08/17/06
By Jesse Schloff
Stowe Reporter
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Say Stowe, and the first thing that pops into your mind probably isn’t women’s hockey.
But then there’s that big, shiny new sign that went up last month on Mountain Road, right where Andersen’s Lodge, an Austrian Inn, used to be.
The North American Hockey Academy, which has lived a fairly low-key life in Stowe for the past eight years, has bought the lodge, and the all-women’s hockey academy plans to become bigger and better than ever.
Inside the academy’s new home, it’s clear as day that this is the nucleus of a sport that is taking off.
Eight years ago, Stowe resident Bill Driscoll had a young daughter who liked to play hockey, but competitive hockey for girls just wasn’t an option back then. Rather than wait around for someone do something, Driscoll started an all-girls team that his daughter and other girls could play on.
“At the time that we started to put this together, girls hockey was an afterthought for a lot of people,” Driscoll said. “On the heels of the 1998 Olympics is when the momentum started to build and a real upsurge in registration took place.”Plans to start the academy in the Killington area fell through, so Driscoll looked to Stowe, where he had moved years earlier in part to teach skiing.
Before long, Driscoll had a full team of girls eager to play hockey against other girls.
Back then, the roster was mostly filled with Vermonters, girls who would stay at their own schools and then come to Stowe for practice. Soon word got out in the hockey community that there was a team just for girls in Stowe, and players from outside Vermont wanted in.
In the second year, another team was established, this one mostly out-of-state girls who stayed in a dorm for the winter to play hockey.
Understanding hockey was one thing; starting a school was entirely different.
“I knew I could start a hockey program just about anywhere through my confidence and knowledge and contacts that I’d made,” Driscoll said. “But I had no idea how to start a school, and that was the scariest thing at the beginning.
”So, to take care of academics, Driscoll enlisted help from another alternative school that had worked in Stowe for years: Mt. Mansfield Winter Academy.
The winter academy is for skiers, and the schedules of hockey and skiing worked oppositely.
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Skiers would practice in the morning and study in the afternoon; the hockey players took classes in the morning and skated in afternoons. It was a perfect solution. But it was new, and it was a hard sell.
After two years, Driscoll realized there was enough interest for him to form his own school, just for girls, just for hockey. North American Hockey Academy was born.
“Initially, it was kind of a daunting enterprise,” Driscoll said. “Unlike the ski academies, we didn’t have a model we could use to tell people about our idea. You were telling this plan to people who had no idea of what you were talking about.
”Eventually, parents and girls began to hear about the academy and, in the years that followed, Driscoll accumulated building spaces for a dormitory, cafeteria and classrooms. All the while, word of mouth built more and more interest in the school across the country.
At about the same time, women’s youth hockey programs started popping up around the country and the sport was quickly gaining momentum at the NCAA and national levels.
Just as in skiing, premier athletes wanted a place where they could go to school while getting the best coaching and best competition in their sport.
In the academy’s fourth year, Jay Morris, a former teacher and principal, was brought in to head the academic programs. Much like the ski academy, the hockey academy works closely with the girls’ hometown schools, and focuses on core curriculum classes. Girls come for the winter, study and skate, and then go back to their hometown schools.
Though Stowe isn’t necessarily a hockey hotbed, it’s within hours of a number of major hockey cities, including Ottawa, Montreal and Boston. What’s good about Stowe is that the girls can practice and live in a safe place, with few distractions.
“We do fly under the radar in a lot of ways,” Driscoll said. “It certainly is a ski town and a lot of high-caliber athletes have come out of Stowe from the ski club. But Stowe is also unique because there has been a great deal of interest in hockey, and in the past years there have been some great hockey players who have come out of Stowe.”
For ice time, the academy rents Jackson Arena in Stowe during off-peak hours.
Last year, Driscoll, Morris and others involved in the academy knew they were outgrowing their facilities. When Mt. Mansfield Winter Academy bought Two Dog Lodge, they realized it made sense to find a better facility for the hockey school.
In “true Vermont form,” Driscoll says, he learned through talking with people in town that the Andersen’s Lodge owners, Dietmar and Trudy Andersen, were ready to get out of the inn business.
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“We were one month from packing up everything and moving out of Stowe” when he learned about the Andersens, Driscoll said.
The new lodge is markedly different from the spread-out facilities of the past. Dorms, classrooms and a cafeteria used to be in three different buildings. Now, they are all in the same structure. The tennis court behind the lodge was quickly converted to a summer practice space, where girls can lace up inline skates and practice slap shots.
In the future, Driscoll would like to build a four-season practice facility on campus, with weight training and other programs.
In the academy’s lobby, a map of the United States is littered with pins poking into different states. Each pin represents a graduate of the school, showing where she is playing hockey today.
According to the school’s Web site, every single graduate has been admitted to a college.
The academy is now considered the premier school of its kind in the country. Driscoll and Morris now sift through 400 to 500 requests each year to study and play for the two school teams. Now, just 40 elite girls attend the school.
“It’s gone from ‘Please come to our school’ to ‘We’ll take a look at how you skate and see how you fit in with us,’” Morris said.