It would take a Miracle ...

In honor of my Boston Bruins, who begin their quest for the team's first Stanley Cup in a gazillion years tonight against the dastardly Les Habitants of Montreal, here is one of my favorite stories ever. First published in February, 2004, it recounts the making of Miracle, the movie of the gold medal-winning United States hockey team at the Lake Placid Olympics in 1980. The original ran on SportsIllustrated.com, and can be seen here.

The best part of the research, in addition to interviewing my good buddy Bobby Hanosn (who plays Dave Silk in the movie), was chatting with Kurt Russell (at right, with director Gavin "No Relation" O'Connor) as a hockey fan, not a movie star. I couldn't get the guy off the phone!

Real to the core
Getting the hockey action right was the key to making Miracle work

Athletes have to believe in miracles. That's why they show up.

Just ask Mike Eruzione, captain of the unheralded 1980 Olympic hockey team that grabbed gold in stunning fashion at Lake Placid. Better yet, ask three Boston guys plucked from obscurity to play key roles in Miracle, which is due out on Friday.

A short 16 months ago, Patrick "Paddy" O'Brien Demsey, Michael Mantenuto and Bobby Hanson were Hollywood unknowns, as faceless as Herb Brooks' band of college students from the Cold War winter of 1980. No acting experience, no national recognition.

"I told Paddy, 'Hold you breath, man, because we're about to go from zero to 4,000 miles an hour,' says Mantenuto.

No doubt, life is going to change in a big way for these three former college hockey players. Backed by Disney's promotional machine and a "can't miss" storyline, Miracle had to be considered a hit coming out of the gate. Kurt Russell gave the movie star power as Coach Brooks, while Eddie Cahill (Jennifer Anniston's boyfriend on Friends) was tagged as goaltender Jim Craig.

But director Gavin O'Connor wanted authenticity above anything else. That meant taking risks, starting with casting hockey players who could act, not actors trying to play hockey.

"I wanted a dramatization of the sport, and I didn't think that could be executed at the level I wanted with actors," O'Connor said. "Using stunt men and body doubles wouldn't give the audience the visceral feeling of what it's like to be on the ice. I wanted everything to smell real and raw and truthful.

"The challenge was to find kids who could play the sport at a very high level and who were born with the acting gene but didn't know it. It was a very long process. We saw almost 4,000 kids."

Casting calls went out in Minnesota and in Boston in October 2002. Mantenuto was working on a fishing boat in Gloucester, Mass., when he learned about the auditions. After playing a season and a half for the University of Maine, the 22-year-old was taking a break from school, reassessing his priorities.

So he answered the casting call, auditioning in Boston, where he met Demsey, a high-energy 23-year-old, and Hanson, a quiet, 26-year-old part-time coach with superb hockey pedigree -- four years at Boston University and brief stints in Europe and the East Coast Hockey League.

Demsey grew up skating on a backyard pond built by his dad, picked up organized hockey in high school and played two years at Fitchburg State College. A communications major, he was interning at a graphic arts firm when he found an ad for the auditions. It didn't matter that he had never acted before.

Demsey showed up the next day in Boston, one of thousands of Hollywood wannabes. He had the look, the accent, and the mannerisms that pegged him for Eruzione, or as Hanson called him, "the Irish Eruzione."

"I know Disney wasn't interested in me, because I had never done anything before and Eruzione is such a huge part of this story," Demsey said. "But Gavin told me that from the time he met me, he knew I was the guy."

At a subsequent Los Angeles audition, Demsey further impressed Hollywood scouts during a scrimmage between Miracle candidates, scoring two goals ("That equaled my college output.").

But it was Mantenuto -- eyed for rock-solid, wisecracking defenseman Jack O'Callahan -- who secured his spot at the Tinseltown tryout. Told beforehand that he'd be reading for the O'Callahan role -- "a tough, Boston kid, the first guy in a hockey fight to stand up for his boys" -- Mantenuto was goaded by another recruit.

"He was a big kid, played at Harvard," Mantenuto said. "He's out there picking on these actor-type kids, who weren't sticking up for themselves, and I have a problem with that."

Mantenuto stepped on the ice, got hacked, and his hockey instincts took over.

"This kid says, 'What are you gonna do, pretty boy?' So I drop my gloves," Mantenuto said. "I end up getting in a fight, and kicking his ass pretty badly. And, in slow motion, I look over at Gavin and I think, 'Oh, s**t, they're gonna throw me out of here.' And Gavin has this huge smile on his face. I came off the ice and apologized, and Gavin said, 'No that was great.' "

Mantenuto scored the O'Callahan role. Hanson was cast as winger Dave Silk.

"Were their audition tapes good? No," O'Connor said. "No one would look at audition tapes and say these guys are actors. I had to bring Paddy Demsey back to the studio three times, because they kept saying 'No' to me. They didn't see what I saw in this kid.

"I usually operate on an intuitive level. I just saw something in this kid's eyes. It's an intangible thing. But there was a spark there, something I just responded to."

By February, O'Connor had his team. Everyone -- plus a collection of ex-NHL and other professionals brought on to play the Soviets and other opponents -- was ensconced in Vancouver, B.C., for five months of filming. Russell, determined to capture Brooks accurately, remained aloof, recreating the same tension that brought the 1980 team together.

"The first night, the first shoot, he walked up to me, looked me right in the eye, and just sucked me into his head," Demsey said. "I really had no clue it was Kurt Russell standing in front of me. It was like a hypnotic state. He was Herb Brooks."

Russell laughs at Demsey's recollection.

"It was a little manipulative, but it was also for a specific reason," he said. "We were working with guys who had never been in front of the camera before. I had to establish as quickly a feeling of honest respect from them, like Herb had from his players."

O'Connor took a different tact, embracing his young charges.

"What's interesting is that these guys became actors in the best sense of the word," says Russell. "They were absolutely committed to each scene. The players didn't have to act -- they discovered that they just had to be themselves."

Sports coordinator Mark Ellis and former NHLer Ryan Walter teamed to put the players through intense rehearsals to make sure the finished product was convincing. Scenes in which players were forced to do brutal wind sprints feature retching too real to be feigned.

O'Connor broke with Hollywood tradition and ask his pseudo-actors to review daily footage with him to ensure veracity. Mantenuto, who felt he could deliver body checks better than any stunt double, steamrolled one extra so often that "by the end of the day he looked like Jay Leno."

"These poor guys are skating with their head down, and we got to run them over," Mantenuto said. "How often is someone going to give you a free pass like that? Any frustration I had with the movie I think you'll see in my hits. Those are real."

Also authentic was the blood drawn between Mantenuto and Nathan West during a scene where O'Callahan and Minnesotan Rob McClanahan duke it out, as well as the dozen stitches collected by Stanley Cup-winning goalie Bill Ranford (Cahill's stunt double as Craig) compliments of an errant shot from Hanson.

"Billy was the best," O'Connor said. "When the kids were getting tired, and the intensity wasn't there, Bill would get in their faces and say 'Look, bring your A game.' He lit a fire under people."

Russell believes the on-ice scenes turned out superbly due to the chance they took by using real hockey players rather than actors.

