When Ryan Stone, a former assistant coach of the women's hockey team, received a phone call in late September 2005 offering him a position as head coach of the Chinese Women's National Hockey Team, he didn't think twice about accepting - even though he didn't know a word of Chinese and the job required him to move across the world.
Last fall, Stone was at the end of a five-and-a-half year stint at Brown as assistant coach under Head Coach Digit Murphy when he decided to travel across the globe to Harbin, China. Stone had first heard of the job through the father of one of his former Brown hockey players. Former Boston Bruin Mike Milbury, father of alum Alison Milbury and, at the time, general manager of the New York Islanders, and Charles Wang, owner of the New York Islanders, decided to focus the franchise's efforts on developing the Chinese women's hockey team during the NHL lockout in 2004. They set up an office in China that year, and, when the opportunity to coach the team came a year later, Stone jumped at it. He left Brown in October 2005, and from mid-October through April of 2006 served as the National Team's head coach.
Stone's home for seven months was Harbin, a bustling city of 9.4 million people located in the northeast region of China. Unlike most of China, with its tropical atmosphere, Harbin is freezing. The temperature did not rise above zero degrees Fahrenheit during the months of January, February and March, according to Stone. But such a climate breeds enthusiasm for winter sports - among them hockey - and Harbin is no exception. All but two of Stone's players hailed from Harbin.
What Stone found upon his arrival was a team of 32 young hockey players, ranging from 16- to 26-years-old, eager to prove that China belonged on the international hockey scene. China showed the world it was ready to compete globally by placing fourth in the 1998 Nagano Winter Olympics which featured women's hockey for the first time.
However, after its Olympic debut, China fell from the ranks of the elite. In the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, China finished in seventh place. Four years later, China did not qualify for the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Italy, which sent the team back to the drawing board to figure out what went wrong and what could be done.
That's when Stone entered the picture. He faced challenges immediately. First, eight of the team's veteran players retired after the team's loss in the qualifying round. Replacing those seasoned members were 10 new players who had never played an international game. The team was also very young, with an average age of 19. Though Stone found himself in the midst of a rebuilding year for the Chinese, he focused the training around strengthening the young team's basic hockey skills in order to reach China's long-term goal of earning a spot in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.
"It was part of a long-term development project," Stone said. "We treated the (2005-2006) season as a training season. I had the women work on their skating speed and basic skills."
The language barrier proved to be another obstacle to overcome, although it was not as challenging as might have been expected.
"I had translators at all times, and the team captain spoke English," Stone said. "I slowly learned the language, and by the end I was able to take a taxi and order food."
The team did not have difficulty with a non-Chinese speaking coach because a foreigner has always coached the team. Most of the communication came through translations by the team captain and the use of visual aids.
"I drew a lot of diagrams on the board. The hockey diagrams are pretty universal," Stone said. "The toughest thing (in communicating with the team) was that hockey uses a lot of idiomatic language. Sometimes the translations were literal and we would have some difficulty understanding each other."
Stone received invaluable help throughout the season from his assistant coach, Tim McNamara, who worked at Brown as an equipment manager for the women's hockey team during Stone's tenure. In China, McNamara ran the strength and conditioning program of the women's team.
After Stone's arrival, the team wasted no time. It immediately embarked on a rigorous regimen. Stone trained the women six days a week, from Monday morning until Saturday afternoon. Each day the athletes trained from 7 a.m. until 9 p.m., completing two training sessions on the ice and one on land.
An essential part of the development project was competing in tournaments. In China, however, opportunities to play competitive hockey games are hard to come by. A lack of significant funding from the government also hindered the team. As a result, the team took on any worthy opponent it could find.
"We played high school-age boys' teams and semi-pro men's teams. We would try to scrimmage once a week with former men's national team players," Stone said. "Since 1998 ... (women's hockey) is now a year-round training thing. It's tough to keep up. With no competition, you don't have the competitive edge."
In October 2005, Harbin hosted an international tournament featuring Japan, Russia and Germany. China finished with a 1-3-1 record but was able to improve its play within a month.
In November the team played in the Finnish National Women's League and emerged from the competition with a 4-9 record. The team then played two tournaments against men's teams. The final tournament the team played under Stone was the Asian Cup tournament held in Beijing in March. The women finished in a three-way lock for first place with Kazakhstan and Japan. Stone was pleased with the performance.
"It was a good way to end the season," Stone said. "You can definitely see great improvement from the beginning (of the season) to the end."
At the end of the season, Stone could have continued in his position, but he decided to return to the United States.
"I missed the college atmosphere," he said. "(Coaching the Chinese team) was a fun and interesting experience, but I felt it made more sense to invest in grassroots programs in China rather than just working on the elite level."
The Islanders have also redirected their focus. The Finns have taken over coaching the Chinese National team, while the Islanders are currently funding Project Hope, an initiative that provides educational opportunities to young Chinese athletes.
Stone said his experience in China was overwhelmingly positive, but he did express frustration with the Chinese athletic system.
"China is starting to get away from it, but they still are on the Communist Russia model," Stone said. "They pick the athletes when they're young. They start identifying them when they are in middle school, 12 and 13 years old. Almost half of the national team (15 out of 32 players) did not graduate from high school.
"The singular focus on hockey without education was difficult for me ... the one thing I asked for the women was to have some class time, but the classroom stuff was watching hockey tapes. The national team is their career path. This is their job."
Of his time in China, Stone said, "It was a rich, incredible experience ... Being immersed in the culture like that was amazing. They really extended the welcome wagon for us."
Stone is now back in the United States and back in the atmosphere he loves - the collegiate hockey scene. He was named assistant coach of women's hockey at Colgate University in September. While Stone works enthusiastically in his new position, he stays in contact with the Chinese team captain by e-mail and thinks often about the team he spent more than half a year with.
"The girls' work ethic in China is very, very strong. They definitely have a lot of national pride," Stone said. "I'm looking forward to watching the future of the program and seeing how they do in the World Championships in April."
