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projo.com's ICE KINGS Special, part 2 of 6: Players know on Day One if they have what it takes
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4.6.98
Belisle's way is a quick cut to the chase
 Players know on Day One if they have what it takes.
Part two of six
By JOHN GILLOOLY
Journal-Bulletin Sports Writer
Mount St. Charles Academy sits high on a hill overlooking the city of Woonsocket. Maybe it's because from their windows school officials always could see beyond the Woonsocket city limits that they've been able to adapt their school to a changing world, while the city around them has struggled in making the transition from a textile capital of the '30s to a functional city of the '90s.
Once an all-male school founded to educate the sons of the French-Canadian Roman Catholics who had migrated to Rhode Island to work in the textile mills along the Blackstone River, Mount St. Charles now is a coed, junior-senior high school with 860 students from throughout Rhode Island and southwest Massachusetts.
There are approximately 300 boys in the high school division, and 20 percent of them play ice hockey. School officials like to talk about the school's excellent academic programs, and they have plenty to talk about. A few years ago, the school was named a Blue Ribbon school by the U.S. Dept. of Education. Every year at least 95 percent of the school's graduating class go on to college. The school also has a highly acclaimed music program; about one-third of the Mount St. Charles students play a musical instrument.
They're all good reasons why parents would pay nearly $5,000 for their child to attend Mount St. Charles. But the reality is that most of the hockey-playing members of the student body are there because they want to play for the varsity hockey team.
It's been that way for two decades now, ever since coach Bill Belisle began cultivating the modern Mount St. Charles hockey legend.
Hockey players are a different breed than most young athletes. Most of them started playing hockey before they were in elementary school. But hockey players don't grow up playing on neighborhood fields or courts like their friends who play basketball, basketball or soccer. Young hockey players in New England are driven athletes -- driven to hockey rinks all over the Northeast.
By the time he reaches puberty, if a hockey player in New England has talent -- or if his parents think he does -- he's probably traveled close to 100,000 miles testing his skills at hockey rinks from Montreal to Marlborough.
"Hockey is a culture of its own,'' said Brother Robert Croteau, president of Mount St. Charles.
It's not surprising, then, that when hockey players reach high school age they're willing to commute wherever they think they can most improve their game. For the past two decades around Rhode Island, the ultimate high school hockey challenge has been playing for Bill Belisle at Mount St. Charles.
10 minutes and out
Under R.I. Interscholastic League rules, Nov. 20 is the first day that the league's winter sports teams can start practice each year. It's the first day that kids who want to become part of the Mount St. Charles legend can show their stuff to Bill Belisle. For some, it's also the last.
Like everything else about Mount St. Charles hockey during the Belisle regime, there are classic tales of first-day practices.
Dave Belisle has been his father's assistant coach for 19 years, so nobody knows better the agony that his father has caused some teenagers on those opening days.
"Those first days used to be really tough,'' said Dave Belisle. "My father would start the practice, watch some kids skate for 10 minutes, then say, `You, you and you, get out of here.' Ten minutes later, he'd tell two or three more kids to try out for junior varsity. These kids weren't bad players; they had been playing hockey all their life and they were being cut in less than 30 minutes. Some kids were so scared they didn't even try out for the varsity; they just waited for the JV tryouts.
"It didn't matter if you had been a hot-shot youth-hockey player; if Bill Belisle didn't like what he saw, you could be gone in a day.''
It certainly didn't matter who your father was.
"My freshman year I was cut after the second day,'' said Peter Belisle, the youngest of Bill Belisle's four sons. "I think the only reason he didn't cut me the first day was because he wanted me to get knocked around for a day by Keith Carney and some of the other seniors.
"At least the other kids who got cut could go home and get some sympathy from their father. I certainly didn't get any sympathy when I got home.''
Peter Belisle, now an assistant hockey coach at the University of Connecticut, eventually earned a spot on the varsity roster and helped Mount win two state championships in the early '90s, but it took him two years to make the big team.
"I got cut again in my sophomore year,'' Peter related. "I didn't make the varsity team until my junior year.''
An exclusive club
Sixty-five players are on the ice for the first practice of the 1997-98 season. It is the largest first-day turnout in recent years. Some of the increase may be because word has gotten around that Bill Belisle has mellowed a little in his first-day evaluations. These days, nobody is sent packing after only 10 minutes. Everybody gets at least a full three-hour practice to show what they can do.