"Sometimes they did end up in fights," Russell said. "At one point there were four fights going on, and Ryan Walter just threw his hands up and said 'I can't stop them.' "

"We had high-contact, high-spirited hockey," Walter said. "The problem was you couldn't fake that. You can't fake the game. So the key piece was that our guys came to play, played hard, and we all took risks. We were very professional as a group, but there were times when guys weren't getting along on the ice. You have to show that. So much of the game comes from passion, and if the passion's not there, it doesn't work."

According to Eruzione and O'Callahan, Miracle works.

"The hockey is great, intense, high-speed," O'Callahan said. "These guys are probably better athletes than we were at the time. Let's face it -- if you're making a hockey movie, and you can't sell the hockey, you can't sell any of it."

Eruzione also reserves special praise for Russell's portrayal of Brooks, saying it was almost unnerving.

"I thought Kurt was spectacular," Eruzione said. "This guy nailed Herb Brooks right on."

Eruzione believes that Brooks, who was killed in a single-car accident last August while the film was in the editing stages, would have enjoyed the final version. Hearing that makes O'Connor beam, because in many ways, he says, Miracle is The Herb Brooks Story.

Brooks, the last man cut from the 1960 Olympic team that shocked the Soviets and the Canadians at Squaw Valley, reinvented himself as one of the game's great hockey minds and a brilliant if unconventional motivator of younger players.

"After meeting Herb, I said to him, almost offhandedly, '1980 must have been such a blast, this must have been such a great year in your life,' " Russell said. "And he said, 'Well, no, it was the loneliest year of my life.' I snapped to at that point."

Out of the ensuing conversation came the reality of what Herb's year was, and the amount of sacrifice that took place, not just from him, but his family, mainly his wife Patty. In the third week of filming, O'Connor introduced the team to the real Herb Brooks.

"Coach Brooks asked us how we were doing, and everyone was just silent," Demsey said. "So I said 'We're a little bit rusty.' And he looks at me and says, 'You must be Eruzione. He was always a little bit rusty.' That was definitely a highlight, when he pegged me as Eruzione in half a second."

Demsey admits that he was more of a physical force than a scorer in his own hockey career. But he nailed the climactic scene with the game-winning goal against the Soviets on the third take.

"My college coach is going to look at it and say 'How come I didn't play that kid?' " Demsey said. "I look like Wayne Gretzky out there."

The 1980 team might be best remember for its youthful exuberance, best captured in the raucous celebration following the 4-3 win over the Soviets. And while O'Connor needed to take some dramatic license, focusing on fewer players to tell the story in two hours, Eruzione and O'Callahan say the depiction rings true.

"The movie will absolutely do our team justice," Eruzione said. "These guys could play."

Meanwhile, the young guns that Disney uncovered say they have a renewed appreciation for the team, Herb Brooks, and the enduring legacy of their accomplishment.

"It's like folklore," Demsey said. "This team helped get USA hockey going. And this film is going to bring their story to a whole new generation of people, which I hope will create another hockey boom."

If it happens, the charge will be led by a group of fledgling actors who, at their core, are hockey-loving Hollywood greenhorns. Nice symmetry, but no miracle.

--Brion O'Connor is a Boston-based freelance writer.

Celebrating hockey’s origins

There's a magic to playing pond hockey that's really difficult to capture in words. But we keep trying. Here's one of my favorite stories from this year. You can see the printed version here. My thanks to the great work by my editor, Tom Connelly, at the New York Times.

On Frozen Pond: Playing up a Hockey Legacy
CONCORD, N.H. — When Chris Brown, 40, laces up his skates and pulls on his Concord Budmen jersey on Jan. 28, he will be reconnecting with the hockey gods who have smiled on New Hampshire’s capital for almost 130 years. The Budmen are among 52 teams, at least 40 of them from this city of 42,000, that will participate in the first 1883 Black Ice Pond Hockey Championship, a celebration of Concord’s singular ties to hockey played in the elements.

“When I was growing up in Concord, there used to be areas flooded in most of the parks,” Brown, a tournament organizer, said. “Then, over the years, those just slowly went away, whether it was lack of interest or the city not having the funds to do it.”

The tournament at White Park, just up the road from the capitol, is a fund-raiser to help restore outdoor skating opportunities in the city. For players and spectators, it promises a tableau resembling what many hockey historians believe was the first organized game played in the United States, on Nov. 17, 1883.

It took place two miles away, on Lower School Pond (pictured above) on the campus of St. Paul’s, a boarding school whose students have included Astors and Vanderbilts, future United States senators and at least one N.H.L. player, Don Sweeney, the former Boston Bruin and now the team’s assistant general manager.

The term black ice was coined at St. Paul’s, a reference to the smooth-as-glass surface that set when temperatures first plummeted, leading to “black ice holidays,” when classes would be canceled so that the students could skate. According to the school’s archives, hockey was played on campus as early as the 1860s, but the modern game took hold with the arrival of two students, George Perley from Ottawa and Arthur Whitney from Montreal, in the early 1880s.

“At one point, when I was a student here, there were eight rinks on that pond,” said the current St. Paul’s rector, Bill Matthews, a former player and coach at the school. “Every afternoon you’d hear the pucks banging against the boards.”

St. Paul’s is also where Hobey Baker began his ascent in the early 1900s. Baker, whose name is on the award given annually to college hockey’s best player, took his skills to Princeton, but St. Paul’s continued to make headlines. On Dec. 15, 1913, The New York Times trumpeted a game between Baker’s Princeton squad and the “famous St. Paul’s School team” at St. Nicholas Rink in Manhattan. The article refers to St. Paul’s as a “little preparatory school, tucked away in the New Hampshire hills.”

“Unless they really know hockey, most people don’t even know where Hobey Baker came from,” said Jim Hayes, 57, a Concord native and director of the New Hampshire Legends of Hockey, the state’s Hall of Fame.

The City’s Sport
Pond hockey at traditionally blueblood St. Paul’s is only part of the Concord story. The sport here has strong blue-collar roots, too, and has produced Olympians as well as numerous college stars and pros, including one N.H.L. veteran, Kent Carlson, an enforcer who played mainly with the Canadiens in the mid-1980s.

“The competitiveness and the drive to succeed in Concord was just amazing,” said Lee Blossom, 51, who attended St. Paul’s before leading Concord High to the state title in 1977, scoring every goal in the semifinal, a 5-2 victory against Manchester Memorial. “Our era had a tremendous group of athletes and hockey was the sport of choice for many of them. That equation created a real hockey hotbed.”

Blossom went on to captain Boston College and play in the International Hockey League. He said the season in Concord ran six months, from November to April.

“When you grow up in a culture like that, it’s easy to hone your skills,” he said. “Hockey was a way of life.”

In many ways, the hockey culture reflects a strong appetite here for sports in general. For a small city with a sometimes inhospitable climate, Concord has left an unusually well-defined footprint in arenas and stadiums around the world.

In addition to its hockey stars, who include the 1998 Olympic gold medalist Tara Mounsey, Concord has produced Matt Bonner of the San Antonio Spurs; Red Rolfe, an All-Star third baseman and table setter for Lou Gehrig on Yankee teams of the 1930s; Bob Tewksbury, whose pinpoint control earned him a 13-year major league career; Joe Lefebvre, who homered in his first two games as a Yankees rookie in 1980; and Brian Sabean, the general manager and architect of the World Series-champion San Francisco Giants.

