Former women’s hockey coach Katey Stone sues Harvard for discrimination

“I will no longer stand idly by in the face of inequality and injustice and allow one of the world’s elite universities to continue to hide behind the fraudulent veil of fairness,” Stone said at a news conference after filing the lawsuit in U.S. District Court.

“The loss of my career, my reputation, my ability to make a living doing a job I love is heartbreaking. The damage is real and it affects me every day.”

Stone is also seeking $5 million or more from as many as 50 anonymous individuals who allege they defamed her. They include Harvard employees and former players who complained about her to the Globe and the university. She did not specify a dollar amount for the damages she is seeking from Harvard.

“I care about every young woman who has gone through this program,” Stone said, “and I am heartbroken by the small number of the hundreds of players who have been part of the program and have not felt supported.”

Her lawsuit described her firing as “an integral part of a larger culture at the university in which female coaches are undervalued, underpaid, heavily supervised, and held to a breathtakingly stricter standard of conduct than their male colleagues.”

Her 33-page complaint partially pulled back the curtain on the school’s handling of alleged problems with its sports teams, citing several instances in which Harvard treated men’s programs differently for problems similar to those that contributed to her ouster.

For example, she alleged that Harvard took no action after members of the men’s swimming and diving teams jumped naked from a diving board or when other male athletes engaged in “Primal Scream” before exams that involved nudity.

“While female coaches, like Coach Stone, are expected to be caring toward their female players and coach with compassion and sensitivity, male coaches are allowed to be ‘strict’ and hold their male players accountable for their actions,” the complaint reads.

When asked for comment on the lawsuit, a Harvard spokesperson replied, “We do not comment on pending litigation.”

Stone’s downfall followed Harvard’s hiring of an outside law firm to investigate abuse complaints published by the Globe and later The Athletic.

Nearly 20 of Stone’s former players, including team captains, alleged to the Globe that over decades she belittled them into seeking mental health care, was insensitive to their mental health issues, shamed them, negatively affected their academic performance and enforced inconsistent disciplinary standards. Some said they were bullied.

The Athletic presented “a portrait of a program that, for most of Stone’s tenure, has pushed and exceeded the boundaries of acceptable treatment of athletes.”

An annual ritual was known as the “Naked Skate,” which players on the program said they witnessed or participated in between 2005 and 2023.

“In some of those years, freshmen were told to do a ‘superman’ slide on the ice, leaving some with ice burns and bleeding nipples,” The Athletic reported. “The most recent ‘Naked Skate’ occurred the day after the Globe story was published.”

Stone’s lawsuit states that she was unaware of any inappropriate behavior such as “nude skating” and that she made it clear to her teams that hazing was strictly prohibited.

She said Harvard had launched two investigations into her and put her on a performance improvement plan before the media reported on it. She said the university also paid her “at a scandalously lower rate than the male head coach of the men’s hockey team, who had less experience and success.”

In her complaint, she alleges that a Harvard administrator told her that the coach of the men’s hockey team was entitled to a higher salary “because he has to make quicker decisions during the game.”

She also said that Harvard athletic director Erin McDermott, reflecting on the university’s treatment of Stone in response to the Globe article, told her, “This wouldn’t happen to a men’s coach.”

Harvard had not announced the completion of the external investigation before Stone retired in June 2023. Three weeks later, McDermott said in a statement that the investigation had found that an unspecified number of former players felt mistreated during Stone’s long tenure.

“We now have an opportunity to end team traditions that are detrimental to team culture and inconsistent with the standards of our community,” McDermott said.

McDermott said the investigation, the findings of which Harvard has declined to release in full, concluded that Stone’s 2022-23 team did not perpetuate a culture of hazing. However, she did not directly address past allegations of hazing.

Members of Stone’s teams from 2000-16 told the Globe that first-year players were subjected to initiation practices that included mandatory costumes on campus, forced drinking and role-playing with sexual undertones. No one said Stone was present during any of the incidents.

Stone described the published reports of complaints from former players as “hit pieces disguised as news articles.”

Some of Stone’s accomplishments at Harvard were historic. While amassing more victories (523) than any other female coach in the history of college women’s hockey, she helped develop 24 All-Americans, 15 Olympians and six winners of the Patty Kazmaier Award, the highest individual honor in college women’s hockey.

Stone led Harvard to a national title in 1999, guided the team to four additional national championships, and won a silver medal as coach of the U.S. women’s team at the 2014 Olympic Games.

A major sign of discontent in Stone’s program preceded reports from the Globe and The Athletic. McDermott told the 2021-22 team that the women’s hockey program ranked last among the university’s 42 collegiate sports programs in terms of the quality of its student-athlete experiences, according to a 2019 survey of players commissioned by Claudine Gay, then dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Gay, who later served as the university’s president for six months, called the investigation’s findings a “red flag,” Stone’s complaint said.

The investigation prompted one of two internal reviews of Stone prior to the external investigation and resulted in Harvard imposing a “performance improvement plan.”

In Stone’s last two seasons, 10 eligible players left the program. In 2022, Ivy League Rookie of the Year Taze Thompson left for Northeastern. In 2023, Jade Arnone, one of the team’s best defenders, left for Boston College.

Thompson, teammate Maryna MacDonald and assistant coach Sydney Daniels – all Native Americans – left Stone’s program after she made a racially sensitive comment in front of them and their teammates, saying they played as if there were “too many chiefs and not enough Indians.”

Daniels filed a complaint against Harvard with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination. Stone apologized to the team for her remarks, but she declined to respond to questions about the other allegations of abuse.

Meanwhile, dozens of Stone’s loyal supporters have rallied around her, describing her as an inspiring leader and compassionate mentor, with three of them giving testimonies at her press conference.

Jamie Hagerman Phinney, a member of the 2006 U.S. Olympic bronze medalist team who now works as a guidance counselor at Belmont Hill, described how Stone comforted her when her son was seriously ill and after he died at age 7.

Nicole Corriero, a three-time All-American who was captain of the Harvard team in 2004-05 and now works as a lawyer, said Stone has helped her “accomplish things I never dreamed I could do.”

And Kalley Armstrong, a former Harvard captain and the native granddaughter of former Toronto Maple Leafs captain George Armstrong, tearfully defended Stone against accusations of bias during the news conference.

Before filing her federal complaint, Stone filed a discrimination charge against Harvard at MCAD. She withdrew the complaint in April and said she planned to file the federal case.

“I realize that Harvard is not for the meek or the weak,” Stone said. “Fortunately, I am neither.”

Bob Hohler can be reached at [email protected].