In 1964, when Nancy Scheflein stepped onto campus at Pembroke College, the women's college at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, she brought with her not only the hopes many carry for higher education, but also a passion for hockey.
Scheflein had grown up playing hockey in New Jersey, and when she was noticed skating by James Fullerton, Brown's first men's hockey head coach, he invited her to "masquerade as a member of the freshman hockey squad," as Cory Dean wrote in the March 22, 1966 issue of The Pembroke Record.
"Scheflein, in a Brown uniform with her hair tucked up inside her helmet, was not discovered until the practice was well underway, and then her presence put a lot of zip into the Brown squad."
The moment sparked an interest in women's hockey on campus that soon resulted in the founding of the first collegiate women's hockey team in the United States, the Pembroke Pandas.
Scheflein has been deemed the "Founding Mother" of hockey not only at Brown, but of collegiate hockey in America for her role in starting the Pandas program.
Once she finished her first practice with the Brown men's team, Scheflein knew what she had to do.
"I was excited I was gonna get to play hockey, my God, you know, I hadn’t really played hockey since 16 or 17. I had the uniform on and all that, but I didn’t care, I just wanted to skate," Scheflein recalled of the opportunity to skate with the men's team .
"Once I got on the ice with these guys, that's when I realized we got to do this for women. After that, I said to the field hockey coach slash gym teacher for ice skating, I said, “Can we make a team?” I mean, I was so excited to be in this beautiful arena."
"That’s kind of how things started. The field hockey players played with their field hockey equipment, so the goalie had her field hockey pants and shin pads. We didn't have anything. And the figure skaters didn't know anything about team sport, but they were very good skaters. So we had a very motley group of women out there, and it was a lot of fun."
The year prior in 1965, Pembroke College had started teaching ice hockey as a physical education credit, and multiple members of the inaugural Pembroke Pandas team came through that first course.
In their early days, without other university's or college's offering women's hockey, the Pandas played games against other local Massachusetts women's teams, specifically the Walpole Brooms.
The captains of the 1966 Pembroke College team were Linda Fox and Lynn Plaut.
When Fox learned of women's hockey at Pembroke, she immediately returned home and sough a pair of hockey skates to replace her figure skates.
"I came home from college my sophomore year and told my parents I wanted hockey skates for Christmas," Fox told Jacob Smollen of the Brown Daily Herald in a podcast outlining the early formation of the team. I can't say that my mom was delighted because she somehow thought that by my coming down here and going to college here, maybe I would give up some of what I used to enjoy.
So asking for ice hockey skates for Christmas did not thrill her. My mom then would come and watch us play games and mostly cover her eyes. She kept thinking that I should figure skate or something.
Like many teams in the era, many issues faced the team in organizing competition. Finances were a significant barrier to the early Pembroke Pandas, as was acquiring equipment, and even finding referees, often relying on members of the Brown University men's hockey team to referee games. But the team remained enthusiastic about playing the game.
"The spirit of the team is good," Linda Fox told The Pembroke Record in 1966.
By the following fall, the Pandas were becoming a notable member of the Providence community.
"Pembroke's unique collegiate hockey team is becoming an established institution on campus, as the Pandas move into their second year of competition," wrote Alison J. Ray in the Fall of 1966 for The Pembroke Record.
The ongoing struggle of finding opponents hampered the formation of a league for the Pandas, who instead started looking outside the region, including to Canada. In 1967, the team began a fundraising push in order to play against the Queen's University women's hockey team in early 1968. Across campus at the time faculty and students could be found wearing "Panda Power" buttons to support the team. According to The Pembroke Record's Chris Labowsky in December 1967, the biggest supporters of the team were the athletes themselves as "Once a girl becomes a Panda, she becomes quite a fanatic."
For many women, it was still common to play in figure skates, but the sign of hockey skates circling the rink for the Pandas was another sign they were becoming more serious.
"The sign is when rushes out to buy men's hockey skates, and most of the Pandas have their own hockey skates," said Fox in 1967.
On their trip to Canada, the Pandas played the Humberside Omegas falling 10-1, before falling 4-1 to Queen's University in what was the first cross border intercollegiate game in women's hockey history on January 28, 1968.
"What the Pandas lacked in experience and skating ability, they more than made upn for in enthusiasm and desire," The Pembroke Record wrote following the games. "After following a rugged training diet and heavy practice schedule throughout the semester at Pembroke and even into their exam period, the team arrived in the Dominion exhausted from finals but ready to take on the heavily-favored Canadian teams."
The Pandas' stars from the series that year included goaltender Marion Dancy and center Kay Greisen, along with captain Linda Fox.
The persistence of the Pembroke Pandas in finding opponents helped spark growth of women's hockey at other schools. In 1969, the Pandas wrote a letter to The Harvard Crimson challenging Harvard's women's school, Radcliffe, to a game.
"We challenged Radcliffe to a hockey game in the hopes that the defense of their honor would provide the necessary incentive to get them to form a team," Pandas co-captain Cappy Cummings wrote.
"The Pandas are getting a little desperate," Cappy wrote. "We've got all kinds of equipment, enthusiasm, and well-wishers--but no one to play."
By the 1970s, schools like Connecticut, New Hampshire, Yale, Princeton, Clarkson, Colgate and Cornell were all fielding women's hockey teams, and soon the Pembroke Pandas would become the Brown Pandas, hosting the first ever Ivy League tournament in 1976.
Today, the Brown Bears women's hockey team still play at the same Meehan Auditorium. Founded in 1964, the team is the longest running women's college hockey program in America.
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