trivino was promptly dismissed from the team on the grounds of intoxication. Eight months later, he pleaded guilty to assault and battery.

Mitchell Fossier (Photo by Buehner, courtesy of Maine Athletics)

In between, BU stepped up its soul-searching after another player, Max Nicastro, faced charges from a similar incident following a February 2012 game.

In the six years since underdoing a rigorous task-force investigation, the Terriers have had no further eruptions. But putting two and two — or Saturday and Sunday — of those weekends together presented athletic empowerment at its worst. The internal task force pointed to “a culture of sexual entitlement…stemming in part from their elevated social status on campus.”

Before and since, BU’s clean-record leaders have taken steps, sometimes opposite their three Beanpot rivals, to craft the opposite image. Likewise, MAAV’s hockey torch-bearers want to keep their culture’s impression wholesome.

“I think athletes often have somewhat of a spotlight in college, both in positive and negative aspects,” said Fossier. “Because a lot of eyes are on collegiate athletes, though, it gives a good stage to raise awareness and get some traction for an issue like this.”

At the time of MAAV’s inception, Black Bear hockey was at or near its peak in popularity. Maine was coming off its fourth Frozen Four and third national championship game appearance in six years. It was also defending its second Hockey East tournament title in five seasons.

The program has struggled in the win column for most of the past decade, reducing its exposure on ESPN and the New England Sports Network. Even so, its legacy keeps it a magnet for publicity. In turn, it remains a key cog for MAAV.

“We strive to have members of all sports teams,” Caron told Pucks and Rec. “And of course having our high-profile hockey team as part of the program has always been important.”

Pearson, for one, is not oblivious to the hook that renown lends him and fellow puck ambassadors to MAAV. Last year he and Fossier spearheaded a slew of initiatives tailored to students at each educational bookend. They would read Hands Are Not for Hitting to local kindergartners and present and lead a workshop titled Reel Men vs. Real Men to their fellow collegians.

“I think it is important for us to be the ones who take a stand because we have recognition on campus,” said the Black Bears co-captain and Detroit Red Wings prospect. “People will listen regardless of if they know us personally because maybe they support the hockey program or the football program as a whole.”

During at least one game per year, Alfond Arena sets up an awareness table as part of White Ribbon Week. The observance is an extension of the global White Ribbon Campaign, which originated in Toronto in 1991 under the same essential pretense as MAAV.

As the faces of the allied programs, Pearson and Fossier took charge of organizing that last fall. When they were not engaged in a concomitant game, they put their own faces behind tables at the Memorial Union building, the three-story hub of Maine student life.

As Caron noted, they literally sweetened the deal with treats for good measure. For added hockey flavor, their shifts might also entail distributing MAAV-logo foam pucks.

From present to prospective members, word of mouth keeps the MAAV torch passing along. One prominent puckster early this decade was Will O’Neill, now a seventh-year pro who made his NHL debut last season. Conor Riley, who wore an “A” as a senior when Pearson was a freshman, is now a staple with the ECHL’s Adirondack Thunder.

Filling Pearson and Fossier’s skates this fall are sophomores Alexis Binner and Kevin Hock. With Binner, a blueliner from Stocksund, Sweden, MAAV will have intercontinental representation.

Currently coordinated by Jean Point-Dujour, a football player turned academic counselor, the group meets Monday evenings at the Memorial Union. As Point-Dujour indicated last winter on the Maine Black Bears YouTube channel, the conferences stress inclusive game-planning. Each member is invited to raise and weigh in on what needs attention.

At times, though, tabling alone is enough to reel in overwhelming awareness from the broader community.

“The responses we got were awesome,” Pearson said of his stint with MAAV. “Everybody was so supportive and really appreciative of the fact that we were out there supporting a cause that is swept under the rug a lot of times.”

How soccer, track in Texas influenced hockey in North Dakota

(Photo courtesy of University of Mary Athletics)

Daniel Huntley may have created a monster at the University of Mary. So many fans packed the Schwan Cadillac Arena for a first glimpse at the new hockey program in action that the gatekeepers had to start turning would-be spectators away. 

On Sept. 15, exactly one year after announcing that they would add a hockey program, the Marauders hosted their first home game against North Dakota State. With an 8-0 victory, the first impression said a long road to establishing a hockey program was worth it.

“It certainly was a storybook ending,” Huntley told Pucks and Recreation. 

The end of the beginning, he hopes.

Huntley, who doubles as Mary’s associate athletic director, certainly achieved a remarkable feat in getting a hockey program ready in one year. More notably, when he arrived, the Marauders did not even have a club team.