And yet no sport has captured the city’s imagination quite like hockey.

“It’s one of those places where you go to the park and the pond will be plowed and people will be playing hockey on it,” said Bonner, who stands 6 feet 10 inches and said he stopped playing hockey when he was 12 and could no longer find size 13 skates to rent at the skate shack.

Shinny Town
Teams playing pond hockey, or shinny, began appearing in Concord 100 years ago. The famed Sacred Heart squad, formed in 1929, played on an outdoor rink alongside the church. The Sacre Coeur, as the team from the then largely French-Canadian parish was known, was made up of local players and St. Paul’s teachers, said Tom Champagne, 81, who played at Concord High and worked at St. Paul’s for 35 years.

So formidable was Sacred Heart that the United States Olympic team, on its way to the 1952 Games in Olso, stopped by in Concord for a game.

“The Sacred Heart group was up, 5-3, after two periods but ended up losing, 8-6,” said Hayes, who still skates weekly and will play for the White Park Hockey Club in the tournament. Champagne, one of five surviving members of that Sacred Heart team, said, “As far as I’m concerned, when I was still playing for Sacred Heart, Concord had the top team for hockey next to the Berlin Maroons,” a reference to a traditional power from the state’s northern reaches. He added, “Concord was a real good hockey town.”

Ensuring that Concord remains just that is one of the goals of the 1883 Black Ice tournament, in which seven-person teams, in three divisions for men and one for women, will play four against four on six rinks.

“It’s shinny hockey,” said Tom Painchaud, 55, a Concord native and St. Paul’s graduate, “like we used to play when we had nothing else to do on a Saturday afternoon.”

The tournament was the result of a brainstorming session between Brown and David Gill, the city’s recreation director. The City Council directed Gill to find ways to help offset budget shortfalls, and he reached out to Brown, a board member of the Concord Boys & Girls Club

“This is not necessarily about hockey; it’s about a community,” Brown said. “It’s a great way to showcase a great facility. Not every town has a park like White Park."

Gill said the tournament, through its business partnerships, has already raised enough money to revive a skating area at Rollins Park in the city’s South End. “We haven’t had skating there in two or three decades,” he said.

Moving Indoors
Hockey in Concord moved indoors with the dedication of the Everett Arena on Dec. 7, 1965. The arena was named for Douglas N. Everett, a member of two Olympic teams who was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in 1974.

“The interest in hockey, when they built the Everett Arena, just exploded,” said Blossom.

The arena ushered a new era in Concord hockey lore. Champagne’s son, also named Tom, recalls the visceral thrill of attending amateur games there, starting with the Concord Shamrocks, alongside his father.

“In the days before Plexiglas, it was wire mesh, and you could smell these guys,” said Champagne, a Concord High player and current Legends president. “You’d get sprayed with the shavings. You could see the blood. You’d be right there. That was before we were watching the Bruins. That was the place to be for a game on Saturday night.”

Sabean, 54, who never played hockey but whose brothers did, said the opening of Everett and the availability of Bruins games on television for the first time revived the sport from a down period.

“That place was going 24 hours a day almost, to accommodate all the teams,” he said of the arena. “They had youth teams, the high schools, travel teams, games, practices, what have you.”

Over the years, the city was also home to the Coachmen (1966-68), the Eastern Olympics (1967-74), the Tri-City Coachmen (1974-75) and the Budmen (1975-92). Leagues came and went, among them the Granite State League, the Can-Am League and the New England Hockey League.

“I watched them all,” the elder Champagne said. “That was good hockey. It was a different era, but a great era.”

For the younger Champagne, 52 and with three sons, the 1883 Black Ice tournament is a reminder of how things used to be and an example of how different the game is for today’s generation.

“What’s unique for guys my age is that I spent just as much if not more time outside playing hockey,” said Champagne, who will suit up for the Turkey Pond Flyers. “Nowadays, even my kids, it’s pretty limited how much time they go out. They don’t know what the nuances of the ice are like. You’ve got to learn to skate around the cracks, and how the puck’s going to bounce. You have to shovel the ice off. If you miss the net, someone has to go get the puck.

“It was just shinny pick-up. But that’s where you learned to be creative, where you learned the etiquette of the game, keeping your stick down, being a competitor. I think the kids miss that today, because it’s all about systems, and it’s all about drills at practices.”

Which, ultimately, may be the best reason for a pond hockey tournament, though certainly not the only one.

“There’s nothing quite like skating outdoors,” Matthews of St. Paul’s said, “no matter what the weather: whether it’s freezing cold or one of those beautiful cool days when the sun is shining, one of those magical days.”

FINIS

Joe Desena wants to break you

A recent email reminded me of this fun piece on Vermont's "Death Race," held every June. Yes, the "race" itself is a bit contrived, but the pain and suffering (and mental anguish) is the real deal. I originally wrote the piece for The Boston Globe. The published version can be found here.

Running them into the ground
Vermont’s ‘Death Race’ is a brutal test of the body and the mind

PITTSFIELD, Vt. – A distressed Joe Desena stands under a bright June sun soaking wet, a combination of sweat and a big dose of slimy Vermont mud. He has already crawled through a half-dozen sections of barbed-wire-laden trenches, hacked a thick tree stump out of the ground, run a mile in a slick river bed, split 20 logs into quarters, and hiked up one of the steep hillsides lining Route 100.

And it’s only 10 a.m.

On Desena’s aching back is a tool pack, with the aforementioned stump strapped to it. Slung over his shoulder is a bike frame. In his trembling hands, he’s holding a gnarled piece of paper with 10 names scribbled on it. Desena stares at the names - ostensibly the first 10 presidents of the United States - but he can’t decipher his handwriting.

“Martin?” he says to a Death Race official. “There’s no president named Martin, is there?”

Martin van Buren shouldn’t feel slighted. Clearly, the Death Race, Desena’s creation, is taking a toll on its maker. He’s not the only one. There were 49 lunatic souls who started the race at 4 a.m. Twenty-one hours later, the last of 18 finishers straggled across the finish line. Thirty-one quit. By Death Race standards, that simply means the event was too easy.

“Our goal is to have at least one person finish,” says Dave Darby of Bedford, Mass., a veteran adventure racer and mastermind behind many of the “special tasks” that make up the Death Race. “Then everyone knows they could have finished, that it was possible. If no one finishes, then we screwed up.”

Desena’s Death Race is a brutal combination of the IronMan triathlon, ESPN’s Outdoor Games, and network reality shows like “Survivor” and “The Amazing Race.” Last year’s co-winner, Chris Mitchell, a 41-year-old software engineer from Boston, is on hand to help out, but had no interest in defending his title.

“I looked at a few pictures of myself after last year’s race, and all these memories came rushing back,” says Mitchell. “I looked like hell, covered with chigger bites, one eye swollen shut.”

Mitchell’s co-winner, Stever Bartlett, a Middlebury College ski coach, is nowhere nearby. “He won’t come back to this town,” says Desena, grinning. “He’s got bad memories of Pittsfield.”

