Former women's hockey coach sues Harvard

On TuesdayFormer women's hockey coach Katey Stone, who retired 13 months ago amid fierce complaints of emotional abuse from former players, filed a lawsuit against Harvard in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, alleging gender discrimination in the investigation that led to her departure. The lawsuit alleges that Stone was told she would be fired if she did not leave voluntarily. The anonymous Jane and John Doe defendants are accused of defamation, and the lawsuit seeks $5 million in damages.

To this point, my voice has not been heard, Stone said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon, where three former players also spoke in support: Kalley Armstrong 15, Nicole Corriero 05 and Jamie Hagerman Phinney 03. More than a year and a half ago, Harvard began a process that ultimately ended my career, Stone continued. This process of investigation, evaluation and scrutiny was rooted in gender bias. She said that as the controversy grew, following reports of The Boston Globe And The AthleticsHarvard officials urged her to keep quiet: Harvard advised me from the beginning to be a bystander while my decades of hard work, dedication, and success were attacked.

Stone accused the university of forcing her to resign over false allegations. Harvard remained silent and became complicit in the smear of their most loyal and decorated coach. The loss of my career, my reputation, my ability to make a living, to do the job I love, is heartbreaking. The damage is real and it affects me every day.

A Harvard spokesman said the university does not comment on pending litigation.

During her 29 years at Harvard, Stone led the women's hockey program to national prominence, winning 523 games—more than any other female coach in women's hockey history—and coaching dozens of the sport's biggest stars, including 24 All-American athletes, 15 Olympians, and six winners of the Patty Kazmaier Award (which recognizes the best player in NCAA Division I women's ice hockey). In 1999, she led Harvard to a national championship and, under her coaching, the team went to four other national title games. In 2014, she became the first woman to coach a U.S. Olympic hockey team, leading the United States to a silver medal.

The Boston Globe And Athletic The investigations, published in January and March of last year, were based on interviews with dozens of former players, who detailed complaints of insensitivity and denigration; they said they had been insulted by Stone and that the coach had been inconsistent in the way she disciplined players. They alleged that her treatment had affected their grades and academic performance and that it had prompted them to seek mental health care. The former players recounted incidents of hazing and initiation practices that they alleged Stone had condoned, including forced drinking and nude skating. (Stone has previously said she was unaware of such practices.)

In March 2023, Harvard launched an independent investigation into the alleged abuse, led by former federal prosecutor Katya Jestin, which found no evidence that the team fostered a culture of hazing. The investigation’s findings were announced on June 29 of last year; Stone had announced her retirement three weeks earlier. At Tuesday’s press conference, Stone and her attorney, Andrew Miltenberg, criticized the timing.

The lawsuit also discusses a previous internal investigation, launched in March 2022 after players complained that Stone used the phrase “too many chiefs and not enough Indians in the locker room,” a comment for which Stone immediately apologized, according to the lawsuit. The investigation, according to the lawsuit, concluded that Stone had not created a toxic work environment and had not engaged in a pattern of unprofessional conduct, though it did recommend performance improvements. (That 2022 investigation was launched by then-Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Claudine Gay; both the lawsuit and Miltenberg criticized Gay by name, citing the controversies of the past school year that led to Gay’s own abrupt departure.)

Harvard’s actions toward Stone and the way it has handled the allegations against her stand in stark contrast to the way it treats male coaches, the lawsuit alleges. Harvard’s attack on Coach Stone is part of a larger culture at the university in which female coaches are undervalued, underpaid, heavily supervised and held to a breathtakingly stricter standard of conduct than their male counterparts, the complaint says.

The lawsuit also alleges that Stone’s coaching methods were subject to a level of scrutiny not imposed on male coaches or men’s teams. While Harvard allows, or even openly encourages, male coaches to use their own judgment about how best to coach and motivate the players on their respective teams, Coach Stone was harshly punished and berated for using the same coaching strategies and behaviors.

It was a topic Stone also touched on in her own remarks at the press conference. Coaches are always looking for the balance between pushing too hard and affirming mediocrity, she said. While cultural norms make it harder to aim high, women who are strong, competent, competitive and assertive as coaches were once seen as role models. Today, these female coaches are seen by too many athletes, parents and administrators as harmful, even emotionally abusive, and the coaching profession is losing great coaches at an alarming rate as scrutiny becomes more intense and biased toward our male counterparts.

The former players who spoke described Stone as tough but compassionate. The Harvard women’s hockey program shaped me, gave me confidence, and taught me to really dig deep to understand myself and what made me special. My junior and senior years at Harvard were pivotal in helping me begin to understand who I was, said Armstrong, a former Harvard captain who now directs Armstrong Hockey, an organization for Canadian Indigenous youth. I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for her, the opportunity she gave me, the guidance and support she provided, and her belief and confidence in me that I lacked in myself.

Corriero recalled arriving at Harvard at age 17, struggling with imposter syndrome and the fear of failure. I was grateful for the honesty that [Stone] always had and her emphasis on earning and working for the opportunities you were given, Corriero said. I was grateful for the confidence she showed in me when I didn’t have that confidence in myself. I was also grateful for the times she encouraged me to embrace roles and positions on the team that I wasn’t used to and didn’t particularly enjoy, but that I learned to accept because I knew it would be for the good of the team. Corriero, a three-time All-American and former Harvard team captain, is now a lawyer in Toronto.

Hagerman Phinney, who stayed on as an assistant coach after graduating from college, played for the U.S. national team for 10 years and won a bronze medal at the 2006 Olympics. She is now a guidance counselor at Belmont High School in Massachusetts. She spoke of Stone’s philosophy on the ice (your individual output is a direct reflection of the efforts of your teammates) and recalled, through tears, how Stone had supported her family several years ago when Hagerman Phinney’s young son became ill and died. When you’re at your lowest point in the face of one of life’s most unfathomable cruelties, Katey Stone shows up, she said. She added later: Your players need you when they’re at their most vulnerable, and that’s why I’m standing with them now.

At the end of the press conference, Miltenberg said his firm had not yet received a response to Harvard's lawsuit. Asked what Stone wants from filing the lawsuit, he said: I think she wants her legacy back and some of the respect and honor that she's earned.