However, he has overcome such challenges before.

Before arriving on the Benedictine Bismarck campus, Huntley logged extensive experience in athletic administration. Among his feats, he oversaw various colleges’ establishing teams in other sports.

That John Chapman-like journey began at Northland College in northern Wisconsin, where he worked from 2000 to 2005.

“A cross-country program was already in place,” he said, “but unfortunately the head coach quit. I was already the hockey coach, but I wanted the cross-country programs to continue. I went to the athletic director and said I would be able to coach cross-country.

“Even though I did not have much experience coaching this particular sport, I believe you can coach if you know how to manage.”

After two years in this role, Huntley handed the reins to his assistant coach. But after preserving this program, his journey was just getting started. In 2005, Huntley moved to the University of Texas-Brownsville, one of the oldest community colleges in the state.

In a three-year stay as the athletic director, his first crack at the top of an athletic department, Huntley navigated other challenges in establishing a new soccer program.

“As soon as I got down there, I knew the community liked soccer,” he reflected. “Brownsville was good at the high-school level, and I looked at adding men’s and women’s soccer.”

Huntley recognized the value of embracing the local community and learned other important lessons at Brownsville as well.

“There were a few important elements contributing to Brownsville’s success,” he said. “Establishing a solid scholarship program and taking the time to find the right guys to coach the team is so valuable. 

“If people see your program is not successful, they won’t go. You have to be diligent in your coaching a player search and find the right people at the right time.”

In 2015, Brownsville merged with the University of Texas-Pan American to form the University of Texas a Rio Grande Valley, but Huntley’s impact remains palpable. Both of its soccer programs continue to compete in the Western Valley Conference.

As for Huntley, he stayed in the state and expanded his resume at Concordia University. Once again, he got a sport going from scratch.

“We sought to establish men’s and women’s track,” he said. “The coach I had there was dedicated and focused on providing student-athletes the opportunity to grow and get better. We had volunteer coaches and former University of Texas coaches. One of these even participated in the Olympics.”

After four years as the athletic director at Marshalltown Community College in Iowa, Huntley arrived at Mary. Pursuing a hockey program there signified a return to his roots, both athletic and regional. He had started his own career in 1990 with one season at the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth, Minn.

But as with Brownsville’s pitch and Concordia’s track, getting the Marauders on the ice was an ambitious endeavor.

“Our jerseys showed up two days before our first game,” noted Huntley. “Our locker room has also taken some extra time in getting completed. But fortunately, these players are resilient.”

Speaking of players, the Marauders are full of homegrown talent, with 16 out of 20 players hailing from North Dakota. Starting goalie Aaron Nelson stands out as both a Bismarck native and a transfer from Minnesota State’s Division I powerhouse.

“We are a club team, but we aren’t treating it that way,” said Huntley. “The team plays 47 games this year, as opposed to the ACHA, which plays only 24. We take one day off, and it is those types of things that make us stand out.

“We are playing in parts of the United States that you would not expect, like the Florida Gulf Coast. Our players will be challenged with unique experiences, and we care about creating a good environment for them.”

Huntley’s avid commitment to developing the hockey program envelops all aspects of the team, from recruitment and funding to scheduling and practicing.

“We are a fully funded hockey program,” said Huntley. “While having a good strength of schedule is important, perhaps the most important aspect of creating a program like this one is having a vision and plan. Taking time to make sure it is well thought-out is so important. We don’t want to do things halfway. We want to make sure our program is successful.”

Huntley’s and the team’s efforts are certainly paying off. Not only did the team sweep ND State on their opening weekend, but followed up by sweeping the University of North Dakota club team this past weekend.

A 4-0 start is impressive, but Huntley knows the team still has a long season to go.

“We play all seven club teams in North Dakota this year,” he said. “We hope we will have a winning record against them and against teams we play in Division II. Ultimately, we want to be ranked No. 1 out west in Division II ACHA rankings.”

Huntley even hopes to find some rivals in this ambitious schedule. But per his philosophy, they will have to wait for a setback.

“I like to think that a rivalry doesn’t start until someone beats you,” he said. “It could be Minot State or Boise State, you don’t know.

“In the end, we want to be a success and provide a strong, competitive environment for our players. We won’t be afraid this year.”

- John Morton

Teaching moments abound for journeywoman goalie Kelsey Neumann

Kelsey Neumann teaches English, and previously learned some Russian and goaltending from an expert. Now she hopes her underdog career path will force her to master French. (Photo credit: Shanna Martin-Book/CWHL)

Kelsey Neumann knows all about playing backup and paying one’s dues.