Desena hadn’t originally planned on competing in his own event. But last summer, during the second running of the Death Race, he was confronted by several irate competitors who accused him of “putting them through 24 hours of hell.”

“So I had to see for myself if I could do it.”

Looking for adventure
The Death Race is one of many edgy competitions offered by Desena’s Peak Adventures. Upcoming events include the 666 Mountain Bike Race Saturday (with a “King of the Hill” competition the next day), the Funeral Run (featuring 50-mile, 100-mile, and 200-mile ultra-endurance options) in late October, and a Snowshoe Marathon in March. None fit the description of “normal” competition.

Peak Adventures grew out of Desena’s belief that society has become soft. A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., who was bitten by the adventure racing bug a decade ago, Desena jumped into his new hobby with the same zeal that made him a successful Wall Street broker.

“For thousands of years, we’ve been creatures that have dealt with this kind of adversity,” says Desena. “It’s only in the past hundred years that we’ve become couch potatoes.”

Desena, 41, has competed in more than 40 adventure races around the globe. He also has the financial wherewithal, thanks to the success and sale of his Burlington Capital Markets firm, to create an adventure racing and training destination in Pittsfield. Situated on Route 100, Vermont’s “ski highway,” the town has gone through several alterations in the past half-century. Established in 1781, Pittsfield was primarily a farming community 50 years ago before Killington changed the landscape. Many farm owners, looking to cash in on the ski craze, opened inns. But when Killington and Pico built on-site lodging, Pittsfield fell on hard times.

In 2002, Courtney and Joe Desena were sharing a loft in New York City when they discovered Pittsfield’s Riverside Farm. The couple bought the dilapidated horse farm, renovated it, and held their wedding there in 2003. Today, the Riverside Farm, in addition to being a home to the Desenas and their three children, hosts a number of exclusive weddings each year. The property, with three rebuilt barns, can also accommodate a variety of special events, from corporate retreats to weekend getaways. Over the past few years, the Desenas have expanded their presence in Pittsfield. They now own roughly 400 acres in the 20-square-mile hamlet, including the Original General Store and a Bikram yoga studio. They also helped salvage the nearby Amee Farm. The Amee property, owned primarily by Michael Halovatch, an adventure racing/Wall Street colleague of Desena, is home to an eco-friendly inn, a working farm, and a huge, rough-hewn roadside barn. The barn headquarters Peak Adventures, which hosts races and training camps.

“Joe moved up here to retire, to slow down, but he’s not wired that way,” says his wife with a laugh.

The juxtaposition between high-end weddings and weekend retreats and the Peak Adventures events often proves hilarious. Last year, Courtney intercepted several Death Race competitors who came stumbling out of the woods, like “Dawn of the Dead” zombies, before they reached a Riverside wedding reception. This year, the early- morning tranquility of a yoga retreat at the Amee Farm Inn was broken by a cacophony of axes splitting wood, as Death Race competitors quartered logs in the inn’s driveway.

Physical, mental challenge
The Death Race festivities actually start the day before, at 10 p.m., when organizers host a race meeting atop “Joe’s Hill” behind Riverside Farm. Racers hike up the hill with their bikes, but return only with their frames, leaving the wheels and chains behind. Nervous chatter fills the cool, bug-infested air.

“I’ve done a lot of races, and you get to the point where you want to keep challenging yourself,” says Greg Hartwell, 24-year-old accountant from Andover, Mass. “This seemed like a great opportunity.”

Hartwell cajoled his 30-year-old brother, Thomas Hartwell of Wakefield, into joining him. “He told me it was an arts and crafts weekend with the boys,” says Thomas.

The race starts at 4 in the morning, well before the first rays of sunlight squeeze into this narrow valley. Race director Andy Weinberg, hoisting a sawed-off stump overhead, informs racers they must find their own in a field across the street (identified by their race bib), hack it out of the ground, and carry it with them the entire day. “You guys are a bunch of nut jobs who want to torture yourselves in Pittsfield,” he says, half-taunting, half-encouraging. “The next 24 hours will be the toughest you’ve ever experienced.”

Competitors crawl through a muddy trench, under barbed wire, to and from the stump field. Then they pick up their bike frames and, after snaking through two more barbed-wire sections, jog a mile upstream in the Tweed River. Everyone falls. Repeatedly.

“Running in the river is like a woman going into labor,” says Desena. “You know it’s going to hurt.”

After the river run, racers lug their bikes, stumps, and tools to the wood-chopping station, split 20 logs, then hike a mile uphill to the list of presidents’ names, before returning to the Amee Farm. The next test is a Lego challenge. Racers have to assemble a collection of Legos, using only their memory or notes, to replicate a model provided to them earlier. After six hours, cracks begin to show.

“There are physical challenges in this race, but we’re trying to break them mentally,” says Darby.

Part of the anguish is that racers never know when the race ends. Competitors aren’t given a race itinerary; they’re simply told to go from one task to the next. From the Lego station, racers head back to the Tweed River, and slog a mile south. At the next station, they hustle to the Riverside Farm, find a raw egg, return to the river, create a fire from scratch, boil water, and eat the egg. Only then can they retrieve their bike wheels.

After rolling their bikes to a small pond at Riverside Farm, racers watch as a volunteer tosses their bike chain into the frigid waters. The racers must dive in, find the chain, and reassemble their bikes. After a brief 300-yard pedal, they exchange the bike for a 40-pound bucket of rocks, which they must drag 1,000 feet straight up Joe’s Hill through “the ravine.” Hiking the ravine, says Desena, is “like trying to ski uphill with banana peels on both feet.” At the top of the hill, racers get instructions to hike back down the hill, fill the bucket with water, and bring it back to the summit. Only then are they given the OK to head to the Amee Farm, and the finish line.

Striking a deal
Similar to 2008, the 2009 Death Race had co-winners. Richard Lee, a 27-year-old former British Royal Marine Commander who is hiking the Appalachian Trail to rehab a broken leg and shattered patella, builds a dominating lead early. But Tom Worthington, a 22-year-old freshly minted graduate of Norwich University and a native of West Falmouth, Mass., closes the gap during the last few events.

On a treacherous hillside, heading toward the finish line, Worthington catches Lee, who got lost and is clearly tiring. The two discuss options.

“I told him, ‘We can do this with dignity, and finish together, or we can race, if you want to race,’ “ says Lee. “I know how competitive I am, and I knew how competitive he was.”

Both decide discretion is the better part of valor, in part because the slippery slope is a serious accident waiting to happen, and in part because they’re both running on fumes. So the two, like Mitchell and Bartlett the year before, make a pact to cross the line together, a Marine from the United States and one from the United Kingdom. Their winning time is 11 hours 31 minutes.

A half-hour later, Desena is the fourth racer to finish. Though he has disqualified himself for getting assistance from his support crew with the presidential names and the bike chain, Desena is determined to complete the course.

“Another 12 hours and this would have been a great race,” he says.

Two of Worthington’s Norwich classmates, Chris Prybella of Pennsylvania and Zach Castonguay of Maine, cross the line nine hours after the winners, well after midnight. The two spent more than two hours at the pond looking for Prybella’s bike chain. But neither would quit.

