Two rinks, five high school and prep level programs and a Division 3 college program are just a quick show of the Massachusetts town of Milton’s force as a New England hockey epicenter.
With boys and girls teams at both Milton High School and Milton Academy and a girls co-op at Fontbonne Academy with Boston Latin, plus the Curry College team, this town has found a strong balance in athletics, academics and ability to get the most out of the players who are born and bred in this hotbed for the sport.
It’s this type of foundation, backed by an ever-growing youth program that has been pumping out talent since 1965, that has allowed the sport to continue to strive in this community and produce quality players, even in the face of the changing landscape of the game itself.
“When I think of the town, you go way back. Like any world, the hockey world is a web,” said Milton Academy boys head coach Paul Cannata, who was an assistant at Northeastern prior to planting his own roots in Milton. “We had Jimmy Fahey, a two-time captain at Catholic Memorial, who became a three-year captain at Northeastern. Michael Ryan, who was from BC High, first-round NHL draft pick. Those two guys come to mind. Then Keith Yandle, who I work with a little in the Mass Satellite program. Right away I think of those guys, and (longtime Milton High School boys coach Warren) “Skip” Lapworth and the long history of Milton sports.”
BC High head coach John Flaherty, a resident who has played alongside and coached numerous players from the town, said, “My son plays Milton Bantam A as well as 2005 Boston Junior Terriers, and my daughter is on one of the Milton U-12 girls teams after playing girls U-10 the last couple years. Milton Youth Hockey and its board members are very committed to growing hockey in the town through both boys and girls programs. They have been actively exposing kids to the game of hockey and making equipment available to those who want to try it out. They have a great group of volunteer coaches who make the game fun for the kids.”
It is a town rich in sports tradition, providing greater opportunity for athletes to strive across the board. This has helped shape the hockey dynamic by producing a more well-rounded type of player from the get-go, aided in large part by the wealth of knowledge available through the coaches in a youth organization that has eclipsed 600 girls and boys participants.
It’s an aspect not lost on Chris Watson, who immediately could see the difference in the players he had when he came on board as head coach of the boys varsity team at Milton High School last year.
“They’re multi-sport athletes for the most part,” said Watson, who coached at Cambridge Rindge & Latin prior to taking over the Wildcats. “Kids range from fall sports like football, cross country, soccer and golf, in the winter they pick up hockey, and in the spring they’re either playing lacrosse, running track or playing baseball. It’s a nice mix of size and speed and different skill-sets. It was a nice surprise walking into.”
“It’s a great sports town,” added Cannata. “There’s a strong interest level in all of the sports. It’s a tremendous baseball town, soccer, football, hockey, basketball. The personalities of the people are athletic, hard-working people. It’s a town that has some resources, but it’s not an over-the-top town.”
One the town’s greatest resources to the cause is the Max Ulin Memorial Rink, built in 1953, which serves as the home for Milton Public Schools, Milton Youth Hockey, Curry College and Commonwealth Figure Skating, to name a few.
Managed by Curry College since 2010, the rink continues to maintain and improve the facilities to ensure that it will stand as a strong resource for generations to come.
The Milton Academy ice rink is another available resource for the town, having ushered many athletes from its borders to more prominent sheets of ice along the way.
As important as having ice is to the game, so too are the people who surround it, and in Milton that stands as the most important resource available. The great hockey minds in town are seemingly endless.
Northeastern men’s head coach Jim Madigan, among the town’s residents, was more than happy to bring the vaunted Beanpot trophy to this year’s Little League Baseball parade.
Within a mile of the Milton Academy campus lives Cannata, Flaherty, Roxbury Latin head coach David Cataruzolo and Catholic Memorial head coach Larry Rooney.
Together those four have been producing a Christmas Clinic at Milton Academy over the past few years, working with youth players for three days around the holidays.
“We’ve been lucky geographically where we are,” said Cannata. “The people around the program, whether they’re from Milton originally or not, the amount of good hockey people that are in that area is vast. The extent of hockey people and athletic people in the area, in and of itself, is a great resource.”
As is the case, these things have a trickle-down effect on the kids, who, as they come up, are looking to give back to the community just the same.
At Milton High School, the boys and girls teams have been organizing a decades-long street hockey tournament over the Columbus Day weekend that has become a part of the hockey tradition of the town, complementing a Friday night spring street hockey league at the Cunningham Park tennis courts. The high school players and their parents help set up the event, recruit the kids to play, provide equipment, referee and coach the all-day affair.
Next season Watson is looking to get his team even more involved with Milton Youth Hockey by implementing a mentor program wherein some varsity players will be assigned to assist with the town’s travel teams, helping at practices and with games in an effort to secure a stronger bond with their local playing options down the line.
“The youth hockey does a lot to promote the game,” explained Watson, who knows that other prominent schools in the region have the city pegged for their talent. “They do garner interest from Catholic schools like BC High or Xaverian. Even right down the street, not far from them, if they’re good enough they could end up at Milton Academy. Where we still have enough kids to keep the high school competitive is a nice thing. We hope to have them dream to wear the Milton red and white when they’re in high school.”
The fact that all of these programs can exist successfully in this town, alongside outside reaches, shows just how much the sport matters and how it all boils down to a devotion for the game that has been carefully cultivated through the years.
“I think there’s a passion for the sport in Milton,” said Watson. “Access to a rink in your town always helps, and having the Ulin right there and being very accessible to everyone definitely helps in its own right. It’s a sport that Milton’s been known for and they want to keep that going and be a part of it”
“All around Boston there are great towns, and Milton is one of those towns,” said Cannata. “It has a long history of sports at Milton High School and all the private schools. All of the families and brothers and sisters who have played, the generations make it a fantastic place that way. I feel very fortunate to live in the town of Milton. I feel fortunate to have raised my children in the town of Milton.”
