In the second episode of The Herald’s new podcast series “Pandas On Ice,” podcast editor and metro editor Jacob Smollen speaks with former Pembroke Pandas to tell the story of how the first intercollegiate women’s ice hockey team in the country became a national powerhouse.
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Jacob Smollen
It’s 1968 and the Pembroke Pandas, Pembroke College’s newly formed women’s ice hockey team, is still the only collegiate women’s hockey team in the country. They’re also still looking for potential opponents.
The solution? A trip to Canada.
I’m Jacob Smollen, podcast editor and metro editor, and this is “Pandas On Ice,” a podcast series about the Pembroke Pandas — the first intercollegiate women’s hockey team in the United States — and everything that happened afterward.
In this episode: The Pandas make it big, from the Frozen Four to Olympic gold — but some things remain the same.
Jacob Smollen
After covering Brown and Pembroke’s campus in chocolate bars and black and white “Panda Power” buttons in order to raise money for the trip, the Pandas traveled to Kingston, Ontario to play against amateur Canadian teams.
The team traveled by bus and stayed in local dorms. Here’s Bonnie Bethea ’69 P’91, P’92, talking about the team’s Canadian experience:
Bonnie Bethea
I know there was a lot of excitement because we were thinking “Oh, this is great. We're playing a real team,” you know. But I don't think we really expected great expectations of us. I just remember being thoroughly whipped.
Jacob Smollen
For Marcia Hoffer ’71 P’08, the Canada trip was her first game as a Panda.
Marcia Hoffer
When we went to the rink before we got on the ice, the other team that we were playing was from an industrial league in Toronto — and they were huge. Before they went on the ice, they took their teeth out. So we might as well have just turned around, gotten back on the bus and gone back to Rhode Island.
Jacob Smollen
Indeed, the Pandas did struggle against the foreign teams including the Humberside Omegas, “reported to be one of the best women’s amateur hockey teams in Canada,” — a 10-1 loss — and the Golden Gals of Queens, a 4-1 loss.
Marcia Hoffer
I guess it could have been worse than that. Nobody went to the hospital. So that was really good.
Jacob Smollen
But, for Marion Dancy ’70, then the team’s goalie, the trip included one of her hockey highlights.
Dancy was one of the many Pandas on her first-year hall who was recruited by Linda Fox ’68. Prior to joining the team, she said she’d figure skated but did not know how to play hockey.
Marion Dancy
They said, “Oh, who wants to be the goalie?” I said, “Sure. I'll be the goalie.” I figured I'd wear a lot of pads and the cage mask and all that other stuff.
Jacob Smollen
We spoke over Zoom and I mentioned finding her name through The Herald and Pembroke Record articles about the Pandas. I shared my screen as she read aloud the coverage of the Panda’s trip in The Herald and, unbeknownst to Dancy, her own performance.
Marion Dancy
Display of teamwork and a small contingent of Panda fans who made the trip … Although Pembroke represented somewhat less … Filled this numbered more either … Among the stars, was goalie … I was a star! My gosh, that is awesome. That's awesome. I love it.
Jacob Smollen
In February 1970, the Pandas again traveled to Canada, this time to Montreal for matchups against McGill and Loyola. The team improved since their last international adventure, crushing Loyola 8-0 before losing to McGill 3-2 in the tournament final. But according to The Herald’s archives, that still made the Pandas the “second best team in North America.”
The trip was one of several over the following years.
Here’s Judy Govalet ’74, then July Gilman, who had figure-skated her whole life before attending Brown, describing one such trip.
Judy Govalet
We played a no-checking game. But there was always a little bit of leeway in that. “Oh, I didn't really mean to do that,” you know, smash. But you know, we didn't we weren't very we weren't completely rough, but things happen in hockey. Sometimes you can't stop yourself. We weren't all professional skaters.
Jacob Smollen
Govalet’s recruitment to the team was much like any other in the early days.
Judy Govalet
We had girls dorms, boys dorms, and somebody was going down the hall saying “Does anybody skate, does anybody skate?” And we had no idea what they were talking about and they came out and said “Well, we’re looking for girls to skate on the hockey team.” And I said, “Well, I can figure skate … but I have picks on the end of my skates to help me stop, I don’t know about all of those shushing stops that the hockey team does.” And they said, “Don’t worry, we’ll teach you, we’ll teach you.”