“One volunteer told me to throw in the towel,” says Prybella. “I told him I’d throw him in before I threw in the towel.”

Finished by the end
Stretching out on his barn floor, trying to work out the knots in his back and legs an hour after finishing, Desena mulls a question: Is this his first and last Death Race?

“I think so,” he says. “This is a race very few people want to do multiple times.”

The Hartwell brothers are among those who fail to finish. Greg never found his bike chain at the Riverside pond (“Plus, my toes had turned green, and I draw the line at green toes.”) while Tom failed to make the time cut-off at the same station.

“I’m pretty disappointed I didn’t finish,” says Tom. “I had a lot more will than I gave myself credit for. On top of that, I had more than my brother. Which was nice.”

However, 18 racers proved equal to the 14 tasks.

“No one gets to the finish without earning it,” says Chris Mitchell, watching racers pick their way through the last, gnarly section of razor wire. “There’s no shortcut.”

FINIS

Taking it to the streets ...

The idea of kids playing, free of adult supervision, expectations or involvement, seems so simple, and yet it happens so rarely these days. US Youth Soccer hopes to turn that around, with a promising program entitled "Street Soccer." It's a brilliant concept, both elegant and daring in its simplicity. Just let the kids play. For the sake of this sport, and our kids, I hope it takes root, and takes off.

My story on a new "street soccer" program in North Andover, written for the Boston Globe, can be found here. The unabridged version is below.

Giving back the beautiful game
New "street soccer" program puts children in charge

NORTH ANDOVER – Almost two-dozen youngsters, ages 10 to 14, boys and girls, mull about Home Grown Lacrosse indoor field during a recent Thursday evening. Jeremy Dalmer, a licensed youth soccer coach, signs in each child, directs them to the field, drops off a bag of balls and a bag of pinnies, and then steps aside. He tells the kids that they’re on the clock, and on their own.

The children gather in small groups from their own community – primarily Lawrence and North Andover – and start pawing at the artificial turf with their cleats, or tapping a ball. Slowly, they start chatting with each other, form three teams, decide on rules (first team to score twice wins), and begin playing.

“My heart was in throat, when the clock first started,” said Dalmer. “I was just watching the kids, hoping they’d get it started. And they did.”

Dalmer’s trepidation was justified. Any new venture runs the risk of failure. And “street soccer” is certainly different: No adults are allowed to coach, referee, or even enter the playing area, except to deal with an injury. But this first session, judging from the reactions of parents, coaches, and the kids, was an unqualified success.

“I think it's so cool. We can just play, and no one is yelling at us,” said 12-year-old Mariah Sanchez of Lawrence, who came with her brother, Xavier, and several Lawrence teammates. “We get to meet new people. I already made a new friend.”

At its core, the mission of “street soccer” – the term the US Youth Soccer coined for these loosely organized pick-up games – is to return the sport to the kids. Sandlot, or “street,” soccer, after all, is how most of the world learns the sport. In this country, however, parents have taken soccer – generally considered a great outlet for wholesome recreation – and twisted it into a petri dish of adult expectations. For far too many children, the beauty has been squeezed out of the beautiful game.

“I see two fundamental approaches to coaching,” says Dalmer, a 32-year-old father of two. “One being the adult trying as best he can to shape the kids into his vision of the sport. And the other being accepting how the kids see a sport, on their own.”

Dalmer first learned of the street soccer program at a National Youth License Course sponsored by US Youth Soccer National in Kentucky in 2008. The idea struck a chord, he said, because that was all he ever knew during his childhood in Vermont.

“I always loved soccer, but my family was religious, and I was never allowed to play organized sports growing up,” he said. “So the only soccer I could play was just with my friends, in backyards.”

However, street soccer has been part of the US Youth Soccer curriculum for a decade, says Sam Snow, US Youth Soccer's coaching director. “It's not terribly new,” he said. “It's just growing slowing across the country.”

The program, said Snow, is being integrated at all levels of youth soccer, from beginners to Olympic development teams.

“The genesis was, fundamentally, about giving ownership of the game back to the players,” he said. “It was also to provide an environment so kids could experiment in how to play the game – ball skills, tricks, moves that they'd do in a game – without the results being on the line, and the anxiety on the part of the adults, coaches, and parents surrounding the field. They're anxious about the outcome, pressuring the kids to play it safe all the time. That was stifling the kids' development.”

The street soccer movement has a distinct “back to the future” feel, which makes sense, given soccer's meteoric rise in this country over the past 40 years. Essentially, soccer's popularity outstripped chances for youngsters to see the game played at a high level.

“I'm 55, and I grew up in Orlando,” said Snow. “When I was growing up, there were no examples at all. We were progressing in the dark. That was the case for most of the country. “There was a need, for a long time, for the environment to be very coach-centered. For a kid to learn how to make a push pass, the coach had to demonstrate it, because the kid otherwise was never going to see someone execute a push pass.”

Today, young players now have ample opportunity to watch top-flight competition.

“We can do this now because of our stage of growth as a soccer nation,” said Snow. “The kids have examples now of how to play the game. They can watch a lot of very good soccer on TV from all around the world.” Snow said he's surprised that street soccer hasn't taken off, but realizes the obstacles.

“It's growing slowly mostly due to the parents,” he said. “There's a sense of, ‘What am I paying for?’ They want things that are, in their eyes, more structured. They want the referees, the won-lost record, having their kids on a roster.”

Well-intentioned coaches can also be a roadblock. “Coaches say, ‘I have so little time with them. I don't want to give up that time,’” said Snow. “And we say, ‘You're actually going to be more productive this way, because you're going to open the door for the kids taking leadership, taking ownership, increasing their organizational skills, their communication, their group dynamics, their understanding of one another's capabilities.' You grow through all of that.”

“The coaches who are willing to step out on the edge of the cliff are the ones who, once they take that leap, and give it a reasonable amount of time, see that the kids will actually begin to improve faster.”

Snow doesn't have any empirical data to back up these claims, but said the program has a common sense foundation. “As a bunch of soccer guys, we just know it works. It's painfully obvious,” he said. “So we just haven't bothered (to collect data). But we probably should, to bring along skeptics.”

The parents at Dalmer's inaugural session didn't need any convincing.

“I love it,” said Janet Werry of North Andover. “Parents are too hands on today. We have to back off sometimes. It's good to let the kids organize things, and make decisions for themselves.”

North Andover’s Mark Kornachuk, watching his 10-year-old daughter Kaitlin, said: “It reminds me of when I was a kid, growing up (in Danvers), playing with my friends. We always played pick-up games, baseball, football. You just assumed everyone would show up at the field. The kids got together, they made the rules, and they lived by them. They ruled themselves.”

Dalmer’s goals for his street soccer sessions are simple: “Just to have the kids enjoy the play enough to return. And that's not even within my control.”

The two one-hour sessions at Home Grown Lacrosse will be held Thursdays through March, and he’s already added a session Tuesdays for U-10 players that combines 30 minutes of skills training followed by an hour of street soccer. Some spectators predicted the sessions would sell out.