It could be that over the years Belisle has become more compassionate about a teenager's psyche. But it probably has more to do with simple economics. Growing up in a mill town in the '30s and '40s gave Belisle a keen appreciation for the value of a dollar. So, if a kid's parents now are paying close to $5,000 for him to go to school, even Belisle will give him a few hours to prove himself.
Technically, everybody starts on an equal footing the first day. It doesn't matter whether you're a returning star or a scared freshman, on the first day everybody dresses for practice in one of the general-use locker rooms of Adelard Arena. Nobody dresses for the first day's practice in the Mount St. Charles varsity room.
The varsity room at Adelard is the inner sanctum of Mount St. Charles hockey. It's only a 10-by-16-foot rectangle room squeezed under the stands at the far end of the rink, but some of the best players in the history of New England hockey have sat on the wooden benches that line its three walls.
Only Mount St. Charles players, coaches and managers are allowed in the varsity room. No parents, no friends of the players, no other hockey players can step foot in the Mount varsity room. All of the thousands of other hockey players who skate at Adelard throughout the year, from pee wees to high school players to adults, must dress in one of the six dressing rooms on the other side of the rink. Once the high school season ends, the varsity room is cleared out and nobody uses it again until the start of the next season.
There's nothing fancy about the varsity room, but then there's nothing fancy about Adelard Arena. Named after Brother Adelard, the rink was built in 1963, and it was old the day it was built. The Brothers of the Sacred Heart purchased an abandoned aircraft hangar for $1, and the congregation of brothers spent the summer in Woonsocket turning the hangar into a hockey rink. The first few years, the fans sat on wooden bleachers, but then the school bought 1,500 grandstand-type seats that had been used at the 1964 New York World's Fair. Thirty years later, fans at Adelard are still sitting in those 15-inch--wide New York World's Fair seats.
The seats were one of the few amenities added to Adelard. Fans still are protected from flying pucks by four-foot-high chain-link fencing on top of the boards rather than the plexiglass panels found in most rinks these days. The acoustics in the hangar-turned-hockey rink make it almost impossible to understand the public-address announcer.
But the varsity room gives Mount St. Charles players a luxury enjoyed by few high school hockey players. Because most hockey rinks are used by a variety of groups, the dressing rooms are shared, even for high school players. You don't see lockers in the dressing rooms at hockey rinks like you do in high school gymnasiums. Hockey players grow up carrying oversized bags, stuffed with skates, pads and padded-hockey pants from their homes to hockey rinks and back home again. Look in the driveway of a hockey family these days and you'll probably find a minivan. You need room for hockey bags.
The agony of every hockey mother is unpacking a bag loaded with sweat-soaked long underwear along with skin pads, shoulder pads and helmets that continually absorb sweat into the padding. There's nothing in sports like the smell of hockey bag.
Most hockey players -- or their mothers -- know the nightly ritual of emptying the bag so that equipment can dry out near a furnace or heater. But once you earn a spot in the Mount St. Charles varsity room, your days of lugging a hockey bag are finished. Each varsity player is assigned a spot in the dressing room. After practices and games at Adelard, the players hang their skates and equipment on hooks above their spot on the bench. They don't even need to worry about bring a towel for a shower. Belisle has clean towels waiting for the players every day. It's the type of treatment usually reserved for college and professional players.
Like a kid's room at home, the Mount varsity room becomes a teenage isolation chamber. It's where Mount players can escape from hearing about any problems except perfecting their skating skills and slap shot. It's where Bill Belisle's hand-written 8-by-10-inch paper signs, some yellowed with age, are a constant reminder of what it takes to be a champion. It's where the music of their generation blasts from a CD player before and after practice, while players share the experiences of being a teenage male. It's one of the most exclusive men's clubs in Rhode Island.
The advantage of not carrying equipment and having a retreat from the outside world is nice, but the most important thing about being in the varsity room is that you might be part of a championship team, and that you practice with Bill Belisle.
Only a few showers and a toilet separate the varsity dressing room from the junior varsity room, but the two rooms are worlds apart.
If you don't have a spot in the varsity room, you carry your equipment to and from practice every day. Worse, while the varsity practices immediately after school the junior varsity practices at 6 a.m.
