Endicott College’s club hockey program started with five or six individuals who played high school hockey inquiring about starting a team. Athletic Director Brian Wylie was in his beginning stages at Endicott as the Intramural and Club sports director when the club hockey program started in 2002. He began to research the American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) to put something together for the group of boys that enquired. The first year of the program, they petitioned to play in Division 2 with a small group of ex- high school players and a young lady who also played high school hockey.
“It was a rag tag first year, we had to play four games against ACHA opponents and then the next year we went full-fledged Division two,” said Wylie. At this time, the program was playing and practicing at Salem State’s arena with late night practices ending around midnight.
Headshot Taken By David Le
"Our goal when we started the club hockey program was to make a varsity team both men and women out of this. We knew that we wanted to build a rink to host Endicott Hockey. That second year of our club program, I asked the team if they wanted to take this as a joke or make it serious like a varsity team, their answer proved the path for where Endicott hockey is today,” Wylie said.
With the club program establishing recognition on both the men’s and women’s fronts after years of hard work and organization with off campus practices, there was finally a decision that a rink would be built on Endicott’s campus. Wylie, having laid down the foundation for the program, started the hiring process to bring in two coaches that could start and lead the birth of Endicott Hockey.
After various years of playing club hockey at Salem State University in 2014, Wylie hired RJ Tolan and Andrew McPhee to lead the club programs in their last season and start recruiting for the first year of varsity division three.
Both coaches had tons of experience before heading to Endicott. Tolan came from close by Wentworth Institute of Technology and McPhee came from Trinity College. “The main reason behind my decision to come to Endicott was that I really bought into the mission of the college. This school is up and coming in so many facets, and I knew that it would be easy to sell to prospective recruits,” said McPhee. Both coaches knew that it would be difficult to get possible recruits to buy into a brand new program, but with the beautiful campus and brand new arena, it made decisions easy to come by. “I was looking for guys who would fit into what Endicott was trying to do both academically and athletically. Recruiting and molding 30 young men at once is never an easy task but these guys made it easy for me as their coach to work with them,” Tolan said.
Headshot Taken By David Le
The Endicott Hockey varsity program began in the fall of 2015 with the arena’s grand opening attributed to one of the greatest hockey players in Bruin’s history, Ray Bourque. “Bourque is a North Shore legend who one day came on campus through the President and just walked around and met some of our students, staff and faculty,” Wylie said. “Immediately, he felt the connection to the campus and wanted to give back to this community with an arena.” The arena was dedicated to Bourque with a capacity crowd and many former and current Bruins in attendance. The season got underway in November, with the men’s team opening up play with a win against Suffolk University.
Both varsity teams had success in their first seasons, making it all the way to the conference championships and finishing as runners-up respectively. The men’s program consisted of all new players except three members who were on the club team the previous year. A team with 30-plus freshman made it all the way to the finals before being bested by Salve Regina University. The 2015 team had a few signature wins against nationally ranked Babson College, Nichols College and a strong showing in the league’s Eastern College Athletic Conference (ECAC).
The women lost in double overtime to Stevenson in the conference final in Maryland with all new members except a few original club team players. The $13 million rink brought friends and families from the North Shore community together to watch top division three hockey right off the bat. The men’s program brought sellout crowds on multiple occasions to Endicott’s campus, with a passionate fan base of students always there to support.
When asked where he envisioned the program five years down the line, McPhee said, “I want this program to be one of the top programs in the country within the next few years.”
“I truly believe this can happen, because Endicott is such a special place, from the admissions staff, the athletic department and most importantly the students,” he said.