In the eyes of a freshman, the players of the 1970-71 Mount Hermon hockey team had a quiet dignity and an intense sense of purpose.   Not that this is complete proof of that, but check out the team photo from the Gateway, above. There is not a real smile to be found, though Jim Sweeney and Bill Campbell appear to be trying.

As noted earlier, it was a PG dominated team, as was usually the case for Mount Hermon hockey teams back then. 

The best New England hockey players in the early 70s were mainly Irish and Italian kids from the Boston area.  (There were good players in Minnesota and Michigan back then but, other than Bob Hanft, they hardly ever came east for prep school.)

Boston high school hockey was a true proving ground and so most of the best players stayed with their high school teams through graduation and then either went straight to college or did a PG year.  Very few prep school teams back then could’ve beaten the best Boston (and Providence) high schools:  Catholic Memorial; Matignon; Arlington with the late Kevin Carr (who then PG’ed at Deerfield before Harvard);  Needham with Robbie Ftorek (who filled Boston Garden as a high school player); Warwick with Joe Cavanagh; Louis Belisle’s Mount St. Charles teams.   

The 1980 US Olympic Hockey Team was built of Boston and Minnesota hockey players who made their bones in high-school hockey, either public or Catholic. It wasn’t a team of preppies. 

All that has changed, from what I gather, with most promising players repeating 9th or 10th grade in private school, playing three or four years of prep school hockey, then two years of junior, then finally, for those who make it, college hockey, starting at age 21 or so. Public high schools have been mainly left in the dust.   

The Mount Hermon team was Boston dominated, and filled out with three guys from Western Massachusetts, two guys from Maine, a guy from New Hampshire, a guy from Minnesota, a guy from  Rhode Island.

(And many were Catholic. I mentioned earlier that in 1970-71 Mount Hermon still had compulsory Sunday chapel, which meant on Sunday mornings we Catholics boarded a Chapin & Sadler bus in Mount Hermon’s post office square, then rolled down through the fields and woods to Turner Falls, an old mill town in a gorge, where the Connecticut’s main channel and a mill canal always seemed to run high and swirling. We attended mass at Our Lady of Peace Church and later went to a variety store down the street to buy Hostess cakes and Sunday papers.  Some of the guys also got to know a fellow parishioner named Pamela Watusi.  

It wasn’t a hippie hockey team.  Chuck Carrigan and Bobby Hanft, roommates as well as linemates, were notable for having severe bowl haircuts, with hair flaring out from under their Johnson helmets and coming to a sudden, thick blunt end, like the Dutch Boy paint kid.  Memory tells me that they got those haircuts from a cute young woman who worked behind the counter in the Camp Hall Snack Bar.  Could be wrong.  Whatever, there were no true long-hairs on the team. That would come next year.

Here’s the lineup as I remember it (and probably not with full accuracy):

1st Line

Center:  Chuck Carrigan, a PG from West Roxbury who went on to play at Bowdoin

Wingers: Bob Hanft, a PG from Duluth and later played at Minnesota-Duluth; George Reynolds, a PG from Newton who later played at West Point

1st Defense

Jeff Prystupa from Feeding Hills and Mike Powers from West Springfield, both of whom were 2-year seniors and both of whom would later play at Wesleyan. 

(Jeff played a key role in my going to the school.  In the spring of 1970 I wanted to go to Williston but my parents wanted me to go to Mount Hermon. To persuade me, my dad took me up to Mount Hermon on a warm April day and we walked around campus. In the Forslund Gym stairwell we encountered Jeff Prystupa. He was generous with his time, thoughts and good cheer.  That conversation converted me.)

(My connection to Mike Powers, on the other hand, has to do with his dad owning a bar in West Springfield. It was a very popular joint, especially the night before Thanksgiving, as I can testify from personal experience. )

2nd Line (Positions are guesswork)

Center: Jake Aldred, a sophomore with amazing natural talent, from Brunswick, Maine

Wingers:  David Terrie, a junior from Hanover who, like Jake, had been the rare sophomore to make varsity, the year before, and who also would later play at Wesleyan; Jim Sweeney, a PG from Milton and I can’t remember where Jim might’ve played after Mount Hermon

2nd Defense

Dan Martignetti, a PG from Winchester (whose family owned a famous package-store chain in the Boston area; “Be a Liquor Picker at Martignetti’s”)—don’t remember where Dan went to college; Bill Campbell, a 1st year junior, originally from Providence I think, who  went to Brown but I don’t know if he played hockey or soccer or lax there (the next year he captained all 3 sports at Mount Hermon).   

3rd Line

Wendall Cummings, a 2nd year senior from Wakefield, played center; John Dignan, a PG from Medford, played one wing while James Creed, a 4-year senior from Rowley, played the other.   Sorry, can’t remember where these guys went to college.

Goalies

Starting Goalie:  Mark Dover, a 4-year senior from Bridgton, Maine

Backup Goalie: Jim Polhemus was a junior that year and the team's only "fac brat," with both of his parents working at the school. 

Again, I didn’t play on this team. I watched this team as a high-school freshman. When I was a college freshman at Amherst I did play against Chuck Carrigan when he was a senior at Bowdoin, George Reynolds when he was a senior at West Point, Jeff Prystupa and Mike Powers when they were seniors and Dave Terrie when he was a junior at Wesleyan. Not that any of those guys would remember that.