Harvard 2022-23: What's Up?

[AlwaysCold2]

Stone's better days are behind her. She should do the right thing and resign before she gets fired. Her style of coaching is antiquated, and other coaches should take note. Sadly, this is happening all too often at other schools/sports as well. Surprised they kept her after the racial comments, but then again, her hockey program was successful at that time. Now, the team is unraveling. High time for some new blood.

[reggiedunlap9]

looks like the Boston Globe removed all of the comments to the Coach Stone article. That is really strange. I have never seen them do that for any of his previous articles

[thirdtime's . . .]

reggiedunlap9: You were an apparent first-timer from outside, teasing sensational news while appearing to sit on the fence. Puzzling behavior at the time, but I should have seen that you took no pleasure in it. Not a troll. My apologies.

Skate79: I hope that you can now see that the dead horse you have been flogging all season, and continue to flog, is in fact a crippled horse that has shown remarkable stamina, given the circumstances. There isn’t a player on this team who wasn’t aware of the coming turmoil at the start of the season: no Daniels behind the bench, no Macdonald steadying the blue line, no Thompson on her way to All-ECAC. What kind of season could any of them expect, knowing what they must have known? (One now understands why KDR has been a shadow of her former self and Bloomer is just beginning to find her form.) No one needs to hear “Don’t let the final score of today’s [Colgate] game fool you.” No one has been “fooled" by this team. Why shouldn’t #4 Colgate be all over Harvard? And no one who was paying attention was “fooled" by the Cornell win, when Derraugh, facing a team that had just lost to Union, started a back-up goalie who proceeded to give up 6 goals on 19 shots. The wonder of the Cornell win is that the freshmen, especially, kept their wits about them in the high-decibel atmosphere of a Friday night at Lynah. Clearly this diminished and probably youngest team in D1 hockey did not spend Friday morning curled up in a ball after reading the Globe.

Jofa: If you know something that the rest of us don’t about the Indigenous ancestry of Werner, Pizzutti and Henry please tell us.

robertearle: Thank you for exemplifying the absence of schadenfreude on this thread. Feet of clay are indeed a sad fact of life, doubly so when they collapse around young people.



With a pending lawsuit, a newish A.D. still finding her way, and a brand new president not yet in office, when Harvard acts (in concert with Stone, certainly) it will be announced not in Eastern, Central, Mountain or Pacific Time but in HST, Harvard Standard Time.

[reggiedunlap9]

Thanks. thirdtime's . . . would never troll on such a sensitive subject. I've actually been struggling with this issue since I first heard about the article coming out. As much as I believe that Coach Stones behavior is unacceptable and that Harvard needs to move on with a new coach, It really bothers me that the Boston Globe can find 16 unhappy players, (many of them "borderline") and totally destroy a very successful coaching career. Really sad

[Skate79]

looks like the Boston Globe removed all of the comments to the Coach Stone article. That is really strange. I have never seen them do that for any of his previous articles

I didn’t see a comments section and I read the article fairly soon after it appeared in the digital version of the Globe.

[Skate79]

reggiedunlap9: You were an apparent first-timer from outside, teasing sensational news while appearing to sit on the fence. Puzzling behavior at the time, but I should have seen that you took no pleasure in it. Not a troll. My apologies.

Skate79: I hope that you can now see that the dead horse you have been flogging all season, and continue to flog, is in fact a crippled horse that has shown remarkable stamina, given the circumstances. There isn’t a player on this team who wasn’t aware of the coming turmoil at the start of the season: no Daniels behind the bench, no Macdonald steadying the blue line, no Thompson on her way to All-ECAC. What kind of season could any of them expect, knowing what they must have known? (One now understands why KDR has been a shadow of her former self and Bloomer is just beginning to find her form.) No one needs to hear “Don’t let the final score of today’s [Colgate] game fool you.” No one has been “fooled" by this team. Why shouldn’t #4 Colgate be all over Harvard? And no one who was paying attention was “fooled" by the Cornell win, when Derraugh, facing a team that had just lost to Union, started a back-up goalie who proceeded to give up 6 goals on 19 shots. The wonder of the Cornell win is that the freshmen, especially, kept their wits about them in the high-decibel atmosphere of a Friday night at Lynah. Clearly this diminished and probably youngest team in D1 hockey did not spend Friday morning curled up in a ball after reading the Globe.

Jofa: If you know something that the rest of us don’t about the Indigenous ancestry of Werner, Pizzutti and Henry please tell us.

robertearle: Thank you for exemplifying the absence of schadenfreude on this thread. Feet of clay are indeed a sad fact of life, doubly so when they collapse around young people.