“They're going to back to school, and they're going to tell their friends. This is going to be huge,” said Ray Mahoney, a longtime North Andover youth soccer coach. “Look at them – they’re all smiling, they're all laughing."

During a break in the action, Werry’s daughter, Morgan Fox, ran off the field for a drink. Asked if she was having fun, she flashed a bright smile.

“It's just so random,” said Morgan. “I'm just here to play.”

Then Morgan scooted back inside the netting, to the field. To play. Like a child.

FINIS

Queen of the hill ...

Marti Shea, to use one of my brother Sean's quaint colloquialisms, is a "device." The Manchester, NH, native isn't just going strong at 47, she's shattering long-held notions of what women can do past their 40th birthdays. Now based in Marblehead, Mass., Shea is a personal trainer and strength coach, when she's not riding her bike straight up hills. I profiled Shea recently for the Boston Globe. That story can be found here. Below is the unabridged version.

Queen of the Hill
Former runner Marti Shea finds her niche in cycling

There was no way Marti Shea was missing the Allen Clark Memorial Time Trial in Vermont last Sunday. The Marblehead cyclist held a razor thin 3-point lead in the BUMPS Challenge (Bike Up the Mountain Point Series), even though she had defeated Kristen Gohr, the second place rider, in four races this summer. The BUMPS scoring system, said Shea, worked unfairly against her. That ticked her off, which was bad news for Gohr. The last thing any racer wants to do is have Shea angry.

"It's crazy. I've beaten her by three minutes up Mount Washington, 2½ minutes up Equinox, and 2½ minutes up Ascutney," said Shea before the series' penultimate race at Mount Greylock in Massachusetts, when she actually trailed Gohr in the standings. "The three times we've met head-to-head, I've crushed her. How can you beat someone three out of three times and still lose to them? I don't get it."

So Shea took matters into her own hands, winning at Mount Greylock in September, and then dominating the Allen Clark race up Vermont's Appalachian Gap. To put an exclamation mark on that win, she set a new course record of 26:46, shattering the old record (set by Gohr, coincidentally) by 80 seconds.

"I felt great," said Shea.

And, oh yeah, she's 47. The feisty, 5-foot-4 blonde who talks as fast as she rides simply crackles with energy. And she has a remarkable gift for denying gravity. Last year, she won the inaugural BUMPS Challenge, earning the moniker Queen of the Mountain. This past summer, she won both bike races up the Northeast's highest peak, the Mount Washington Auto Road Bicycle Hillclimb in August, and Newton's Revenge in July. In between her Greylock and Allen Clark victories, she finished second in the Everest Challenge, which features more than 29,000 feet of climbing in two days of racing in California and Nevada.

"I'm bummed to say I took second place both days behind a 24-year-old pro rider," said Shea. "But I did give her a hard time on both days."

When it comes to competition, Shea is an undeniable force of nature. Want proof? Entering her second cycling stage race ever this past September, Shea convinced race organizers and USA Cycling officials to upgrade her license so she could race against the pro riders. She finished 11th overall, despite he fact that she had never raced a criterium, which was the final stage.

"It went out so freaking hard," said Shea of the crit. "I somehow managed to get on the end of it, for eight laps. All these girls are getting dropped all around me, and I'm telling myself, 'Don't give up, don't give up.'

"It wasn't the smoothest, but I finished with the leaders."

Shea has always been hyper-competitive, dating back to her days as a high school student at Manchester Memorial in New Hampshire. "Marti Shea? I played soccer against her," says MaryEllen Stergiou, who graduated from Manchester Central. "She was a beast."

Shea laughs when she hears Stergiou's comment. She was a five-sport athlete at Memorial – soccer and cross-country in the fall, basketball in the winter, and track and softball in the spring – until the New Hampshire Interscholastic Athletic Association adopted a one sport/one season rule. Shea's competitive gene, she said, comes from her father, William "Willy" Shea, who was a ball-hawking guard for St. Joseph's (now Trinity High) basketball team in Manchester.

"Willy was an outstanding guard," said William Pare, who now lives in Maryland. "The basketball coach at St. Joe's at the time was Doddie Healy, and when asked what an aspiring kid should do to learn how to play basketball, he'd simply say 'Watch Willy Shea.' Which was amazing, since Willy was very short for a guard."

At 5-foot-4, Shea's daughter is also small in stature, but with a big engine. A gifted all-around athlete, she concentrated on track "because I thought I'd get further with that." She was right, parlaying her high school accomplishments into an athletic scholarship at Boston University, where she ran the 3K, 5K and 10K, indoors and out, as well as cross-country. After earning her bachelor's degree in K-12 physical education, and a master's in education, Shea continued running as a sponsored athlete for Nike, while starting her own personal-training business, Select Fitness in Marblehead. She also participated in the 1988 Olympic trials, an eye-opening experience.

"There was really a lot of drug use, a lot of people making big teams doing stuff. And I didn't want to go down that route," said Shea. "I felt like I had reached my potential naturally, I wasn't going t get much faster. I was a high 32:50 10K runner. Back then, the Olympic time was about a 30:30. If I could have knock off another minute, that would have been phenomenal. Anything under 32 was exceptional. But that wasn't going to happen, not without doing something I didn't want to do."

Instead, Shea turned her focus to the marathon trails in 1992, but foot and knee problems became increasingly more chronic. "My dad told me a long time ago, you only have so many races in the tank. You can only go to the well so many times, and then you don't want to do it anymore," she said. "I remember him saying, 'You're going to grow up and you'll know when it's time to quit.' I felt like that in running. I remember doing a track workout, and thinking, I don't want to do this. Something just snapped."

So Shea hung up her running shoes, and got on with her life. "In all honesty, I felt like I needed a break from competing," she said. "I had been competing since I was 15. I just needed some time. I still loved running, but I was tired of having to push myself so hard. I missed sports. I wasn't doing anything else when I was running. So when I stopped, I took up windsurfing, snowboarding, mountain biking. I had a blast doing a bunch of other stuff."

It proved to be a real transitional period in Shea's life. She got divorced, entered into a new long-term relationship, and started putting more energy into her business. However, working as a personal trainer brought She into constant contact with athletes, and one started talking up the Mount Washington bike races. At the age of 44, with an arthritic right knee that prevented her from running, even for fun, Shea thought cycling was a good fit. Plus, she felt a spark again.

"Part of the reason I did it was to see, 'What can I do? Am I never going to be a great athlete anymore? Is this it? Is it over? I wanted to wee if I could still do it, still perform at a high level," she said. "It was really for fun. I love challenges. That's why Mount Washington became a goal. I wanted to show that I was still fit, that that I could still do it."

Sponsored by her husband Joe Tonon's Destination Cycling business, Shea entered the Mount Washington race in 2006, and came in third, with a time of 1:11:40, only three minutes off the winning mark. Last year, she finished second, and this year she won the women's category outright.

"I think I'm breaking some boundaries here. I feel like I'm really making a statement for older women, that it is possible for us to do these things," she said. "It's great. I'm totally intrigued by it, because I'm surprising myself. I believe in my heart that I can compete against these younger girls, but it's one thing to say it, an it's another thing to prove it."

