Family Picture: The Everett Family Endows Women's Hockey Head Coaching Position

The Everett family - Bob ‘65 and Mary ‘66, their daughter Liz ‘97 and husband Brian Krisberg, son Peter and youngest daughter Cate MMH’19 - has been a fixture at Cornell athletic events for six decades. Their recent gift to create the Everett Family Head Coach of Women's Hockey comes as the Big Red readies to celebrate the 50th anniversary of women's varsity athletics at their alma mater. Now they're hoping their generosity can inspire others to step forward and support Cornell Athletics - and like them, build a new extended family of their own.

Doug Derraugh '91 stood in the tunnel at Lynah Rink as his Cornell women's ice hockey team huddled up at center ice.

The final practice of the season is often emotional, particularly for the senior class. For the top-ranked Big Red, less than 48 hours from the scheduled puck drop in search of its first national championship, this practice wasn't remotely supposed to be its last.

When the players got out of bed that morning, they were a little more than 48 hours away from hosting the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Less than three hours before their practice, however, Derraugh, his staff and their players gathered for a team meeting in their locker room to process the NCAA's decision to cancel all winter championships.

Tears were shed. Frustrations were vented. Their journey, travelled so well but with no chance to reach their destination, was over. They decided to control what they could and make their own ending. Instead of packing up their lockers and escaping the pain, they dressed and took the ice one final time together.

Just steps from the ice they call home, Derraugh took in one final moment with a group as special as they come.

The date was March 12, 2020, and the walls had collapsed in on college athletics and the United States as a whole. COVID-19 had taken hold on the coasts and was spreading unconstrained. Though Ithaca was untouched for the time being, the Ivy League Presidents made a decision to move forward in what they felt was the best interest of their campuses and student-athletes. Two days earlier they had cancelled the Ivy League men's and women's basketball tournaments in an abundance of caution, and the previous day they announced that spring seasons were postponed. Now, the NCAA had made the inevitable official.

Within days, students would be going home and anyone who wasn't the most essential of workers would be shuttered in their homes.

But this isn't about the virus and the havoc it wreaked, but rather a picture and the family it displayed. It's about the Big Red women's hockey program, the creation of a new family and a love song to Cornell.

It's also about the Everett family, and how a loose connection has become the strongest of bonds.

Bob and Mary Everett are loyal Cornellians. Mary played field hockey and lacrosse in the years before Title IX, when a group of women would be rounded up with a couple of hours notice to play a game against local colleges. Bob's connection to Cornell stretches back even further. His brother, Pete, enrolled in the fall of 1949 and bought him a subscription to the Cornell Sun. 

"For a kid, heroes are born," Bob Everett said of Cornell Hall of Famers like Rip Haley ‘51, Frank Bettucci ’53 and Dick Mathewson '55.

It was already Everett's hometown team by the time he enrolled in 1961.

Naturally, the Everetts' love of Cornell was passed along to their kids. Their daughter Liz chairs the Cornell Athletics Alumni Advisory Committee and is a member of the University's Board of Trustees. Another daughter, Cate, graduated from the SC Johnson School of Business in 2019 with a Master's of Management in Hospitality. Their son Peter attended Williams, where he was a championship oarsman, but grew up as and remains a Big Red fan. 

"I grew up in Schoellkopf. I learned a lot of vocabulary words in Lynah Rink," said Liz Everett Krisberg '97. "That created an environment where we've all been passionate fans of the Big Red. And more than that, we believe strongly that athletics is complementary to the university's academic mission."

Celebrations are often joyous, but sometimes solemn. 

As Derraugh peered out at the ice on the evening of March 12, athletic trainer Katy Harris captured the moment with her iPhone, documenting a final group hug for the 2019-20 season. It was a tender, and inauspicious, end to a campaign that included Ivy League and ECAC Hockey regular season titles and capped as the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in program history. 

What was happening in the middle of an empty Lynah Rink was a celebration in the same way a funeral is a celebration of life. A full range of emotions was on display - sadness, gratitude, pain, resolve. Any family can understand that moment of loss and the conflicting emotions involved.

Harris' picture ended up in the hands of Manoj Dalaya, the father of goalie Alexandra Dalaya. Manoj was so moved that he painted a water color of the scene and sent it to Coach Derraugh.

A print of that water color ended up in the hands of the Everett family. 

"Boy that really got our attention. Obviously something terrific is going on here," Bob Everett said.