Jacob Smollen
She said that during her time on the team in the early 1970s, they began to improve. Allison McMillan ’74 and Martha Schmitt ’76 arrived from Minnesota, both of whom later served as captains for the team.
1972 also brought the passage of Title IX, which required schools receiving Federal funding to provide equal opportunity regardless of sex in sports. This includes, according to the NCAA, equality in participation, scholarships, equipment, practice times and locker rooms.
Here’s Beth Bowman Smith, class of 1974:
Beth Bowman Smith
By junior year, we had full hockey gear, and at least we looked like hockey players. Whereas before that we were pretty much a ragamuffin crew.
By senior year, we weren't selling candy bars anymore. I think we were, we actually had a little bit of a budget. So whether that was Title IX, or what it was, I'm not quite sure.
Jacob Smollen
Cornell and Colby were among the next schools in the U.S. to form women’s hockey teams, and according to team records, both Cornell and Colby became frequent opponents of the pandas in the following years.
But even post-Title IX, some things just didn’t change. Here’s PJ Hamel ’75, then Peggy McKearney, talking about the lack of support the team was given during an early trip to Colby, with audio courtesy of the Pembroke Center Oral History Archive:
PJ Hamel
We went up to Colby and we stayed in an unheated, empty classroom building — we had all brought sleeping bags — and lay on the hard floor in our sleeping bags, freezing — I mean, freezing — to death. It was the most uncomfortable night I had spent and I just thought, "Can't we do better than this?" I mean, do the boys, when they went on their hockey trips, do they lie in an unheated classroom in sleeping bags on the floor with not even a pad underneath them? Come on!
Jacob Smollen
Hamel, who said she was the team’s starting goalie throughout her four years at Brown, also had to use dirty equipment from the men’s junior varsity team to practice.
PJ Hamel
I was putting on sweat-soaked equipment that was disgusting. It smelled. It was cold. It was wet. And these leg pads that would be just absolutely soaked from sweat on one side and ice on the other side and they were really heavy because they were so soaked with sweat and ice and water. And thinking, “Wow! What if I had my own gear! Wouldn't that be great? That would be so nice.” And I don't know if I ever did get my own gear in four years here because Title IX was enacted in 1972, so that was after my freshman year, and it really didn't start to be taken seriously 'til about 1975,
Jacob Smollen
Starting in the 1974-75 season, the Pandas had a non-volunteer head coach for the first time, Steve Shea ’73. The next year, Brown hosted the first-ever Ivy League tournament, losing to Cornell in the final 3-2.
In 1981, the Pandas would finish on top of the Ivy League for the first time — kinda. The team shared the title with Cornell after the head coaches, Shea from Brown and Bill Duthie from Cornell, called it quits following a fourth overtime in which the teams remained tied.
Patty Nawrocki Murphy
The Brown Pandas were very low on the totem pole in terms of their ability to potentially win the tournament. But we were able to put it together and one by one started to knock teams off. In order to get to the finals, we had to beat Princeton. We beat Princeton and then the championship game was against Cornell. Cornell had won every single Ivy championship before that day
Jacob Smollen
That was Patty Nawrocki Murphy ’84 talking about the game, which occurred her first year at Brown
At one point during her time on the team, Nawrocki Murphy remembered getting new jerseys, but unlike the men’s varsity team, there were no names on the back. Nawrocki Murphy’s not sure why there weren’t — but regardless, the team decided to do something about it.
Patty Nawrocki Murphy
Since my parents’ house was just over half an hour away, we piled in some cars, went to my parents’ house. And I had a sewing machine. So we went and bought all the letters to spell all our names, I ripped out the sewing machine and we ended up making our own names and velcroing them to the back of the jerseys.
Jacob Smollen
Nawrocki Murphy said that during her junior year the words “Women’s Varsity Ice Hockey” were finally put in letters on the locker room door.
Patty Nawrocki Murphy
Prior to that, it only said “Men’s Varsity Ice Hockey.” So that was just almost like, “Oh we’ve kind of made it”
Jacob Smollen
The Pandas would finally make it atop the Ivy League — this time alone — during the 1984-85 season, and again the next year. But the team struggled in the following years. Little did they know the change that was on the horizon.
Jacob Smollen
This is Digit Murphy:
Digit Murphy
Ok, so uh…
Jacob Smollen
Murphy grew up in Cranston and played hockey for an all-girls team at her high school. She was good — good enough to be recruited to play hockey in college by a number of schools — not including Brown, something which would bother her for years. Murphy ended up playing hockey at Cornell.