The Les Canadiennes de Montreal draftee played one period of intercollegiate Division I hockey. On Groundhog Day 2010, her Clarkson Golden Knights made a simple drive down the road to St. Lawrence. There she gave junior goaltender Lauren Dahm her only night off of the year, stopping 22 shots in a 4-1 loss.

After transferring to Division III’s SUNY-Plattsburgh, she mustered 60 minutes and 54 seconds over three regular-season appearances in 2011-12. Her name never showed up on any other Cardinals stat sheet.

Time for the educator in the making to swap out the pads for a pad and pencil? No, not completely and not for good.

In 2016-17, as a walk-on rookie with the NWHL’s Buffalo Beauts, Neumann logged two periods in as many exhibition games. Team USA veteran Brianne McLaughlin, the eventual playoff MVP, was the clear go-to goalie for the Isobel Cup champions.

This past winter, she finally saw action against a fellow NWHL club. But her shift lasted 32 seconds in a 4-1 win over Connecticut. Naturally, the credit for the victory went to all-star Amanda Leveille, as did the rest of the campaign’s crease time.

But in between, Neumann stood out as the Beauts’ first recipient of the NWHL Foundation Award. Since 2016-17, the league has singled out one player from each team for “actively applying the core values of hockey to her community as well as growing the game and improving hockey culture.”

Taking Somali, Congolese and Eritrean immigrants on their first excursion to an ice rink is one way of doing that. This summer, Neumann did so as a way of combining her game with her sunlight vocation as an English as a second language (ESL) teacher.

Now on the cusp of attaining her teaching certificate, Neumann has honed her pedagogy through the Buffalo-based Journey’s End program. The opportunity presented itself when one full-time ESL instructor took maternity leave. Upon the predecessor’s return, she and Neumann briefly rotated before the old incumbent moved to another department.

Since then, Neumann has built a team of her own with her teenage and twentysomething Anglophone apprentices.

Journey’s End Refugee Services was founded in 1979 when a slew of Cambodians settled into the Buffalo area after the Khmer Rouge crisis. Today the organization caters to those fleeing more than a dozen troubled nations with resettlement, education and job-training.

Teaching ESL at the ground level, Neumann sees the skills break out in every fashion. Sending a student to the program’s second rung is the culmination of a given relationship.

“Their reading ability is about Pre-K to end-of-first-grade reading level,” she told Pucks and Recreation. “Whenever I get to see them improve on paper, that’s great. But I may have some students who don’t have the ability to read the test.”

That is when they show what they have absorbed through conversation instead. And it’s not always restricted to flavorless fundamentals.

Following a year-round itinerary, Neumann’s class will at times have a student absent for a week-plus at a time. But on one pupil’s return from a breather, the craving to delve back in was palpable.

“She came into the classroom the other day so excited and so happy, saying ‘I missed all of you!’”

With assistance from an intern, Neumann helped another learner nail the phonetic difference between B and P. The achievement elicited a round of high-fives. It was one testament to the teacher’s goal of creating “as fun and great an atmosphere as possible.”

“Yes, we are a school,” she said. “But we try to get them out of school, field trip-wise, and that kind of stuff.”

So at the end of June, when the NHL’s Sabres ran their annual prospect camp at HarborCenter, Neumann naturally filled an off day with an optional trip to her other workplace.

“A handful of (students) met us,” she said. And there, next to the only NHL arena where two national anthems precede all games, a cornucopia of cultures converged.

Athletic dream chasers from around North America plus the Czech Republic, Finland, Russia and Sweden constituted the attraction. Outright novice viewers finding relief from the strife of their native lands in Africa looked on.

As the master of the sport in the stands watched her fellow spectators, she could “see their excitement grow.”

Climbing north?

The prospect of playing for Les Canadiennes spells Neumann’s first chance to uproot to another country. That fact is a tad surprising given how much she has darted around the Lower 48 through her first 27 years.

If you know her background and aspirations, but not her phone number, you could anticipate any one of 10 area codes on your screen after scheduling a call. Even then, you just might see an 11th code when she rings.

Neumann was born in Southern California, but admits she moved too early to remember living there. She subsequently lived in Texas and North Carolina. Her father, Tracy, is still based in the latter as chair of a pastoral council.

For the better part of Neumann’s early upbringing, her mother, Cindi, homeschooled her and her older brother, Justus. But the siblings has plenty of chances to learn outside their walls and outside their native tongue.

“My brother has an ear for language,” she said.

Neumann would scoop up some American Sign Language and Italian. But following her brother’s precedent, she established a lofty connection to Russian.

