It’s March 8, 2020. Noble and Greenough School is up, 5-4, over Phillips Andover in the waning moments of the Chuck Vernon Elite 8 championship.
The Bulldogs are without coach Tom Resor. He informed the team the previous day that he had to miss the game for his daughter’s wedding. Without Resor, Nobles has erased multiple deficits, thanks to a four-goal outburst in the second period, in a back-and-forth affair at Worcester Academy.
But in a scene made for Hollywood, the doors to the rink burst open and a hush falls over a crowd.
“You just see this guy jogging in around the perimeter of the rink,” Brooke Manning (Marshfield, Mass.), then a freshman, said. “Our bench start’s going crazy. We had students there and fans — everyone's going crazy.”
It’s Resor, who is yet to have medical procedures on both of his knees. Walking, let alone running, “wasn’t great,” Manning said.
Emmy O’Leary (Southboro, Mass.), a sophomore at the time, said, “All of a sudden, the whole rink just starts applauding, and everyone just stops to watch Mr. Resor run to the bench. It was almost like a movie scene.”
Manning is now a freshman forward at Harvard after earning ISL MVP and All-NEPSAC honors as team captain in 2023. She sees it as a testament to Resor’s care for his players. She knows he skirted some traffic laws to get to Worcester after his flight landed. For her, it’s a “core memory.”
“We just got to be there with him and celebrate that win with him,” she said. “I can still see him running around the boards in my head. It was the best thing ever. It was awesome.”
O’Leary is now a sophomore with Princeton after earning ISL MVP and NEPSAC Player of the Year in 2022 as captain. She also calls it her favorite memory of her time at Nobles.
“He still made it a point to want to get there in time for our game and just show support,” she said. “I think that just speaks to how great of a coach he is.”
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That championship win in 2020 marked the 10th NEPSAC title of Resor’s career behind the bench of Nobles’ girls program.
After 23 years, this season will be his last.
“It’s something I had been thinking about over the summer, and it sort of crystallized at the end of the summer,” Resor said of his decision. “I thought it was time for me to step aside, and time for someone else to be able to do it. … I don't regret it. I'm excited for this season. The hard part is knowing that I can't sort of go out with everybody on the team at the same time.”
Before taking over the girls program, Resor spent 14 years coaching boys hockey at Nobles. He got his start at Lawrence Academy in 1983. He’s spent the better part of 40 years in rinks from November to March.
Resor took sabbaticals the past two springs. It gave him the chance to step out of the academic calendar. A continued change of pace moving forward is nice to think about, whether or not he outright retires or continues teaching and counseling at Nobles.
Even away on sabbatical, Resor was there for his team. He made it a point to be at the class of 2022 and 2023’s graduations.
“He would always say how much he missed going down to the rink and seeing all of us,” Manning said. “It just really showed how much he cared to leave his condo in Florida to come back and see us and see the girls.”
On the ice, Resor built a dynasty at Nobles. If the Bulldogs weren’t winning titles, any given year’s champion likely still had to go through them. In 12 of the past 14 seasons, they made it to at least the semifinal game. They reached the title game 10 times in that span, winning six. Nobles has been a destination under his watch.
Manning believes his emphasis on versatility and preparedness for any situation helped her become the player she is today.
“I'm very proud to tell people that I went to Nobles and was able to play under Tom Resor,” Manning said. “I think that there are some really big shoes to fill in his absence. He created a legacy there where people want to come to Nobles because they want to play for Tom.”
But Resor’s most important contributions have been off the ice, in Manning and O’Leary’s eyes. As much as some coaches might get hung up on stats and records, those aren’t his priorities. O’Leary maintains she learned as much from Resor away from the rink as at it.
“The most important skill that Mr. Resor taught me was to believe in myself, like he trusted me and instilled confidence in myself,” O’Leary said. “He made me trust myself through him trusting me, and I think that's kind of rare these days. You don't see coaches doing that.”
Manning said, “It's not a coincidence, all the success that he's had, and it comes from such a place of love for the game and love for all his players. It was just such an exciting thing to have someone so eager to get down to the rink every day. He would always tell us that it was his favorite part.”
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The relationships and bonds Resor has built among his players have been equally as fulfilling for him. He’s had the chance to coach his daughters in the hockey program as well as two of his sons in lacrosse. To him, players get the most out of sports, especially hockey, when they enjoy it and put in as much as they can. It’s particularly true when it comes to friendships.
“I’ve had on both boys and girls, some great kids who now I see a lot of them leading their own lives with their own families and still stay in touch with a lot of them,” he said. “I think that's been rewarding. The whole cumulative effect of it all and building the relationships I've been able to build has been really special.”
His departure will leave a sizable hole not only at Nobles but in girls prep hockey in general. He’s seen the landscape develop throughout his tenure with the emergence of more club teams, better coaching and better training. It’s led to a constant rise of skill and competitiveness across the NEPSAC.
“We've battled back and forth in the last several years, and Tom has just done so much for girls prep school hockey,” Williston Northampton coach Christa Talbot Syfu said. “He's worked closely in the executive committee and is a go-to person and a leader.
“It will be hard to think about girls prep school hockey without him.”
As bittersweet as moving on might be, Resor is looking forward to whatever is next.
“It's exciting, but it’s a little nerve-wracking, in a sense, because I have enjoyed it so much, and I will miss it,” Resor said. “I know I'll miss it a lot.
“But I also know I'm ready to be able to miss it and move on. So I think that’s why I feel so good about it.”