In fact, Murphy was the star sophomore on the Cornell team that tied with the Pandas in 1981. In an article from the Brown Alumni Magazine in March 2017, Murphy said that she was disgusted that the coaches had decided to end the game in a tie: “There was some thought, I guess, that women couldn’t handle it. It was ridiculous.”
Digit Murphy
I was always mad when I went to Meehan, and I'm like, “Why did they not pick me?” You know, because I'm like, I'm right here. Because, you know, you grow up around Brown so you want to go to Brown.
Jacob Smollen
After graduating from Cornell, Murphy worked in retail and with computer systems in materials and inventory control. But she said that got boring. She left her job and went back to school to be a physical education teacher.
One day, she decided to call up Shea, who was still the Pandas’s head coach.
Digit Murphy
And I said, “Hey, Steve. … Do you remember me?” He’s like “Oh yeah, I remember you.” I'm like, ”Good.” You know, I said, “I'm back in town. If you ever need an assistant coach, give me a call. Take my number.” And he did.
Jacob Smollen
Murphy said that after two years as an assistant coach, Arlene Gorton — yes, the very same Arlene Gorton who approved Nancy’s team in 1963 — hired her to lead the Pandas.
Murphy got right to work. She said when she took over in 1989, the team was struggling and had little money for recruiting.
Another part of the team’s revamp? A name change. No more Pandas, Murphy said — the team would be called the Bears.
Digit Murphy
I remember going to battle a little bit with the alums and kind of telling them why I thought we should change the name because, quite frankly, we weren't very well respected in the league back then. We had these uniforms that were pretty ugly and my whole shtick was look good, feel good, play good. We got all new equipment, we got new helmets, we got new pants, we got a new image, we kind of rebranded. Now they would call it rebranding, I just called it yeah, we're getting rid of that Panda soft, cuddly kind of image — and like kind of dumpy and fat — and we're gonna go with bears who are ferocious.
Jacob Smollen
Still, according to Murphy, within the team, players continued to call themselves the Pandas.
Digit Murphy
Which I kind of liked, right? They didn't lose that piece of the history. But they bought into what we were doing. We were building a championship team.
Jacob Smollen
Under Murphy, the team did start to improve. In her first year as head coach, the team finished 11th in the Eastern College Atheltic Conference. Starting in the 1994-95 season, the team finished 1st three years in a row.
The Bears soon found success at the national level as well. In the 1997-98 and 1999-2000 seasons, the Bears lost in the national championship of the American Women’s College Hockey Alliance, which hosted a post-season tournament for collegiate women’s ice hockey prior to the NCAA.
Only a couple of years later, the team played Minnesota-Duluth in the second-ever NCAA national championship, ultimately falling just short once again.
Still, the Bears were a powerhouse, a far cry from their humble beginnings.
The team even won the Bean Pot — a tournament typically held between Boston College, Northeastern University, Boston University and Harvard — when Boston University did not have a team in the tourney in 1993. The Bears are the only team not from Boston to ever win.
Digit Murphy
They were like, “Oh, let's get Brown. They're close. We'll beat them.” And we ended up the joke being on them because we had Kate Presbrey ’94 — she was a really good goalie — and we ended up winning the Bean Pot. And then the year after they didn't invite us of course.
Jacob Smollen
Part of that success was Murphy’s coaching style, which, as she herself described, was tough.
I met Christina Sorbara ’01, who played on the team during their run of dominance, at what else — a Brown women’s ice hockey game.
Christina Sorbara
Ohhh, come on, get rid of the puck.
Jacob Smollen
She told me about her experience playing under Murphy while the current Bears scored a goal.
Christina Sorbara
Yeah she was intense. And she was willing to try anything. Even when you achieve the goal, she wanted more. I remember one weekend, maybe it was going to Cornell. And we went up there and we won both games, we thought “We did so well.” We drove the bus back. We took out you know, unloaded our bags, and she’s like “Get dressed, get on the ice.” What did we do? We just won games, we had a great six-hour bus ride back or whatever it was and it’s like “You guys won. There’s still more. Go.” And we had to do, we skated lines or something. You know, and it was intense.
Jacob Smollen
Yet, Sorbara said that Murphy was so much more than just a hard coach.
Christina Sorbara
She always pushed us. And even if you weren’t getting better at hockey, you are getting better at life.