After taking lessons at Justus’ request to Cindi, the two younger Neumanns frequented Vladislav Tretiak’s goaltending camp in Minnesota. From the ages of eight to 14, Kelsey honed her craft under the Soviet stopper’s tutelage.

As a bonus, “every once in a while, we could have a short conversation in Russian with him.”

After her last go-round with Tretiak, Neumann moved to Wisconsin. She spent one season on the predominantly male 2005-06 Madison Capitols bantam team, opposite Amanda Kessel.

From there, she completed high school over three years at the North American Hockey Academy in Vermont. That was the most recent time she held a starting job in net, let alone put sparkling stats on paper. She left the academy with 54 shutouts, a .930 save percentage and a slender 1.16 goals-against average.

NAHA was also where she established her scholarly aptitude as an honors student. For a time that appeared to be her sole professional foundation. In what could have been her senior season at SUNY-Plattsburgh, she was not even on the roster.

By then, Neumann had graduated with a degree in communications, then went to Canisius College in Buffalo. There she worked as a teacher’s aid at local schools and obtained her master’s in childhood education and special education in 2015.

That autumn, Journey’s End came calling and the Beauts began play as one of the NWHL’s Founding Four franchises. By that point, Neumann was three-and-a-half years removed from her last competitive game. Moreover, with McLaughlin, Amanda Makela and Kimberley Sass, Buffalo had sturdy goaltending depth.

But the serendipitous local connection was too tempting to ignore. In June 2016, Neumann attended the Beauts’ free-agent camp. They would ink her to their taxi squad that fall.

Meantime, with her students, she suspects she was unwittingly living out Gordie Howe’s old saying about the two languages all hockey players speak. With Arabic, Congo, Somali and Swahili in the melting pot, she makes the effort to let the pupils play teacher on occasion.

But, she admits, “They might all not be appropriate words. They all laugh whenever I say it. I’m not sure.”

If Neumann has it her way in the crease, though, she will not seek any pardons for uttering French. She already has her Buffalo day boss’ blessing. Jacqueline Ashby, the coordinator of educational services at Journey’s End, is a Canadian expatriate and proficient Francophone.

“My boss knows about the (Montreal) camp, and she’s very excited,” Neumann said. “At the same time, I know it’s more of a tryout camp. So I’m hoping to be able to tell her a bit more.”

Out of the ‘bleu’

When she entered the CWHL Draft, Neumann was not banking on Montreal, since the club did not interview her. Yet in the eighth round on Aug. 28, Les Canadiennes picked her up.

The next step is mid-September’s training camp. It will be her turn to do what she watched with her students 11 weeks earlier.

And she hopes she will earn the need to nail the local lexicon. She wants a turn going international and reversing her role outright.

“Going into the draft, I didn’t even know I was anywhere near Montreal’s radar,” she said. “So I find it really fitting.”

Hockey-wise, not much is changing for Neumann besides the setting and the personnel. She is again facing a steep path to the goaltending stable.

Last year’s Les Canadiennes had the CWHL’s winningest netminder in Emerance Maschmeyer. Over the offseason, they obtained league veteran and two-time Canadian Olympian Genevieve Lacasse.

But, Neumann says, she has reiterated her own lessons of repetitive preparation for herself while teaching some of her own nation’s newcomers. Hers is the same fundamental approach to tutoring a language or becoming a full-time sentient Shooter Tutor (or better).

“It’s all about making sure you’ve done everything that you can to make sure the next day is going to go smoothly,” she said. “I want to know that I’m putting in the work.”

Because you never know when you might get the call. You might even know where it’s coming from, let alone what the party on the other end speaks.

Pro Beach Hockey, we barely knew ye

 

(Photo courtesy of Tomas Scholl)

For the moment, Pro Beach Hockey still has two years on the XFL’s lifespan.

In late January 2018, WWE’s fizzled football offshoot was greenlit to join entertainment’s rash of reboots. After lasting a single campaign on its first try in 2001, the XFL is slated for another go-round starting in 2020.

Notably, as ESPN’s Darren Rovell mentioned, this XFL “won’t rely on flashy cheerleaders and antics as its predecessor did.” That presumably means antics like three-point conversions and a faceoff-type “scramble” to determine possession.

Regardless, those headlines alone should have stirred the minds of those who remember PBH. Then there was this past summer, which marked the 20th anniversary of the radical roller hockey league’s inaugural season.

It mustered two more seasons, then failed to reemerge after the summer of 2000. As such, its time never overlapped with the XFL. In addition, it barely coincided with the rise of Survivor, the quintessential harbinger of this century’s reality-competition TV boom.

