A journey of more than 5,000 miles and a plane ride of over 15 hours separates Cambridge, Mass., from Sochi, Russia. That was the trip that Harvard women’s ice hockey coach Katey Stone, along with senior forward Lyndsey Fry and junior defenseman Michelle Picard, embarked upon in February 2014 to compete for the United States at the Winter Olympics.

But even though all three took the trip from the same city, the road to Sochi has varied for each team member.

Stone, Harvard’s veteran coach starting her 20th season with the Crimson, had coached the U.S. national team to one silver and two gold medals in the past three years of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) championships.

A Connecticut native, Stone grew up on the New England hockey scene and became the winningest coach in the history of Division I women’s ice hockey in 2010.

Stone was chosen as the coach of Team USA in June 2012, making her the first-ever female coach of a U.S. Olympic hockey team in the sport’s history.

But the call to serve her country from the bench came with a price—the end of her streak of 19 consecutive years coaching from behind the boards in Cambridge.

The coaching duties for the 2013-2014 season were passed on to then-assistant coach Maura Crowell, who had been the Crimson’s second in command for the previous three seasons. With Stone away, Crowell stepped in as interim head coach and led Harvard to a 23-7-4 record and a berth in the NCAA tournament.

“I think it’s really important to be yourself when you are a head coach, even if it is an interim role,” said Crowell, now associate head coach. “That being said, a lot of the knowledge I gained as an assistant for three years with Katey obviously went into play with what we were teaching the kids. I tried to keep a lot of the staples of Harvard hockey in the system.”

Picard, a native of Tauton, Mass., had played for the U.S. U-18 team on her way to becoming an Olympian.

Fry, who participated in the same national program, had taken a more unconventional route up the junior ranks from her warm-weather hometown. The Chandler, Ariz., native has been playing hockey since a young age and attributes her success to her community and family.

“For me personally, [the Olympic experience] had so much to do with my family and everyone who supported me back home,” Fry said. “I’m from Arizona, which is not exactly the hockey capital of the world, but the great thing is that the hockey community there is so small and tight-knit. So when I first stepped onto the ice in Sochi for practice, just seeing those Olympic rings, all I could think of was all the people who had ever supported me.”

Over the course of last season, Stone, Fry, and Picard were never away from the team for long, holding Olympic training right outside of the Boston area in Bedford, Mass.

Fry even lived in Cambridge during the year off, enabling her to stay connected with Harvard hockey while training with Team USA.

Stone, too, kept tabs on her team from afar, often coming to practices and games to support her players and coaching staff.

“I love my job at Harvard and love the program that we built here,” Stone said. “I always had an eye on what they were doing and kept in contact with the coaching staff while staying focused on the task at hand, which was coaching the Olympic team.”