To be specific, there are 10 rinks: 10 rinks owned by 10 individual schools. Thayer Academy and Roxbury Latin School, the only two members of the ISL without on-campus facilities, make do by driving to a nearby center.
The availability of playing surfaces is the most obvious explanation for the success of ISL players at the next level. Not every high school has the means to build and operate a functioning ice rink. The 12 ISL schools do, for the most part.
However, Harvard coach Katey Stone pointed to a different factor as the reason behind the athletic success of ISL graduates.
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“They’ve got real good coaching,” Stone said. “That’s why a number of kids have come from there—because those kids are well-prepared, and they’ve got a leg up on the coaching.”
Just as ISL schools produce talented hockey players in bulk, they also retain high-level coaching talent. Years before coming to Lawrence Academy in Groton, Mass., Kevin Potter earned All-American honors as a senior skater at Bowdoin. He now serves as the school’s athletic director and girls’ varsity hockey coach.
As in most matters related to ISL girls’ hockey, however, Noble and Greenough leads the pack. Tom Resor, the girls’ varsity head coach, has worked at the school since 1986, and three assistants join him to train the Bulldogs.
Two of these assistants once had National Team experience; one, namely Sara Decosta-Hayes, won a gold medal in the 1998 Olympics as the Americans’ goaltender. True to past form, she now instructs Nobles’ goalies.
The impressiveness of the coaching staff translates to obvious results. In the past 14 years, this boarding school with a population just over 600 has won 14 league titles. Eleven of the 13 ISL players who play for the Eagles or the Crimson once attended Nobles.
“The ISL has been strong, but certainly Nobles has carried that flag for a long time,” Stone said.
So much time has elapsed that current Bulldogs can look up to a graduated rank of players that has found success on a national or even global stage. During Resor’s 14 years with the girls’ varsity, the team has graduated 11 National Team members and 35 college players, including 19 in the past four years.
However, former Bulldogs insist that Nobles, and all other ISL schools, do more than just pump out superior athletes.
“The ISL schools do a great job [of] preparing you both academically and athletically to take the step into these great universities, especially in the Boston area,” said Parker, a one-time Nobles student. “Going through the ISL program and seeing the older girls work hard…is something that you strive to do yourself.”
So the recruiting wheel turns. Players transform from awestruck youngsters into bona fide college stars, and the process repeats with another class of skating talent. This winter, Nobles captured its 14th consecutive conference title; the Crimson and the Eagles already have three ISL players locked up with official commitments.
Spanning the length of decades, this long migration of ISL hockey stars from prep school ice rinks to the Harvard and Boston College arenas shows no signs of abating. But the line of people will stop, if only for a few hours, in Minneapolis this Friday.
Mary Parker will be there, along with 12 of her ISL peers. They may wear new colors, but some of the old high school familiarity still lingers.
“It definitely adds a new friendlier element,” Parker said. “You never want your friends to beat you.”
—Staff writer Sam Danello can be reached at sdanello@college.harvard.edu.