ESPN2’s PBH had elements of both of those entities. As a sport, it departed a host of norms in the rulebook. Just as the XFL would scrap coin tosses and point kicking, PBH introduced a two-point goal range and skateboard-like ramps on the end boards.

As a TV institution, PBH made like many other Southern California products. Like the first season of Survivor on CBS, it filled a summer void by “premiering” its “episodes” over June, July and August.

With that said, the bid for bragging rights was genuine. Throughout May, six teams engaged in a 10-game schedule, with the best advancing to a playoff. Compensation hinged on how a given team’s season ended. Afterwards, everyone outside of SoCal found out just how the season unfolded.

To fit an hourlong telecast window, portions of the taping were edited, not affecting the final outcome of the game. (Incidentally, one planned change for the new-look XFL is to aim for a two-hour maximum contest length.) But viewers still saw every second of every quarter (yes, quarter), timed at eight minutes apiece.

It needed to be quick in its rookie campaign, for that summer was anything but slow on sports television. For five weeks, the FIFA World Cup permeated almost every waking hour. Primetime programming was seemingly all about Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa jockeying for MLB’s single-season home-run record.

The ESPN family carried some or all of the baseball and soccer action. But with the flexibility of delayed broadcasts, PBH could reach its niche audience almost any time.

Perhaps you were a grade schooler trying to beat the heat at home. Maybe your family was taking some midday downtime or crashing for the night in a hotel room. Or you had a day off from your summer job.

If you were remotely into hockey, PBH was probably there to tempt you at any of those points.

With its format and implicit demographics, comparisons to the X-Games, which ESPN had launched in 1995, were inevitable as well. Commissioner Chris McSorley expressed as much to the Los Angeles Times before play commenced.

“We are creating a bridge between extreme skating and in-line hockey,” he told the paper. “All pro sports constantly review the structure of the rules of play and upgrade where needed to increase the entertainment value.”

Entertaining trimmings would be a must. With only one venue laid out at Huntington Beach, the six-team circuit was a high-profile house league. Except the house had no walls or roof.

As such, the action was a beachside attraction, hence the league’s moniker.

To this day, David McClane Enterprises, the eponymous company of PBH’s brain parent, acknowledges the short-lived experiment’s existence. On the its website, DME proclaims that it “felt the sport and the players could gain marketing credibility if new rules reflected what was happening on the streets and the game’s presentation combined the sex appeal of the beach with live music.”

For intermission entertainment, McLane channeled his old Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling show by enlisting the Slammin’ Dancers. Odds are that would not fly in a hypothetical late-2010s or early-2020s PBH reboot.

Given the caliber of play, the main attraction was dressed in loud uniforms representing gimmicky team names. While America Online was just breaking out, the PBH roll call read like the domain names on a primordial group chat.

In alphabetical order, you had the Dawg Pac, Gargoyles, Heavy Metal, Salsa, Web Warriors and Xpress. And because it was ESPN2 in the 1990s, those names were often typed in all lowercase.

But there was some delayed gratification. In April 2013, one PBH alumnus came within smelling distance of NHL action. Goaltender Rob Laurie took the Anaheim Ducks bench for precisely three minutes and 53 seconds, standing in while the real backup ran late after a short-notice summons from the team’s AHL partner in Virginia.

At the time, CBS’ Chris Peters took note of the then-42-year-old Laurie’s playing background. He had previously starred in Anaheim for the Bullfrogs of Roller Hockey International, a less flashy indoor league.

In addition, Peters wrote, “Laurie just so happened to play for one of the best-named teams in all of PBH, the Web Warriors. The Internet sure was neat and cool and mysterious in 1998, so why not name a team after it?”

Another ex-PBH stopper, the Salsa’s Brad Sholl, went on to run the L.A. Kings practice facility for a time. He also oversaw a Vegas Golden Knights youth program and raised a future goaltender in Tomas Sholl.

The younger Sholl, who turned four while PBH was premiering its first season, went on to Bowling Green. He turned pro last autumn, and has played for two teams apiece in the SPHL and ECHL. In between, in an interview with Pucks and Recreation’s John Morton, he credited California’s roller hockey craze for fostering his career on ice.

That is far from enough to make a remote revival realistic. But it is enough to make sense out of PBH’s presence on the archives of McLane’s website.

Given its essential equipment, which has no resurgence of interest in sight, PBH is a plain relic of its era. Yet some products of that era symbolize the worth of the fleeting one-hour game broadcasts, three-month TV seasons and three-year lifespan. McLane can also take a morsel of pride in formulating an early, unique kind of sports/entertainment/reality competition series.