Once again, as she did in high school and college, Shea is letting her results do the talking. She won the very first stage race she ever entered – the Killington Stage Race in Vermont last May – and now has two BUMPS titles on her resume. With the help of sponsors such as Cervelo bicycles, Laser helmets and Fit Werx of Peabody, Shea plans to take her talents to the road-racing arena next year, and will compete in several major stage races, including the Tour of the Gila in New Mexico and Cascade Cycling Classic in Oregon.

"To me, it's like a second chance. This is the twilight of my career," she said. "I have no idea how long I can compete at this level. I'm definitely making a commitment for two years. If I still have the ability to compete against young girls who are 25, 26, I'll keep going. I'll keep going as long as I can."

Her experience at the Everest Challenge, where she finished second to 24-year-old Kathryn Donovan, was both a wake-up call, and an inspiration. "She is the real deal," said Shea. "She came in 10th overall in the Gila and Cascade, so that tells me the work I have cut out for myself to raise the performance bar over the next eight months."

Given her track record, it wouldn't be wise to bet against Marti Shea. "I'm a wicked tough competitor. I love to win, I hate to lose," she said. "But I also love the process of getting to that goal as much as attaining that goal."

FINIS

Drop the puck!

I always look forward to Hockey East's Media Day, because its the milepost that indicates that the college hockey season is right around the corner. This year, I covered the festivities for ESPNBoston.com. The main feature can be found here, with the accompanying Notebook posted here. Below, you can find both. Full props to Steven King of Icon SMI for this great shot of Boston College netminder John Muse.

Defending champs tabbed as nation's No. 1
BC faces tall task of repeating, gunning for third crown in four years

Make no mistake. Boston College hockey coach Jerry York knows exactly the odds he's up against this season as his Eagles (29-10-3 overall last year; 16-8-3 Hockey East) look to defend the national crown they won last spring. Minnesota (2002-03) and Denver (2004-05) were each able to repeat earlier this decade, but an East Coast squad hasn't won back-to-back championships since Boston University turned the trick in1971 and 1972.

That hasn't discouraged the pundits, who pegged York's Eagles as the overwhelming preseason favorite in the USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine Men's College Hockey Poll. BC garnered 28 of 34 first place votes and 504 points, easily outdistancing North Dakota (4 first-place votes, 462 points). Hockey East coaches agreed, giving the Eagles the top spot with a virtual unanimous vote (York cannot vote for BC).

"That's the best hockey team I've seen in a long, long time," said Northeastern coach Greg Cronin. "They could get 40 wins."

But for York, the memory of a lackluster 2008-09 season (18-14-5, no NCAA bid) on the heals of BC's 2008 championship is still fresh. The same thing happened to York's Eagles after their 2001 title run, when they responded with an 18-18-2 mark, and again missed the NCAA cut.

On Wednesday, though, York looked cool, calm and composed during the Hockey East Media Day at TD Bank Garden in Boston. The No. 1 ranking, he said, is simply "an indication that we have a lot of good players."

Like their cross-town rivals Boston University, the BC Eagles don't rebuild as much as they re-load. The leadership void created by the loss of senior captains Matt Price, Ben Smith and Matt Lombardi is expected to be filled capably by seniors Joe Whitney and Brian Gibbons, and junior Tommy Cross. Add senior goaltender John Muse, who already lists two national championships (2008 and 2010) on his glittering collegiate resume, and the Eagles have the players that can crack the whip.

"Obviously, we'll get everybody's best game, every night," said Muse. "I think our guys have prepared this summer. At the end of the day, it will all come down to how hard we work, and how much fun we'll have."

As for coming into each game with a bull's-eye, Muse replied: "When you come to Boston College, there's the expectation to win every year. So I don't think we'll get worn down by expectations."

York concurred, saying that his players understand that Boston College is never a date that opponents look past. Though the coach prefers to nurture his team during the course of the season, allowing younger players time to develop and mature, he knows the No. 1 ranking brings added pressure from the first drop of the puck this year.

"We're accustomed to that," said York. "We also have high expectations. Now it's time to tee it up."

York can afford to be eager. Cross, the highly regarded blueliner (a Boston Bruin draft pick), is finally healthy, and York expects the junior to have a breakout season. Cross heads a young defensive corps that made huge strides last year (Brian Dumolin led Hockey East with an astounding plus-40 rating as a freshman). Muse and goaltending partner Parker Milner shore up the goal. And up front, the Eagles return their top three scorers, and seven of their top nine, from a team that outshot opponents 33 to 26½ per game, and outscored them 171 to 104, last season. Leading that Magnificent Seven are junior Cam Atkinson (53 points), and senior captains Gibbons (50), and Whitney (45).

And more reinforcements are on the way. York's incoming class, with three NHL draft picks, including first-rounder Kevin Hayes (Chicago), is again rock solid, despite the loss of NHL draft pick Cody Ferriero (San Jose) to Northeastern. Ferriero won't have to wait long to get a close look at the team he spurned, as the Eagles and Huskies clash at Northeastern in the season opener on Saturday, Oct. 9. NU's Cronin knows his Huskies will have their hands full.

"BC has so much returning talent," said Cronin. "So much firepower."

York, however, isn’t making predictions. He expects another season-long battle in Hockey East play, pinpointing Maine (ranked No. 2 in the coaches poll), New Hampshire, Boston University and Merrimack as teams he's particularly concerned with. Asked to handicap his team's chances of repeating as NCAA champs, York opted to hold his hand close to the vest. "That's a question that has to be answered in late April," said the coach who has the second most wins (850) in college hockey history.

But York made the statement with the confident air of a man who expects to be there when the final cards are dealt.

NOTEBOOK
BOSTON - While Boston College is looking to defend its national title, here's a look at Hockey East's other Boston-area schools following media day on Wednesday:

Boston University
Legendary BU bench boss Jack Parker has seen plenty of surprises in his 37 seasons at the helm of the Terrier program, but few could have prepared the 65-year-old for the shock he got late last July. Parker went into the hospital to have a stent implant, but left after having quadruple bypass surgery on his heart.

"I feel fine," said Parker on Wednesday. "I was all blocked up. They say I'll have more energy, now that everything's flowing again."

Which leaves the Terrier coach, who has more wins (834) at a single institution than any other hockey coach in NCA history, itching to get back on the ice. He also has a team that he's excited about, despite losing five of last year's top six scorers (only 31-point man Chris Connelly returns).

"We have 17 freshmen and sophomores on the roster, so we're very, very young," said Parker. "It's quite a turnaround from the championship season of two years ago." This coming season, the Terriers must make due without the bruising presence of Eric Gryba (the school's all-time penalty minute record holder), slick puck-moving defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk (who left a year early to pursue his pro career with the Colorado Avalanche), and feisty forward Nick Bonino. The loss of Bonino, a face-off specialist who was critical to BU's success when he was healthy, may loom largest, but Parker wants to make certain his gifted-but-young blueliners continue to mature.

"Our biggest concern will be on defense," he said. "The only guy (on defense) back from the championship team is David Warsofsky, but he's a hell of a player."

