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The high-level success of the Boston College women’s ice hockey program is mirroring a dramatic growth in this old winter sport – a surge in interest, participation and skill that has all of the speed and power of an Olympic slap shot.
This past weekend, Coach Katie King Crowley’s Eagles completed a hugely successful season, advancing to the “Frozen Four” National Championship round in Minneapolis before bowing to Harvard, 2-1, in a semifinal game that went down to the wire.
Along the way, Crowley’s team notched an eye-popping 34-3-2 record, the best showing by any Boston College hockey team – male or female – since the storied 1948-49 squad of Hall of Fame Coach John “Snooks” Kelley posted a 21-1 mark en route to the school’s first NCAA hockey title.
In recognition of her team’s stellar accomplishments, Crowley was voted National Coach of the Year and Hockey East Coach of the Year by her peers; Olympic silver medalist Alex Carpenter ‘16 was named winner of the Patty Kazmaier Memorial Award as college hockey’s best female player [see separate story]; two other players, defender Emily Pfalzer ’16 and forward Haley Skarupa ’15, joined Carpenter as finalists for the Kazmaier honor; and freshman goaltender Katie Burt was chosen for Hockey East’s All-Rookie team.
"I thought our team played hard,” Crowley said after the Eagles bowed out in the Friday night national championship semifinal. “We ran into a goalie that made some really nice saves on us, and we knew that was going to happen. I thought our kids stuck to it and worked extremely hard. We just came up short. Those are the games that you're hoping to get a bounce to go your way, and it didn't seem to happen for us tonight.
"But I'm extremely proud of the season our team had, what our players have done for our program, where they have brought it. These seniors and leaders have done a tremendous job."
A good measure of the Eagles’ current success in women’s ice hockey may be tied to the influence of the US Olympic Team on young players. Crowley is a perfect example of the growing interest in the women’s game, as she won All-America honors at Brown and earned a spot on the US National Team for nine consecutive seasons (1997-2006). Crowley helped Team USA win the gold medal in the 1998 Winter Olympic Games, a silver in the 2002 Olympics and a bronze in the 2006 Games.
She also hired former University of Minnesota standout Courtney Kennedy, a fellow Olympian in both 2002 and 2006, as her top assistant.
“Since women’s ice hockey became an Olympic sport, it has just exploded,” explains Crowley. “It’s been fun to see the growth of the sport. There are so many more scholarships and so many more opportunities in college for these young kids.”
Hockey East Commissioner Joe Bertagna, who began his own post-playing career as Harvard’s first women’s ice hockey coach, readily concurs with Crowley’s analysis. “When I first started coaching back in the ‘70s, I think we only had three women who had ever played hockey on an organized team. They were all from Concord Academy,” he laughs. “Now, opportunities for young girls have increased through USA Hockey as well as through school systems, creating a larger pool of players who wanted places to go.
“At the same time, colleges were dealing with issues where they had to provide equal opportunities for women, so what we have seen in the last 30 or 40 years is a terrific development of the product on the ice,” Bertagna says.
“BC has really grown the sport,” Bertagna adds, “and Katie has been a big part of it. There are very few female head coaches in the country. She is a great role model, and to have two Olympians behind your bench is really something special.”
After retiring from active play, Crowley served as BC’s assistant coach from 2003 until she was appointed to the top bench job in 2007. The Salem, NH, native quickly turned a sub-.500 team into a winner and has constructed a stellar 190-72-39 record in eight seasons at the helm. This year, the Eagles were ranked No. 1 in women’s college hockey polls for most of the season, and advanced to the Frozen Four group for the fourth time in the last five years.
Crowley’s plan for hockey success is basic: Recruit hard-working, talented players who want to be part of a successful team. “Ultimately, I look for hard work, intensity and the drive to be good as a group. As an individual, you have to make sure that for every shift you get, you are working as hard as you can work. Even if you don’t have the talent that the other team has, if you can outwork them you are going to be successful.”
Crowley adds that “We have been able to get not only good players to come to BC, but the right players. You can’t have all Alex Carpenters or all Kelley Stacks or all Molly Schauses [BC’s three 2012 Olympians], you have to have the pieces that fit into your overall puzzle. Kids know their roles when they come in here and what we expect of them.
“My favorite part is that they are all good kids – kids who want to be at Boston College. They want to help our program be successful and compete for national championships,” Crowley says. “This year’s team, I think as a whole, is the team that loves the sport the most.
“They just love hockey and they love being out on the ice. It’s a long season that starts in September and goes through March, but they loved it,” Crowley notes. “They were never bored. They loved always trying to get better out there.
Crowley does not lose sight of the fact that one of the nation’s top men’s college teams shares the same ice with her own charges in Kelley Rink. “We have been so fortunate to have our men’s team to learn from, and to have Jerry [York] and his coaches here to have really good conversations about things like practice drills, power plays or offensive zone stuff that might be happening to us that similarly happened to them. We try to model ourselves after them a little bit.
“You know how important the concept of ‘team’ is to them and what it means to them. I think that our kids feel that too.”
Hockey blood runs deep in Crowley’s veins. Not only was she a two-sport star in both hockey and softball during her undergraduate days at Brown and followed by years of high-level international competition, in 2010 she married Ted Crowley, a former Boston College defenseman who later played with the US National Team, the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs and in Europe before back injuries ended his career.
The Crowleys are the proud parents of a 21-month-old daughter, Camryn, who is already showing signs of a hockey future. “Every time we drive by BC, she starts saying ‘Hockey! Hockey!’” laughs Katie. “She just loves being around the team. Growing up with these role models has been awesome for her, and I know it will only continue to get better. She loves to go into that locker room. She thinks she owns it,” Crowley says.
Her father Ted, who manned the blue line for the Eagles from 1989 through 1991, figures that his daughter will grow up to be a “puck-moving defenseman,” while mom Katie envisions Camryn as a “future forward” in the sport.
“But right now, she seems to like the goalie best,” laughs Crowley.