With a pending lawsuit, a newish A.D. still finding her way, and a brand new president not yet in office, when Harvard acts (in concert with Stone, certainly) it will be announced not in Eastern, Central, Mountain or Pacific Time but in HST, Harvard Standard Time.

Well thirdtime tell me how you really feel. So now I’m supposed to be a mind reader and have a crystal ball into the women’s program to understand everything that’s going on with the team prior to the start of the season? Wow, no pressure there. High decibel atmosphere of a Friday night at Lynah? The rink looked half empty to me. I think everyone has empathy for the players especially McDonald, Thompson and Daniels. What happened to them is inexcusable. So we now know that fear has been a factor in their play this season but it is not the sole reason for their overall record. And Cornell’s defense and goaltending issues were magnified when they lost 5 to 1 to Dartmouth the next day. This wasn’t about starting a backup goalie. This was about a Cornell team that was looking past both Harvard and Dartmouth and they paid the price. It happens. You said a couple of weeks ago that Harvard was a hot mess and did not agree with me when i laid the blame on the coaching playbook. Now you want to change the narrative? Okay, no problem but I don’t appreciate the sanctimonious tone of your post accusing me of flogging a dead horse. You’re off base there.

[ILoveHockey]

I didn’t see a comments section and I read the article fairly soon after it appeared in the digital version of the Globe.

The comments were there for at least a few hours. There were many posts, including many from those who have never watched a women's hockey game. I did not see a reason justifying taking down the comments, but I might have missed it. Usually, offensive comments are just deleted at the request of a reader or on the Globe's own initiative.

[Blackbeard]

A Canadian version of the story...https://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/kat...ions-1.6732019

[ShootDePuckNo]

Do you think that this story plays out differently at a scholarship school as opposed to a private university where aid is based on need? I would think that the biggest fear of a non-scholarship school coach is not losing, but rather that some of these recruited players decide after 1-2 seasons that they just want to be regular students. That seems like potentially wasted time and effort. For the scholarship schools, this is not an issue. If you chose to just be a student, you now must pay your own way. If the coach doesn't like you, they can just take away your scholarship and send you to the transfer portal.

If this story has any validity, away from what was deemed as insulting terminology, why would any coach want to drive away players after working so hard to recruit and retain them?

[hab]

Do you think that this story plays out differently at a scholarship school as opposed to a private university where aid is based on need? I would think that the biggest fear of a non-scholarship school coach is not losing, but rather that some of these recruited players decide after 1-2 seasons that they just want to be regular students. That seems like potentially wasted time and effort. For the scholarship schools, this is not an issue. If you chose to just be a student, you now must pay your own way. If the coach doesn't like you, they can just take away your scholarship and send you to the transfer portal.

If this story has any validity, away from what was deemed as insulting terminology, why would any coach want to drive away players after working so hard to recruit and retain them?

Interesting perspective! However, it is my impression that most women who end up in an Ivy school hockey program are there mostly for the hockey and would not be excited about being just a "regular student". The huge endowments of the Ivy schools just give them a competitive advantage in recruiting women from middle income and lower income families with only a pretty minimal academic threshold.

[Trillium]

Thanks. thirdtime's . . . would never troll on such a sensitive subject. I've actually been struggling with this issue since I first heard about the article coming out. As much as I believe that Coach Stones behavior is unacceptable and that Harvard needs to move on with a new coach, It really bothers me that the Boston Globe can find 16 unhappy players, (many of them "borderline") and totally destroy a very successful coaching career. Really sad

I can tell you that there are infinitely more than 16 unhappy players he could have talked to. Dozens more, including a great many former national team players across at a decade and a half. Stone's psychological abuse, and demoralizing of all but her small number of favourites (who could always do no wrong in her eyes) has has lifelong negative impacts on so many former players. This is a poorly kept secret among those who had the misfortune to be on the inside of HH and their close friends in other programs. Every year since back in her glory days in the early 00's the chemistry in her dressing rooms is a mess by year end as she can't help but pits players against one other. That's why the team inevitably self destructs come playoff time. Too many players who were top of the heap in minor hockey soon become shells of their former potential because she can't help but make it all about her, at their expense, instead of what's best for the team. What is sad, is that despite complaints year after year about her to the administration, and the FAS survey confirming that the women's hockey program had the lowest player satisfaction of 42 Harvard teams, Harvard chose to continuously turn a blind eye to her abuse and the well-being of the student athletes because all they cared about was winning. The fact that MANY student athletes were forced to play through brain injuries, shoulder injuries, hip injuries, were made fun of for experiencing mental health challenges--most of which she was responsible for, were told they were lazy when they had severe mononucleosis, were cut or forced to quit for some of these things, is the tip of the iceberg. The article let her off lightly frankly. There's far worse stuff. Stone destroyed her coaching career all by herself. It's about time she's held accountable

