Four years ago, the Colby College women’s ice hockey program crashed close to rock bottom. The Mules didn’t triumph in any of their first 20 games and finished winless in New England Small College Athletic Conference play.
The team’s final record was 2-19-3, but the victories came over a pair of losing teams from the lower levels of NCAA Division III, and it was clear Colby had nowhere to go but up.
Former Dartmouth College assistant Holley Tyng became the Mules’ interim coach less than a month before that season’s first practice, later landing the job on a full-time basis.
This winter? Colby was 15-6-5 overall and 9-3-4 in a conference that’s produced five national championships. The No. 2 Mules earned their highest seed ever in the conference tournament, won their first home playoff game in more than a decade and were in the hunt for a national tournament bid before losing in the NESCAC semifinals.
“This program has done a 180,” said sophomore defenseman Sadie Kuhn, a former three-sport competitor at Woodstock High who played in all but one game and had six assists this winter. “Our seniors had never gotten a weekend sweep before this season.”
Tyng, recently voted the NESCAC’s coach of the year, first saw Kuhn in a video on a friend’s phone over dinner in downtown Woodstock. Months later, Kuhn’s name popped up when Tyng was asking a North American Hockey Academy coach if he had any overlooked prospects. That described Kuhn, who was spending a chunk of her senior year at the Stowe, Vt., institution in hopes of making a late push to college hockey.
“I had talked to a bunch of schools, but I wasn’t excited about them academically,” said Kuhn, who’s majoring in biology. “That’s important, because as a female hockey player, you know you’re not going to make a career out of it.”
Kuhn shared a desire to play for Tyng with another Mules sophomore, forward Colleen Donoghue, of Meriden, a Kimball Union Academy product. Colby was 8-13-4 in the coach’s second season. The pair helped their new team go 12-10-3 as freshmen. As outlandish as it once would have seemed, the Mules now harbor conference and national title hopes.
“I don’t think there was a lot of recruiting done here before, and I really wanted to market the program and the school,” said Tyng, who left Dartmouth when former head coach Mark Hudak stepped down. “I’m extremely lucky, and I realize that all the time. People in my situation haven’t always landed on their feet, and I landed in a perfect situation.”
Colby is building a $220 million, 350,000-square foot athletic facility with a hockey rink, basketball arena, field house, squash courts and Maine’s first Olympic-sized pool. The three-story structure also houses fitness and physical therapy centers and myriad locker rooms and is scheduled to open later this year.
The new construction is a recruiting bonanza and helped reel in Donoghue, who’s majoring in chemistry and who overcame a broken ankle this winter to play in eight games and post six assists.
“I’m so thankful to be there and be given a chance to play the sport I love,” said Donoghue, who grew up playing for boys teams in the Twin Valley Flyers youth hockey organization. “Our program is on the rise, and we’re still hungry for more.”
Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com.