High School Sports: Hockey

PROVIDENCE — None of the players on this year’s Smithfield High hockey team was born when Reynolds Lillibridge started coaching high school hockey.

Heck, it’s possible some of their parents may not have even been born then.

But even if they hadn’t lived through the entire Lillibridge coaching era, the Smithfield players understood that winning a state title this season would mean more than just another championship plaque in the high school trophy case.

After a high school coaching career that spanned 41 years, including the last 28 seasons as Smithfield’s head coach, Lillibridge had told some people that he might retire after this season.

There was no formal announcement. He didn’t want the players’ focus to divert from their primary task of playing hockey, so he didn’t say anything to the team. But in a town the size of Smithfield, it doesn’t take long for word to circulate.

“I was unaware of it at the beginning (of the season), but I heard some rumors halfway through the season,” said Smithfield senior goaltender Nathan York. “We wanted to make the best of it for him. He coached my brother 10 years ago to a state championship. So we wanted to make sure he left with one.”

It didn’t come easily, but eventually York and his teammates assured Lillibridge of ending his coaching career in championship fashion as the Sentinels overcame a 2-0 deficit en route to a 7-4 victory in the deciding game of their best-of-three Division II title series against Ponaganset last night at Schneider Arena.

“So is this the end?” Lillibridge was asked about his coaching status.

“Yes,” said Lillibridge without any additional elaboration.

You wouldn’t expect Lillibridge to announce his retirement any other way.

He never was a man of many words, but he was a coach of several championship teams.

He started coaching high school hockey back in 1966 as assistant to Larry Kish at Mount St. Charles. He helped Kish lead the Mounties to a couple of state championships in the late 1960s and early ’70s. After Kish left Mount St. Charles to coach professional hockey, Lillibridge spent a few years as an assistant at Smithfield before becoming the Sentinels’ head coach 28 years ago.

The reality of today’s hockey world is that when you’re coaching a hockey team at a small public high school in a small Rhode Island town, you’re not going to compete day in and day out with the likes of Mount St. Charles, Hendricken and La Salle.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t produce solid hockey teams.

Before this season, Lillibridge’s teams had captured six divisional state titles and also had appeared in a few other state title series.

His teams usually followed the same pattern. They were teams that played solid, basic hockey. Teams that needed to work for everything they got.

Last night was a prime example. The Sentinels trailed, 2-0, after the first seven minutes, but they kept working at creating opportunities. Within five minutes, they had tied the game by converting a couple of rebounds into goals. Then they scored two goals in the first 2:21 of the second period and never gave up the lead.

“I’m really proud of them,” Lillibridge said about his final Sentinels squad. “For a while there it was really close, but my kids hung in there. They just work really hard.”

And last night they had an added incentive.

“We wanted to make it special for him, too,” Ryan Maloney, one of the Sentinels’ senior tri-captains, said about Lillibridge’s final season.

jgillool@projo.com