Sports News : Wednesday, November 17, 1999

by Tony Guadagnoli
Seattle Times sports staff

The shriek of a hockey coach's whistle stops play inside Olympicview Arena in Mountlake Terrace. The players, their jerseys soaked in sweat, their hair disheveled and their breathing labored, focus attention on the voices behind the whistles.

Those are no ordinary voices.

They belong to Coach Cindy Dayley and assistant coach Zoe Harris.

The women coach the Husky Hockey Club, the men's club team at the University of Washington. In their first season as coaches last year, Dayley and Harris guided the program, which gets $1,850 of its roughly $35,000 budget from the university, to 10 consecutive victories. Their team finished 11-6, its best finish in more than 10 years.

But their jobs as Husky Hockey Club coaches fell to Dayley, a Seattle native and loan underwriter, and Harris, a project manager for The Pacific Institute, by chance.

Nearly three years ago, both approached Athletic Director Barbara Hedges and expressed an interest in developing a women's hockey program at the UW. Dayley and Harris were met with a no-go on the women's team, but Hedges suggested they coach the men's club team. Her suggestion didn't take hold until a UW alumnus approached Dayley and Harris in summer 1998 about coaching the team after they had won a national women's in-line hockey championship.

Dayley and Harris expected to run into plenty of skepticism from the players.

"But to our surprise we were treated really well," Harris said.

"I can remember them saying, 'If you have something to teach, we have something to learn,' " said Dayley, who attended her first hockey game (the Seattle Totems) as a baby. "Gender never was brought up."

That is not lost on the players, who say the coaches are brilliant motivators.

"The level they coach at is so much higher than anything I've had," said Eli Troyke, a defenseman who played youth hockey in Spokane. "They know so much about the game."

Being coached by women is the least of this team's worries. Gender, you see, is easy. Equity is not.

Getting an afternoon game or practice time or paying for jerseys, those are the real problems. The team competes in the Pac-8, with all the Pac-10 schools except Arizona and Arizona State, and in Division II of the nonprofit American Collegiate Hockey Association and has a decent chance to make the Pac-8 playoffs in February in El Segundo, Calif. The UW is 3-3 and plays again on Friday against Northern Arizona.

Most of the Pac-8 teams are better funded and equipped and, because of geography, can play more games. Disney helps USC manage its $50,000 to $75,000 budget. The Husky team created its own logo and Web site and asks for a $5 "donation" for home games at Olympicview.

In addition to selling merchandise, the team participates in the university's development fund letter program, which helps attract sponsors and raise money. So far this season, they have raised about $1,500. Still, Dayley and Harris said the team will be $8,000 in debt by the end of January. And in a Catch-22, if the Huskies make the playoffs and must practice another month, it could double expenses.

"Here you see these youth players with all their jerseys and equipment paid for, and we've got to stop at a store at times before practice and buy tape for our sticks," Husky captain Sam Kim said.

Players must pay roughly $600 per season and are provided only pucks and water bottles. They pay for everything else.

The team practices from 9:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. (most of the earlier times are reserved for youth leagues) at Olympicview, a new building that rents for $250 an hour on game night and is 12 miles from campus. The team is grateful to play games at 10 p.m. Last season, games began at midnight, giving new meaning to the term "night shift."

"It's heaven, absolute heaven," Harris said of the early start.

And for this slice of "heaven" - practicing late, giving up almost every winter weekend and playing in relative obscurity - the coaches and staff don't get paid.

"What do people say?" said Harris, who with Dayley was honored by the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto for being the first women to coach a college men's hockey team. "They probably say we're nuts."

Both coaches say the team is the "best-kept secret on campus."

But they are changing that check by check, shift by shift, game by game, win by win.

" 'Why do you want to even get involved with that?' 'They drink, they party.' 'It's a beer league,' " Harris recalled being told. "Well, we think we can change that reputation and have a team that'll be proud of themselves."

They are changing that - check by check, shift by shift, game by game, win by win.

"When I was a sophomore two years ago, we had like seven guys show up regularly, and whoever wanted to play played," said Kim, who admits he was one of the skeptics. "I mean, I played for coaches who were brutal and were like drill sergeants. I thought, 'What are they (Dayley and Harris) going to teach me?' But they have by far the most knowledge of any hockey coaches I've ever had. I've learned so much. They totally proved me wrong."

The two coaches have brought organization and structure. They held tryouts, relied on regular lines and regular drills and used basic concepts that were lacking a few years ago. And Dayley and Harris have preached discipline.

"We are teaching them that they have to have their gloves on and their stick in their hand to help the team," Harris said. "They have to realize if they are in the penalty box, they are not helping the team. You can't pass the puck from the penalty box. We've found they are just sponges for knowledge."

But lest you think the players are sissies, Harris remembers a game last season when Dayley, 5 feet 2, yanked a 6-2 forward by the collar and whisked him away from a potentially volatile situation without so much as a peep.

"In general terms, the main differences between coaching women and men is that with women you have to tell them what they are going to do or need to do and then you get them motivated," Dayley said. "With men, you motivate them first and then tell them later what they needed to do or have to do."

And Harris and Dayley see their players learning more than hockey.

"We have tried to be really big into positive reinforcement and let them see what each positive goal is," Harris said. "What they are doing in practice might help them in school or later in a career.

"We just want to represent the university well. We want our players to respect themselves and be respected and have fun doing it."

Copyright © 1999 Seattle Times Company