Brooke Whitney is a pioneer on and off the ice

Published 11:27 pm Monday, March 24, 2008

BOTHELL — Along the way, Brooke Whitney made it look easy.

As a hockey player she was always one of the best. And by her senior season at Boston’s Northeastern University in 2001-02 she was indeed the best — with a trophy to prove it. That was the season she received the prestigious Patty Kazmaier Award, the equivalent of the Heisman Trophy for college women’s hockey.

It all happened because Whitney, as a young girl, dared to dream big. And she’s never stopped, even now as she transitions from player to coach with an eye toward perhaps working one day in the front office of a professional sports team.

“I just love to dip and dab into a lot of different things,” said the 28-year-old Whitney, whose family still lives south of Snohomish. “And I love to learn. I’m like a sponge. But it’s all kind of centering around athletics.”

Currently Whitney is the associate athletic director and head girls hockey coach at Lawrence Academy in Groton, Mass., outside of Boston. She’s back in the Northwest tonight, though, to speak at the Seattle Junior Hockey Association Bingo Hall in Mountlake Terrace and promote women’s hockey.

In the six years since she finished her collegiate career she also has played two years as a pro in Canada, earned a master’s degree in sports management, spent two years as a college assistant coach, spent parts of five seasons with the United States national team, and worked for USA Hockey in the organization’s development program.

Sitting around is not her thing.

“I have to be busy,” confessed Whitney, who will be inducted into the Northeastern University Hall of Fame next month. “My parents both said, ‘You’ve been like that since the day you were born.’ If we had a day off, I was like, ‘What are we doing, where are we going?’ But I enjoy it. It’s a good busy.

“And as I look back now,” she added, “what really got me going was being challenged.”

Whitney was born in Seattle, but moved with her family as a small girl to Anchorage, where she was introduced to hockey. By the time she was in the fourth grade, which is when her family returned to the Puget Sound area, she was hooked.

She played whenever she could, mostly on boys teams, and was good enough to try out for the U.S. Olympic team as a senior at Bothell High School, though she didn’t make the squad. But she did earn a scholarship to Northeastern, where she continued to excel.

Coming from the West Coast, where hockey is less popular than in the Midwest and upper East Coast, “she was kind of a pioneer,” said Heather Linstad, Whitney’s coach for her first three seasons at Northeastern and today the head coach at Connecticut. “Washington does not have that many girls playing hockey, and there were certainly not a ton of them playing when she was there. So for her to achieve her success and be as good as was … Brooke is kind of a leader in that respect.”

Though Whitney arrived at Northeastern with plenty of talent, she made herself outstanding with desire, determination and a will to succeed, Linstad added.

“Brooke was one of those kids who worked very hard on the little things all the time, and I think that’s just her character,” Linstad said. “She has a high standard for herself and she’s always goal-orientated, and it was the same thing in the classroom, As a coach, those are the attributes you look for from your athletes. You want them to be willing to work just as hard in the classroom as they do on the ice.”

Whitney retired from playing a year and a half ago, but still the game tugs at her.

“I really do miss it,” she said. “I love hockey and that’s why I’m still around it (as a coach). But I’ve always been a very competitive person by nature, and in that regard I’d say that’s the one piece that’s missing in my life now. In a tight game, I’m used to being the one that can go out and make a difference, but I can’t do that now.”

Indeed, Whitney misses playing enough that she is considering trying out for the U.S. Olympic team for the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver. She probably will have to decide sometime this summer, and says she is “probably 50-50” at this point.

Because she tried out but was not chosen for the 1998, 2002 and 2006 teams, the chance to finally be an Olympian is persuasive. But there is no guarantee she’d be chosen, and Whitney says she’d also want to balance the opportunity with other things going on in her life.

“I have a lot of thinking to do about it,” she said. “I really don’t have anything to prove, and that’s why I did retire. I can walk away with what I’ve accomplished and I’m completely fine with it. So if I decide to go back and try out for 2010, it would strictly be for fun.

“But if I made it,” she said, “it would be a great accomplishment. I have friends who have been on (the Olympic team) three times now and the third time was just as important to them as the first. So of course I’d be ecstatic. It would be a good chapter to end on.”