Late practices, new coach define Emerson hockey
Despite recent struggles and a rough start to the season, Lions' club team looks forward to a brighter future
Amelia Rayno
At just after midnight, a flurry of purple and white jerseys scatter to the frosty edges of Simoni Rink in Cambridge. The allotted hour is up, the tired bunch has finished their drills and scrimmages, and now the band of 22 men and one woman shuffle toward the locker room.
Behind them, a commanding figure follows and quickly offers instruction as the players shed their thick padding. They brush the ice off their skates, throw their sticks into giant duffel bags, and rush out the door to catch the final train out of Lechmere Station. Tonight, like the other one or two times the team practices each week, the Emerson Lions were the last ones on and off the ice.
The Emerson hockey team, which has club status as a school organization, doesn’t have a choice when it comes to night-owl practices. Their 11 p.m. slot is the only one available since the rink is occupied by more established teams most of the time. As the dull buzz of the Zamboni makes the evening’s last wet circles over the sheet, the Lions are just tugging on their skates and helmets.
The athletes have paid to be here. They have sacrificed their time, their cash out of pocket and their comfortable Thursday evenings in front of the television. Their coach has given up his own share, carping drills and dropping pucks for nothing more than a free membership to Gold’s Gym. The late nights at Simoni ensure that everyone who is there truly wants to be.
“No one is pushing us,” said Alan Gwizdowski, a senior captain and television-video major. “We don’t get a lot of support from the school, and it’s a really expensive sport. You have to love it to be out there.”
Players say their passion for the game transcends what might seem like a thankless job to a less ardent crowd.
“We go to practices late at night, scrambling to get the last T home,” said Casey Smith, a freshman woman who is playing check league hockey for the first time. “If you didn’t love the game there is no way you would be willing to do that.”
And perhaps this love has proven even more powerful, through not only a lack of support, but also a rough start to this season following a 3-12 mark last year.
In its first game, Emerson fell 16-0 to Bentley College. In its second against Merrimack College, the margin widened to a 20-0 defeat.
“It’s frustrating [that these were the] first two games,” Gwizdowski said. “I know what the team can do, but for some of the freshmen—it’s tough to say we can get back into it, when we haven’t been in it yet.”
Bentley and Merrimack boast Division I programs. Many Lions players doubt whether they belong in the same rink as DI teams.
“Personally, I think the experience level is a juxtaposition,” said junior goalie Greg Cohen, who recorded an astounding 62 saves during the loss to Bentley.
Despite all of the team’s hardships, one thing is decidedly different for the Lions this year—they have a coach.
John Sullivan landed at Emerson when he answered a Craigslist.com posting created by Assistant Captain Pete Keeling after a dismal spring. The result brought the team something they were unable to give themselves: organized leadership.
After growing up in the Boston area, Sullivan returns after 18 years spent playing in junior leagues and instructing hockey camps in Canada. Now he routinely journeys to Cambridge on cool New England evenings and watches a group of college students slap shot after shot, the ice-sheathed bowl echoing with the rhythm of wood rasping over its surface.
Last year, Gwizdowski acted as the coach and ran practices. Having played hockey his entire life, he effuses passion collected from two decades of hitting pucks.
“I grew up skating on ponds,” he said, alluding back to his days as a tot in Rhode Island. By the time he reached the first grade he was playing six or seven days a week.
But as committed as he was to the Lions last year, Gwizdowski said he couldn’t do it all.
“It wasn’t easy to participate in drills while also coaching, trying to stop people to tell them what they were doing wrong, and doing right,” he said. “And also, coaching myself, no one was doing that.”
Players said Sullivan’s guidance has made all the difference this season.
Sporting a thick white hoodie, Coach Sullivan stands against the background of thick steel bleachers, a whistle slung about his neck, never for long. He plucks it up often, its shrill call signaling the start and stop of drills. He elicits the image of “the quintessential Canadian hockey guy,” as Gwizdowski called him. Sullivan, who is working to pass his bar exam while coaching Emerson, will be gone after this season, and then the Lions will be back to square one. But the coach, with the guidance and inspiration he brings, represents another phase in a steadily growing program.
Sullivan was quick to dismiss any serious concern over the ups and down of the team. He said the job was a good fit and that he wants to help players have fun and teach them along the way. But when he steps onto the rink, he gives every intimation that it means something a little more to both teacher and student.
The promise of a winning season lingers as a yet-fulfilled hope. Their games are played, for the most part, without a significant audience—many Emerson students aren’t even aware of the team’s existence. And without school support, the Lions have to buy their own equipment, jerseys and rink slots. They have stripped away everything but an unbounded appreciation for the game they play. It’s enough to keep them coming back.
“We are progressing every year,” Gwizdowski said. “The ball [is] rolling and now it’s [a] snowball effect.”
As the Lions let it roll and gather mass, the leadership, increasing support from the school and committed players such as Gwizdowski could change the face of this program. Of course, it takes time.
But the Lions said they will take time, and make time, in order to produce something special.
“What we lack in skill,” Smith said, “we make up for in heart.”
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