Also, only the varsity practices with Bill Belisle. One of Belisle's coaching strengths is improving individual skills. That's the way hockey dreams are turned into hockey reality, but you have to be in the varsity room to get Bill Belisle's help improving your skills.
Each year the goal at the start of the season is to be told you can put your equipment in the varsity room. But there are only 25 spots on those benches and this year 65 players want one of them.
An eye for intensity
Most of the activities during the first 90 minutes of the first day's practice are standard hockey drills, drills most of the players have been doing since kindergarten. But that doesn't relieve the anxiety.
"Every year, the first drill is the same,'' says senior forward Joe Cardillon. "The coach pulls the cages in a little toward the center of the ice, then, by class, everybody skates around them as fast as they can, starting with the seniors. It's a drill you've done a thousand times, but the first time you do it at a Mount practice, you're terrified. All you can think about is, What if I fall?
"My first year, the coach starting cutting kids 10 minutes after practice started.''
Nobody is told that intensity is part of the Mount St. Charles practice regimen; it is automatically understood. It has been passed down through two decades of players. Freshmen know before they step on the ice for their first practice with Bill Belisle what's expected of them.
Sometimes it's what you do after you finished skating a drill that can make the difference between playing and sitting on the bench. After going full speed down the ice during a drill, players don't simply glide back back to the waiting line; they sprint. Goalies not being used in the drills sit on benches patiently waiting their turns. When Belisle yells "Switch,'' they don't gingerly skate out to the goal crease; they jump over the boards with their bulky equipment and sprint toward the goal, while the goalie being replaced sprints to the bench.
The dividing line
This year there are four or five players who obviously don't have the skating skills of the others. You wonder if they haven't come out just so they can say they played hockey at Mount St. Charles, if only for a day.
The dividing line between the other players, however, is not so recognizable. Obviously they've all been skating for a long time. Most of them could play for any other high school hockey team in Rhode Island, but they want to be part of the Mount St. Charles legend.
The Belisles look for aggressiveness in the drills, but they don't tell anybody that. They look for balance on skates. They look to see if a player attacks while skating around cones during a drill or simply eases his way through the turns. After about 90 minutes of drills, the prospects show what they can do in a 30-minute scrimmage. Then everybody is called into the middle of the rink.
Although everybody technically starts on an equal footing the first day, this year there are 12 seniors who saw regular duty on last year's state championship team. There was never any question those seniors would be back in the varsity room this year. So Belisle excuses the seniors and tells them they can put their gear in the varsity room.
While the underclassmen spend another 30 minutes scrimmaging, the seniors stake their claims to spots in the varsity room. They print their names on pieces of white adhesive tape and stick them along the front of the shelf over the benches. That's where they will sit every day except Sundays for the next four months.
At the end of the practice, Dave Belisle tells a few underclassmen who were starters last year that they also can put their gear in the varsity room. He also goes over to the other dressing rooms and tells 11 players that they don't have what it takes to play for the varsity, at least not this year.
"It wasn't too bad today. I think all of these kids knew they weren't going to make it,'' says Dave. "But after this it's going to get tough, because this year there's a lot of parity. There isn't much that separates a lot of these kids, and they all know it.''
Starting times
You don't dominate a high school sport like Mount St. Charles has dominated Rhode Island high school hockey without creating some enemies.
On Friday, Nov. 21 there was a story in the local Woonsocket daily newspaper about Mount St. Charles that mistakenly said the first practice had been on Wednesday rather than Thursday. It's one of those mistakes that can easisly happen in the newspaper business, when you're writing a story one day that won't appear in the paper until the next.
But two days after the story appeared, Dick Lynch, executive director of the R.I. Interscholastic League, opened his mail and found a copy of the story along with an unsigned letter saying this was proof that Mount St. Charles cheated by holding practice before the legal opening day.
Lynch had heard I was going to spend the season with the Mount St. Charles hockey team, so he gave me a call.
"Were you at the first Mount practice?'' Lynch asked.
"Yes, I was.''
"What day was it?'' Lynch continued questioning.
"It was Thursday,'' I said, wondering why the director of the Interscholastic League didn't know what was the first day of the winter sports season.
"Are you sure it was Thursday?'' Lynch asked with an apologitic tune.
