Dillon reflects on her hockey path after growing women’s hockey program
Head coach Diane Dillon has been with the Oswego State women’s hockey team for 11 seasons. Dillon grew up around hockey and developed a passion for the sport at a very young age.
According to Dillon, her families life revolved around hockey. Her father coached for a few teams and Dillon recalls helping out on the ice as a kid.
“We didn’t go on family vacations, we went to hockey games,” Dillon said.
When it came to actually being able to play, Dillon did not have very many opportunities to start out as a female hockey player in western New York.
“I’m probably one of the first generations that got to take advantage of Title IX,” Dillon said. In other words when I was in junior high and in high school I had the opportunity to play sports I wasn’t allowed to play with the boys, but there was no organized girls hockey back then.”
Dillon’s dad decided to take initiative and put an ad in the paper calling any girl that was interested in playing girls’ hockey.
“My father is actually responsible for girls hockey in Western New York.” Dillon said.
The girls’ team her father formed started to practice once a week on both indoor and outdoor rinks. Since the team was just starting out, they did not really have much equipment so most of the girls skated in figure skates while wearing football jerseys as uniforms.
Dillon got her first taste of collegiate coaching after taking the assistant coach job at her alma-mater, Cornell University, in 2001.
“I’m a coach’s kid so I think any coach’s kid had the approach where you think about the game a little differently,” Dillon said.
While Dillon was coaching at Cornell, the opportunity to start up a women’s hockey program at Oswego State arose. The Marano Campus Center was opening up the new ice rink and Oswego State President Deborah Stanley wanted both a women’s team and a men’s team on the blue line to break in the rink.
Dillon’s older brother played for the Lakers while she was growing up so she was already familiar with the Oswego atmosphere.
“I was a little kid coming to watch his games in Romney,” Dillon said. “My big brother was everything so I use to come to Oswego with my parents.”
Dillon applied for the job and in the spring of 2006, she was hired to return the Oswego State women’s ice hockey team to the ice.
According to Dillon, forming the original team was a task in itself. The recruitment season was nearing its end and a lot of women’s players had already committed to other schools.
Dillon formed an original team of girls that had a passion for hockey and were ready to become the first women’s ice hockey team for Oswego State.
According to Dillon, the team hit a few rough patches in the beginning. Being so new, the program was still trying to work out the kinks to be a successful team.
“We had a very interesting group when we started,” Dillon said. “These were the kids that set the foundation and they hold a very special place in my heart.”
Dillon said she has seen the program grow immensely since the beginning in 2006. She has worked harder to develop teams of players that could not only handle the puck, but could bring speed to the team as well.
This past season, Dillon had found just that with her freshman recruits. The chemistry between the players this past year has contributed to their success. Dillon is looking forward to bringing in the next freshman class in replacement of the powerhouse seniors that are graduating.
“We’re looking to even out the classes and optimally I’d like to bring in about five to seven kids in per year,” Dillon said. “We’re realizing that speed really works in this league and we’re going to be looking for some bigger and stronger players.”
Dillon hopes to see the program improve more and more every year and she is incredibly proud with how far the program has come since its start in 2006.
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It should be pointed out that the team Coach Dillon began to form in 2006 was not the first women’s hockey team here at Oswego. I asked Tim Nekritz to confirm my belief and this is his response –
A sharp observation (I haven’t read it yet), as always.
I can’t lay my hands on my notes this early, but I know it was a club then varsity sport in the early ’70s and reports say some version played into the ’80s, but not nearly at the level we have now.
Of course you ask a historian an answer, and you’re bound to get a story, or at least an excerpt … see below.
Go Lakers!
Tim
The experiences for women student-athletes began changing in the early 1970s, influenced by the passing of Title IX legislation in 1972 seeking equal opportunities for participation between men and women in education programs receiving federal funding. Initial reaction included a backlash among traditional men’s programs impacted by the blow to status quo, although as the years went on, greater acceptance followed.
Pat Russo remembers joining many fledgling women’s athletic programs. “I went out for the softball team,” Russo said. “Because I was left-handed, and the coach wanted a left-handed catcher to throw down to first base, I became the catcher. I was the only catcher on the team.” She joined the swim team even though she didn’t know how to swim. As a graduate student, Russo also played on what was then a club hockey team that became the original women’s varsity hockey team, which she would later coach. “For me, coming to college was an explosion of possibilities,” Russo said.[1]
For women especially, the athletics programs seemed less serious and regimented than they are now. Russo recalled practices running five days a week, but no practices on the weekends as is commonplace today. “We practiced in four lines in Laker, didn’t wear goggles” for the swim team, she said. “There were no women’s locker rooms. We had to change in the bathroom.” They did not have trainers, nor any weight training. Women’s teams traveled less than today. Swim season ran from October 1 to March, but practices would not take place while students went home over Christmas break. Nonetheless the coach at the time, Grace Mowatt (now Burritt), “was great,” Russo said, doing a lot with scarce resources. Russo remembered softball season running March and April, as she sometimes had to dash from one practice to another.[2]
The women’s hockey team struggled against powerful foes such as Clarkson, Colgate, Cornell, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, University of New Hampshire and University of Rochester. Losing by 20 goals was not unusual, Russo said. She admitted to knowing little about recruiting, so the team often relied upon walk-ons, some of whom had never even played hockey before.[3]
Bringing a high school hockey background and a lot of spunk to play goalie for some women’s games was Linda Cohn, who later gained worldwide fame covering sports as an ESPN anchor – blazing a trail for women in that arena. When she was inducted into the Oswego Athletic Hall of Fame in 2006, Cohn recalled being shelled by a Cornell team led by Diane Dillon … who would later come to the Oswego campus to lead a revived women’s hockey program.[4]
…
With the opening of the Campus Center, Laker women’s hockey joined the college’s intercollegiate offerings as its 24th sport. This was not your mother’s hockey team. When Pat Russo, now a professor of education at Oswego, coached the sport’s first varsity go-round in the early 1970s, she said, the team felt unwanted and resented with paltry institutional support and inconvenient ice time.
[1] Interview with Pat Russo, January 7, 2010.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Linda Cohn, Oswego Athletic Hall of Fame induction, November 11, 2006.