From Spartans to Olympians

Former LA athletes and their quest for gold

By Philip Hersh ’64 (contributing writer)

A luger. A rower. Five hockey players. Two women, five men.

They are Lawrence Academy’s Olympians — or, in one case, oh-so-close to being an Olympian.

The whole idea of LA Olympians in these sports seems incongruous to someone like me, who was in the LA Class of ’64. In those days, the hockey rink was little more than what someone might assemble in a backyard — an ice sheet and boards near the windswept playing fields below the dining hall. Not exactly conducive to attracting Olympiclevel hockey talent. Even though the hill leading down to those fields was steep enough for some good sledding, it wouldn’t exactly be a luge track. And while many New England secondary schools have rowing programs, Lawrence is not one of them. Yet here we were, sharing Olympic memories over Zoom for an Alumni Speaker Series panel I moderated a few hours after the first 2022 Winter Olympics events had taken place in China.

Ninety minutes later, 1984 Olympian Dave Jensen delivered a perfect coda to the conversation. Jensen transferred to Lawrence Academy as a junior after what he described as unhappy years at another school. He spent very little of his senior year on campus because of commitments to six months of Olympic preparation.

“Coming to Lawrence Academy was the best decision I ever made for many reasons,” Jensen said. “I got the support of everybody on campus, academically or in sports. Everybody wanted to help you try to succeed.” The support could come from a flexible academic program known as LA II, which helped both Jensen and 1994 Olympic luger Jonathan Edwards stay on track to graduate while rarely on campus. It could come from the decision to build an indoor hockey rink dedicated in 1972, or it could come from the hectoring and mentorship of longtime hockey coach Charlie Corey. (All four of the men’s hockey players on the panel — Jensen, Steve Heinze, Ted Crowley, and Craig MacDonald — went on to play in the National Hockey League.)

Or, it could come from the school’s 1970 decision to become coeducational again, after seven decades of being all male, and the sports opportunities provided to young women including 1992 Olympic rower Cindy Ryder Matthes and 1998–2002 Olympic hockey player Laurie Baker McLaughlin, who were multi-sports athletes at Lawrence.

There are recurrent themes in each of their stories. The pride each felt in representing his or her country in international competition is one such theme.“When you pull on that USA jersey for the first time in an Olympic game, it’s an indescribable feeling,” Jensen said.

When Baker McLaughlin did that in 1998, she was part of the first women’s Olympic hockey tournament. Her teams won gold in 1998 and silver in 2002. They were trailblazers who played it forward to many of the women on the 2018 team that also won gold. “As we travelled the country (on their preOlympic tour), it was amazing to see all the little girls coming out, whether they played or not,” Baker McLaughlin recalled.

Ryder Matthes’ Olympic dreams were spurred by watching 1976 gymnastics champion Nadia Comaneci achieve the perfect 10. She would get her first taste of the Olympics by running part of the torch relay for the 1984 Los Angeles Summer Games.

A runner and skier at LA, she took up rowing as a club sport at Bucknell, and then got serious about it when she moved to Boston after graduation. Ryder Matthes won a gold medal in single sculls at the 1991 Pan American Games in Cuba before placing 11th in double sculls at the 1992 Summer Games in Spain. “I spent my high school and college years building up my aerobic base, and that’s what allowed me to become a successful rower,” she said.

Jonathan Edwards transferred to LA to play lacrosse. He had tried street luge — sleds on wheels — a couple of times as a kid. At 16, he was invited to spend two weeks sliding on ice at the Olympic Training Center in Lake Placid. “I stayed five weeks, and that was all she wrote,” Edwards said of getting hooked on the sport.

Laurie Baker McLaughlin ’95

Cindy Ryder Matthes ’84

Jonathan Edwards ’91

David Jensen ’84

Steve Heinz ’88 After being named to the junior national luge team, Edwards would spend only five weeks of the fall in Groton as a junior and just two weeks as a senior. The LA II program allowed him to progress toward his 1991 graduation, even though — in those pre-internet days — it meant lugging his books around Europe.

“Lawrence’s attitude toward this was, ’Let’s make it work,’’’ Edwards said. It put him on the path to the 1994 Norway Winter Olympics in doubles luge. Edwards and partner Mark Grimmette finished fourth, then the highest finish ever for a U.S. team in the event.

Dave Jensen’s 1984 Olympic hockey team, which finished seventh, had the unenviable task of following the Miracle on Ice team of 1980, when the U.S. stunned the redoubtable Soviet Union in its medal round opening game and went on to win gold. “I was too young and stupid to know any better as far as feeling any extra pressure,” Jensen said. “I’m sure there was some.”

Steve Heinze, 10 years old in 1980, was one of many American kids motivated to play in the Olympics by watching the Miracle on Ice team. When he made it to the 1992 Olympics in France, the team’s play in winning its round-robin group and quarterfinal match spurred thoughts of history repeating itself, before the U.S. met the Russians (then known as the Unified Team) in the semifinals.

“We were on the cover of USA Today,” Heinze recalled. “They were thinking we might be the next ’Miracle.’’’

They hung with the Russians into the second period before losing 5-2, then could not regroup for the bronze medal game with Czechoslovakia. “One of my greatest regrets is that we couldn’t play the Czechs tougher,” said Heinze, who went on to a 12-year NHL career, with four seasons of 20-plus goals.

Ted Crowly ’89

There is a bittersweet Olympic connection between Heinze and Ted Crowley. They might have played together in 1992 had Crowley, slowed by an injury, not been cut just before the team left for the Olympics. Heinze wound up with Crowley’s jersey number (11).

“Just a quirky thing that my Olympic experience is tied to Ted after knowing and playing with him since I was 12 years old and through Lawrence Academy and Boston College,” Heinze said.

Crowley then caught a break because of the 1986 International Olympic Committee decision that switched the Winter Games, previously held the same year as the Summer Games, to the mid-point of the Olympic quadrennium. The first Winter Games of the new cycle was in 1994, so Crowley barely had to wait for another chance. “My favorite Olympic moment,” Crowley deadpanned about learning the next Winter Games were only two years from 1992.

Hockey was literally an underground sport at the 1994 Olympics, with games in the world’s largest subterranean arena, Gjovik Olympic Cavern Hall, nearly 400 feet below ground. “The team bus drove right into the cave,” Crowley recalled. The U.S. finished eighth.

For Craig MacDonald, a decision made in 1995 to allow NHL players in the Winter Games meant he had the odd experience of playing hockey for Team Canada in Japan less than three weeks before he would watch the 1998 Olympics in Nagano from afar. The players on that pre-Olympic iteration of the Canadian national team all would be replaced by NHL stars who arrived in Japan just a few days before their Olympic tournament began. MacDonald had played 62 games for the national team in the five months before the Olympics.

Ironically, another player from his small hometown, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, got a chance to be in the 2022 Winter Olympics when the NHL pulled out at the 11th hour because of COVID-related scheduling issues. “Best on best is what we all want to see,” MacDonald said of the NHL presence, “but what an opportunity for those kids to play.”

MacDonald was sorry to have missed out on that but felt the same way as the Lawrence Olympians did about having played for Canada on the international stage. “When you put that jersey on, it’s pretty special, whether it’s the highest level at the Olympics or any time you can represent your country,” he said.

Even if it didn’t say so on their uniforms, all seven also represented Lawrence Academy. Then and now.

Craig MacDonald ’95