"Yes, I'm sure,'' I said.
"I knew there was nothing to this, but I had to check it out,'' Lynch explained as he told me about the letter.
When you spend time around the Mount St. Charles hockey team, you learn nobody wants to win more than Bill Belisle. But you also learn that anybody who thinks Mount St. Charles has won 21 straight state hockey titles because Belisle has broken Interscholastic League rules, doesn't know the man. You don't go to Catholic Mass every day, then cheat to win a high school hockey game.
Impatient players
The tryout process for the varsity goes on for about a week. It includes a Saturday night practice from 8:30 to 10:30. Mount St. Charles hockey players don't have a teenager's normal weekend social life. The only day the Mount St. Charles hockey team doesn't practice or play is Sunday.
Each day a few more players are told to put their equipment in the varsity room, and a few more are told they're don't have what it takes to play varsity this year.
By the fourth day of practice, however, there still are 40 players on the ice.
"I've never seen a year like this, where there so much parity,'' says Dave Belisle, as the players come off the ice from practice.
He had told all the players who still were dressing in the general dressing room on the other side of the rink to bring their equipment to the junior varsity room.
"Look at that kid,'' Belisle says. "He's really disappointed. He thought he would be in the varsity room by now. He just missed making it last year; now he's worried he'll miss it again this year.''
Belisle knows by midyear that some of these kids will no longer be at Mount St. Charles. Young hockey players used to be patient; they were willing to spend years on the junior varsity working their way up to the varsity. Some of the players who helped build the Mount legend didn't play a varsity game until their senior year.
But today's young hockey players, and their parents, are impatient, probably a reflection of the society around them. If a kid doesn't make the varsity the first year -- or, at the least, by his sophomore year -- there's a good chance he will transfer to another school where he thinks he can play.
When everybody is in the junior varsity room, Dave Belisle goes around the room telling selected players that they will dress for a scrimmage the following day against St. Sebastian School. All around the room, teenagers stand half-naked, desperately hoping the assistant coach points in their direction.
You don't need to watch Dave Belisle to know who gets the nod. The players try hiding their excitement, but when he points in their direction their face lights up. When he passes a player without pointing, it's the look of a kid who gets underwear at Christmas.
Dave tells those who didn't get the nod that they will dress for a scrimmage against Notre Dame High of Connecticut on Friday, but that isn't enough to erase the disappointment.
The players know the difference between the two assignments.
St. Sebastian, a prep school from Needham, Mass., is one of the best teams Mount will face all year. Show that you can play against St. Sebastian and you're virtually guaranteed a spot in the varsity room. Notre Dame is a relatively weak team; a good showing against Notre Dame doesn't mean a lot.
Dismal holidays
Most years, the final varsity cuts are made on Thanksgiving morning. Through the years, it has made for some very unpleasant Thanksgiving Day dinners.
Nobody knows that better than JoAnn Fede.
This is Fede's eighth year as a Mount St. Charles hockey mother. Her older son Frank was an All-Stater forward in 1994 before going on to the U.S. Miltary Academy, where he set an all-time West Point career scoring record. The year after Frank graduated from Mount, his younger brother Paul entered the school.
The fact that his older brother had been an All-Stater didn't give Paul any advantage in the quest for a spot in the varsity room. It took him three years to become a varsity regular defenseman.
"Thanksgivng morning was always the last day of cuts,'' JoAnn Fede said. "If they came walking out of the rink carrying their bag, it meant they had been cut from the varsity, because the varsity players leave their equipment in the dressing room. We had a few years like that. As soon as I saw him walking out with his bag, I knew my Thanksgiving dinner was ruined.''
No sure things
The parity among this year's candidates means it takes a little longer than usual to fill all of the varsity room's 25 spots, but eventually the room is filled.
When the final assignments are made, one of the players still in the junior varsity room is freshman goaltender Tony Ciresi. Ciresi, the son of Belisle's former assistant coach, is a talented young player. He could be starting for a lot of Rhode Island high school teams, but he isn't quite ready for a spot on the Mount St. Charles varsity.
He's proof that talent is the only thing that buys a berth on the Mount St. Charles hockey team. Bill Belisle owes Tony Ciresi Sr. his life, but that doesn't buy Ciresi's son a spot in the varsity room.
Next: Intense in the perfect sense
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