A talented junior goaltender tandem of Kieran Millan and Grant Rollheiser return from last year's 18-17-3 squad as well. Also keep an eye on the freshmen forwards, led by NHL draft picks Charlie Coyle (San Jose) and Yasin Cisse (Atlanta). "It'll be interesting. I think it's a terrific (incoming) class," said Parker. "We expect two or three forwards to be very important right out of the gate. And from what we've seen in practice, we can expect a lot of them."

Merrimack College
The Warriors have one of the league's most gifted offensive threats in sophomore Stephane Da Costa, who ran away with the league's Rookie of the Year honors last season after tallying 45 points on 16 goals and 29 assists. However, like BC, Merrimack coach Mark Dennehy (an Eagle alum) must prevent his charges from being simply happy with getting to the Hockey East playoffs. "We took huge steps, but we didn't achieve a lot of our goals," said Dennehy. "Complacency won't be part of our vocabulary."

To make inroads, and possibly gain home-ice advantage in the Hockey East playoffs, the Warriors must improve on last season's woeful 4-16-1 road record. "What it comes down to is confidence," he said. "We know we're good enough. Now we have to take that on the road."

A key could well be the play of junior goalie Joe Cannata. "I think Joe Cannata is floating under everybody's radar," said Dennehy. "I think he's one of the best goalies in the league. And when the lights are shining brightest, he's at his best."

Northeastern
Woe to any Husky who thinks coach Greg Cronin won't be breathing fire this season. The Huntington Hounds missed the Hockey East playoffs last year on the last game of the season, a short 12 months after one of the program's most successful campaigns of recent vintage.

Sophomore netminder Chris Rawlings will have another year under his belt, and if he can mirror the same improvements he showed last season, NU will be set in goal. The incoming freshmen class, which includes forward Cody Ferriero, who spurned Boston College, looks promising as well, with a quartet of towering defensemen, Jake Hoeffler (6-foot-5, 210), Jamie Oleksiak (6-foot-7, 240), Luke Eibler (6-foot-2, 180), and Anthony Bitetto (6-foot-2, 200).

"Those guys are going to be critical," said Cronin. "I'm tired of being small. We've got to make sure we're defending our net."

Up front, Cronin expects typical tenacious Northeastern hockey from his upperclassmen forwards, especially captain Tyler McNeely and fellow senior Wade MacLeod, as well as talented sophomore Steve Quailer, who was granted a medical red shirt after a season-ending injury last fall.

UMass-Lowell
So, who's left to play defense for the River Hawks? UMass-Lowell coach Blaise MacDonald acknowledges that the conventional wisdom is to build from the net out, but the reality is that he lost his top two goaltenders and four top defensemen from last year's 19-16-4 squad. Perhaps UML's best defense will be a strong offense.

"I think we can roll out 12 really good forwards," said Riverhawk coach Blaise MacDonald. "Our forwards are faster and better than last year."

MacDonald said he'll rely heavily on the leadership of his four captains, and especially senior center Scott Campbell.

UMass-Amherst
Coach Donald "Toot" Cahoon lost his two most potent offensive players from last year's squad when James Marcou and Casey Wellman turned pro. "We've got 13 freshmen," said Cahoon. "We're the youngest team in college hockey. We're the great unknown."

"But I love the character of our kids,' he said. "The joy of this is that it's fresh. I'll have their attention."

FINIS

Thirty miles to glory

An epic accomplishment by my new friend, Davis Lee, who succeeded in his quest to conquer the English Channel. My account in last week's Boston Globe can be found here. Below is the unabridged version, accompanied by a stunning photo from Lisa Poole.

Thirty miles to glory

So, Davis Lee, you've finished your long-anticipated solo swim across the English Channel. What's next? According to the 35-year-old nuclear physicist from Newburyport, that's a question that requires reflection.

"I'm not sure if I've exorcised whatever demons made me want to do it, but perhaps it's all still a little too surreal," said Lee after his 12-hour, 41-minute swim from Dover, England, to Calais, France, last week. "I think one needs to stand on the cliffs of Dover and look into the distance, the cold, gray, rough water, with tons of shipping traffic, to even start to comprehend the absurdity of the task."

Lee was joined in England by his two-year-son Oliver, and his wife, Katharine, who is expecting the couple's second child in November, as well as his coach, Andrew Soracco, and his brother, Timothy Lee. Having a solid support crew was a comfort, though it didn't offset all the obstacles thrown at Lee. His anticipated swim date was delayed for two days. When he finally got the green light, it came at 1 a.m. Lee learned his start time six hours earlier, so he'd been awake for 16 hours by the time he stepped into the murky waters off Shakespeare Beach.

And he was already cold. The swashbuckling crew aboard his pilot boat, the Sea Satin, were below deck "guzzling tea and chain-smoking," said Lee. So the first-time channel swimmer had to choose between staying above deck, and getting chilled, or keeping warm below deck and risk nausea from the secondhand smoke. With high humidity, the salt air felt as cold as the water, he said, and swimming at night was "really, really freaky."

"The first hour was very calm, the next eight were very rough," Lee said. Worse, the tide changed just a few miles off the coast of France, turning the channel into "a washing machine."

"There were times, both early on and later on in the swim, when it was just dark, figuratively and literally," said Lee. "I wasn't going to allow myself to give up before I got to France, but if they pulled me from the water, I don't think I would have minded."

Even stepping onto French soil, after swimming 31.6 statute miles, was a bit anticlimactic. "I wish I could say it was amazing, with fireworks going off," said Lee after his first day back at Axcelis Technologies in Beverly. "But I was just spent. I was cold. I'd been awake for more than 30 hours. There was nothing left there to feel."

"And once you get out (on the French coast), you have to swim back to the boat to go back to England. That was probably the longest 300 yards of my life."

Reunited with his family in Dover, Lee grabbed a pint at The White Horse, a pub named after the channel's whitecaps that are said to resemble horses. The walls and ceilings are littered with signatures of successful channel swimmers.

"One of my favorites, because I could relate, had the name, time, date, and just said 'It was bloody horrible,'" said Lee. Lee took a similar tact, finding a spot on a ceiling beam above the bar, and signing his name, date, time, and adding, simply, "It was cold."

This week, Lee said he finally feels normal again. "I've forgotten a lot of the pain. The saltwater has been rinsed from my mouth. If you gargle saltwater for 13 hours, your mouth is destroyed."

Still, the question remains: What's the next challenge? Prior to his English Channel adventure, Lee admitted he was eyeing the North Channel between Ireland and Scotland, a stretch of open water that makes the English Channel look like child's play due to the frigid temperatures.

"It's equally long, but about 10 degrees colder. There are only eight or nine people who have done it," said Lee. "It's significantly more complicated. They have a little web site, that says, 'If you haven't completed an English Channel swim, we wouldn't even consider taking you on this. Don't even bother calling.' That's pretty hard-core."

However, after his channel crossing, Lee acknowledged he's gained a new perspective of the effort required, and the potential hardships. "We've got a baby coming," Lee said. "I'm going to see how that goes before planning any big, crazy swims."

Plus, the prospect of even colder waters would force Lee to recalibrate his training regimen. "I'd probably have to train in Maine all summer," he said, laughing. "And pack on another 40 pounds of fat."

FINIS