My background, in a nutshell

Something tells me I should be writing this in the third person; Colleen Coyne was born and raised in East Falmouth, MA, blah, blah, blah.  It just doesn't feel right.   

It is true, I did grow up in East Falmouth; a nice town located on Cape Cod.  It was a great place to grow up and I feel fortunate to have had that opportunity.  Along with my 3 siblings and my parents, we were very active in the youth sports organizations.  Personally, I was most interested in hockey and baseball.  I also played soccer and dabbled in basketball for a season or two.  We try not to bring that up as I think it may be offensive to any basketball player for me to claim that I "played" the game.

To this day it hard for me to say, honestly, that hockey was always my favorite.  I loved playing baseball; pitching in particular.  Like with skating, I was the beneficiary of outstanding tutelage when it came to pitching.  My dad was quite a pitcher in his day.  I didn't have to take his word for it either.  There were some pretty credible sources that assured me he was a pretty smart ball player.  If you asked him, he would probably tell you that his advice on pitching was one of the few things I really listened to as a kid.  I loved it.  I have always preferred team sports, but I loved the head-to-head combat between a pitcher and a hitter.  It was more than physical, it was a mental battle as well.

I did always love hockey, though.  From the time I was eight years old, I took power skating instructions from a woman named Debbie Fernandes.  She was a figure skater herself; a fact that I believe made her the great instructor that she was and continues to be.  I would attend classes first thing in the morning, before school.  Thank you mom and dad.  Those were some early mornings.  I continued to return to Debbie through high school and college.  I would always call her when I was home on break.

I played my high school hockey at Tabor Academy in Marion, MA.  They had just started their girls' program a year or so before I got there.  I had three great years there and then headed up to Durham, NH for four great years as a Wildcat at the University of New Hampshire.

Those 7 hockey seasons, when I had the oppotrunity to skate 5 or 6 days a week, no doubt put me in position to join the U.S. National and Olympic teams.  I was a member of those teams from 1992-1998.  I had a chance to play in several international competitions including 3 world championship tournaments and, of course, the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.