[Trillium]

Do you think that this story plays out differently at a scholarship school as opposed to a private university where aid is based on need? I would think that the biggest fear of a non-scholarship school coach is not losing, but rather that some of these recruited players decide after 1-2 seasons that they just want to be regular students. That seems like potentially wasted time and effort. For the scholarship schools, this is not an issue. If you chose to just be a student, you now must pay your own way. If the coach doesn't like you, they can just take away your scholarship and send you to the transfer portal.

If this story has any validity, away from what was deemed as insulting terminology, why would any coach want to drive away players after working so hard to recruit and retain them?

Simple. Stone is a malignant narcissist. She is incapable of seeing herself as responsible in any way for any negative result. It is invariably, in her mind, because players are lazy, or stupid, or selfish or whatever. So she can't help herself from making them suffer for making her look bad. Because it's always all about her. She revels in being the omnipotent one.

Elite players who have devoted their WHOLE LIVES to the sport of hockey, live and breathe the sport. It doesn't occur to many 17 year olds that they aren't going to play forever. If you haven't been an elite athlete or part of their family, you probably have no idea of the sacrifices that takes. After spending that length of time with hockey as the #1 priority in their lives, they don't suddenly for no reason "decide after 1-2 seasons that they just want to be regular students". If they leave hockey, it's generally only because she made their lives unbearable, a living hell. It's a necessary act of self-preservation. What's truly sad is how a coach can cause such irreparable harm to the lives of so many for so long, and yet what is being discussed and focused on is how unfortunate it is for her that she's finally being exposed for the sick person she is.

[Trillium]

By the way, this isn't finished being explored in more depth in the media. There are other noted media outlets contacting other former players beyond the sources in the Boston Globe article to get their stories.

[reggiedunlap9]

I'm sure there is a lot more coming out on HH. My guess is Harvard is trying to hold on and get through the season and Coach Stone will quietly resign. They don't have many games left.

I don't think we've heard the last from Bob Holher on this subject either. I'm sure he is on the warpath looking for his next program to destroy


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[Trillium]

I'm sure there is a lot more coming out on HH. My guess is Harvard is trying to hold on and get through the season and Coach Stone will quietly resign. They don't have many games left.

I don't think we've heard the last from Bob Hohler on this subject either. I'm sure he is on the warpath looking for his next program to destroy


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I don't know squat about Bob Holher or his history. What I do know is that there are several women's hockey programs in addition to this one, where inappropriate and/or abusive behaviours by long time "well-respected" winning Head Coaches were enabled and swept under the carpet for many years by their administrations, to the long-term detriment of their student-athletes. Thank god for media outlets and reporters like Bob Hohler who eventually shine a light on this. It's sadly the only way to force schools to take action. Without exposure in the media, the mistreatment would never stop.

In the past 10 classes of freshman who have now graduated from Harvard, 36% of the student-athletes were not rostered 4 years. In the past 5 classes, that rises to 47%! These figures are way beyond the average of other D1 and Ivy programs, and should be unacceptable to the administration. Even athletes who did graduate, including Peper found the experience and environment toxic. One's university years are supposed to be a highlight in life, not a nightmare to be endured.

This high level of attrition, as well as the lowest student satisfaction level among 42 Harvard teams, is a huge red flag to a coaching problem within, as it was with McCloskey et al. Why don't athletes want to continue to play for her? If it's that the student athletes were just "too soft" or "not talented enough", why is she still such an awful recruiter after 25+ years experience?! It's also telling that very few athletes in her program proportionately who do stay, ever improve their stats significantly over their 4 years with her. Why has that never seem ed odd to HH supporters? She does not develop the talent she recruits, but in a high proportion of cases, she actually manages to destroy the confidence and thus denigrates the inherent talent of the players she brings in.

So you can villainize Bob Hohler, and question his motives, but I don't understand how or why you would wish to defend a coach whose behaviour has been appalling, and who, by objective metrics over the past 10 years (as noted above, and by her playoff performance) is no longer deserving of her position.