Former Harvard women’s hockey coach Katey Stone filed a sex discrimination suit against the university Tuesday, alleging it forced her out following reports of misconduct she denies.
Stone, who coached the team for 27 seasons, resigned in June 2023 amid an investigation into allegations of a toxic culture in the program.
These allegations, first reported last year by The Boston Globe, include Stone allegedly making insensitive remarks about Native Americans, body-shaming players and overseeing a culture of hazing that although Stone wasn’t directly involved in, she was still responsible for preventing.
According to a report published last year in The Athletic, players were pressured by upperclassmen to participate in an annual “naked skate,” during which some freshmen were told to “superman” slide on the ice, leaving them with ice burns and bleeding nipples.
There was also the annual “Initiation Week,” where underclassmen were urged to, among other things, mimic sex acts and overconsume alcohol, according to the Athletic.
The Athletic did not find evidence that Stone played any role in these hazing incidents, and in the suit filed Tuesday, Stone denied having any knowledge of them or of fostering an inappropriate culture.
In the complaint, she decries her forced resignation, calling it “part and parcel of a larger culture at the University wherein female coaches are undervalued, underpaid, heavily scrutinized, and held to a breathtakingly more stringent standard of behavior than their male counterparts.”
“I will no longer stand idly by in the face of inequity 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 Tuesday, The Boston Globe reported.
“The loss of my career, my reputation, my ability to earn a living doing a job I love, is gut-wrenching,” she said. “The damage has been real and affects me every single day.”
In the complaint, Stone alleges that the former players accusing her of misconduct were acting out of a “personal vendetta” and therefore shared false information with the Globe.
The complaint mentions that despite Harvard’s public acknowledgement that the team has not fostered a culture of hazing, the university nevertheless tacitly endorsed this narrative by forcing Stone to retire.
This wouldn’t have happened if Stone were a man, the suit claims.
“Harvard has long accepted, if not outright approved and encouraged, behavior akin to the allegations against Coach Stone from its male coaches and staff without incident,” the complaint states.
It goes on to list examples of misconduct by men’s teams under the purview of male coaches who weren’t punished, such as in 2016 when the Harvard men’s soccer team came under investigation for ranking the female soccer team based on sex appeal.
Stone in the complaint also accuses the university of gender-based pay discrimination, alleging that she was paid “at an egregiously lesser scale” than the men’s hockey coach, and that the university refused to reveal the breakdown of compensation levels between male and female coaches.
Stone is seeking no less than $5 million in damages from the university as well as from the 50 Jane Doe defendants accused of defaming her.
She became head coach prior to the 1994-95 season. Over her 29-year tenure, Stone won more than 500 games and led her team to six Frozen Four appearances and four NCAA title games.