Tara Mounsey
Digit Murphy is a fierce competitor. She played the sport herself, she coached the sport and she really had a way to get me to compete to the highest level that I could.
Jacob Smollen
That was Tara Mounsey ’02.5, one of several Olympians who played under Murphy during her time as head coach.
In 1998, women’s ice hockey debuted as an Olympic sport at the Winter Games in Nagano, Japan. Men’s ice hockey had been an Olympic sport for nearly 70 years prior. Four Brown women’s ice hockey players carried the legacy of the Pandas with them to Japan in 1998: Mounsey and Katie King ’97 for the U.S., Becky Kellar ’97 for Canada and Chie-Chie Sakuma ’94 for Japan.
The U.S. went on to upset Canada 3-1 to take home the first Olympic gold medal in the sport.
Game Audio
Jacob Smollen
But Mounsey said the gold wasn’t what was most important to her.
Tara Mounsey
The most important part for me of that year was the impact that it had on the sport and young girls. It gave them another sport to try and then also have heroes to look up to, and rather than … you know, I had to look up to the Bruins. I wasn't gonna play on the Bruins, right? I’m not big and strong enough, I’m not a man. And so it really, women's ice hockey grew exponentially and it continues to grow since 1998. And so that's really special when you can show up at the arena. And you see all these young boys and lots and lots of young girls that want your autograph. And they are just so happy to be at the rink. That is what it was all about.
Jacob Smollen
Murphy left Brown in 2011 after a decorated 22 years as head coach. At one point during the 2006-07 season, she was the winningest coach in Division I women’s ice hockey. But before she did, Murphy said that when the men’s hockey coach left in 2009, she’d interviewed for the men’s head coaching position.
She didn’t get it.
Digit Murphy
I was more successful than the men's coach at that point and they just would not respect our program to even think about slotting a woman in that spot. I definitely wanted to do it, because I wanted to make history. I wanted to be a person that my players looked up to.
Jacob Smollen
Murphy said that the reason why she was passed up for the job goes back to her role in a Title IX case filed in 1992, Cohen v. Brown University. In the case, Amy Cohen ’92, then the co-captain of the women’s gymnastics team, and other plaintiffs argued that by demoting four varsity sports, including women’s volleyball and gymnastics, the University was not providing “ample opportunity for its female athletes.”
Murphy testified against Brown as part of the “landmark case,” which Brown ultimately lost, causing the reinstatement of the teams.
Digit Murphy
It was wrong that Brown, with all the resources they had, chose to cut women's sports instead of adding money and adding resources for opportunity.
I testified against my employer. Pregnant. And, I mean, for me, I'm very aggressive, and I kind of don't care. But it was it was kind of maddening. It was maddening.
Jacob Smollen
During her time as coach, Murphy said in addition to the Title IX case, that the women’s ice hockey team was given game and practice schedules that prioritized the men’s team.
Despite progress, the team and Murphy were still facing the same misogyny that had constrained earlier iterations of the Pandas.
Digit Murphy
I don't think there was a lot of malice with the way that our program went through those Title IX hurdles. I think it was the times. _eople just weren't thinking that way. And as a progressive thinker in the women's space in sports, you're kind of treading on resources that weren't there. Right? So now it's like, “Holy crap, what do we do?” because you're challenging the system.
I think Brown was better as a result of our program existing, because the Pandas challenged the norms back then when they actually existed as the oldest program in the country.
Jacob Smollen
That’s it for this week’s episode of Pandas on Ice. In the next episode, we take a trip back to the reunion and reunite with Nancy. What is the legacy of the Pandas today?
This episode was produced me, Jacob Smollen, and Finn Kirkpatrick, and edited by Hayal Lily Karakus and Megan Wang. The episode was reported by me, Jacob Smollen, Linus Lawrence, Tom Li and Amanda Sun. The script was written by me, Jacob Smollen, with additional help from Carter Moyer, Christine Okulo, Annabelle Kim, Megan Wang, Jaanu Rah-mesh, Rohey Jasseh, Sonya McNatt, Hayal Lily Karakus, Tevah Gevelber and Julia Gallent.
If you like what you hear, subscribe to Brown Daily Herald podcasts wherever you like to listen and leave a review. Thanks for listening, we’ll see you next week.
Jacob Smollen is a Metro editor covering city and state politics and co-editor of the Bruno Brief. He is a junior from Philadelphia studying International and Public Affairs.