Bob and Mary had been introduced to All-American Lindsay Browning during her freshman year when she wrote a note to the family while on a bus heading to Harvard for a key conference game. They kept that thoughtful postcard and were excited when Browning rang them as part of the athletic department's “thankathon”. Later the players emailed a short video thanking them for their support. Browning's teammates Amy Curlew, Finley Frechette and Maddie Mills also met the Everetts and continued to build a friendship. 

"It's a community of people that we care about. It's a gift that we've been given," said Mary Everett of their growing relationship with women's hockey.

Cornell women's ice hockey has been among the top teams in the country for more than a decade. Since 2010, the Big Red has appeared in four Frozen Fours and advanced to the championship game once, were invited to eight NCAA tournaments, claimed seven Ivy League titles, with six ECAC Hockey regular season crowns and hoisted four league tournament trophies. Head coach Doug Derraugh has been named ECAC Hockey Coach of the Year five times and has been recognized as AHCA Division I National Coach of the Year on three occasions. 

Over that 11-year span, Cornell has won 74 percent of its games overall (258-80-36), and has been even better in ECAC Hockey play (78 percent) and better still against Ivy opponents (82 percent). 

That type of stratospheric success has put the Big Red high on the list of national title contenders year-in and year-out. 

"When I first started coaching at Cornell, I heard from the other coaches in ECAC Hockey about how fortunate I was to be in this position at a university where they support women's ice hockey so strongly. We are very fortunate to have a town, a community, a school and alumni that supports women's ice hockey, the way they do," Derraugh said.

Just as impressive has been their commitment to service and the Ithaca community.

"These women are such an inspiration to young girls, which is reinforcing and creating this wonderful example and path," Everett Krisberg said. "They are spending hours in the weight room, at practice, networking for jobs, and then on top of that, spending time with members of the community. I don't know how they do it, but I'm looking forward to learning from them."

“Coming to a place like Cornell University, you're going to get a degree that's going to help set you up and position yourself competitively in the global workplace. It's not only being a great hockey player, but being great in the classroom, being great and giving back in the community, being a great teammate, learning to be a great leader, learning to be a great follower. All of these life skills are going to help you to be successful for the rest of your life. Cornell will challenge you, and I think those challenges also help student-athletes deal with other aspects that are going to be challenging in their lives afterward.”

Challenges like they face today: losing out on two potential championship runs and limiting time together with their family - their own and their extended Cornell ones. 

The Everetts' love of Cornell and Big Red athletics led them to closely follow their University's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The same pandemic that ended the Big Red's national championship dreams and that led to the image that so touched them, was now providing an opportunity to set an example for others who also loved Cornell athletics.

"We knew that we wanted to do something meaningful that could have a broad impact," Everett Krisberg said.

A single conversation with the Everett family began with the same sentence that Bob Everett had often uttered during his long career in alumni affairs and development at Cornell.

"Here is an opportunity that you need to know about."

That opportunity, presented so ably to Liz and Brian by Cornell Major Gifts Officer Marike Toothaker, was to make a gift that would endow the Cornell women's ice hockey head coaching position. 

Liz and Brian brought the opportunity to the rest of the family and invited them to join together as a family. They all considered and ultimately agreed. The only condition was that it be named for the entire family.

"In giving back, particularly in my volunteer roles, I get more out of it than I give. So part of it is paying back by paying forward, but the other part is seeing how it positively impacts the student-athletes' experience. It's just a no brainer," Liz said.

"In the midst of all that has gone on, we have the Everett family deciding to step up and endow the head coaching position at this time when everybody's feeling so low and distraught," Derraugh said. "It was a huge boost, not just for women's ice hockey, but for the entire athletic department."

Bob and Mary Everett had the picture of the final practice framed for Liz and Brian as a holiday gift. They couldn't wait until Christmas, so they made Liz open it on Christmas eve.

When she met with a number of players via Zoom in early January, she made sure to point out its prominent place in their entryway.

It brought smiles to the players' faces. It also reframed that picture from one of grief and loss to one of love and family.

"Did we stretch to do this?" Bob Everett said. "Yes. Absolutely! I think there are a lot of people who are looking at the year-end values of their pension or their IRA accounts, who have done extraordinarily well. It seemed this was just the perfect opportunity to share that unanticipated windfall. We think of how much good this gift is going to do. I feel like this is not just a gift that we're giving, we feel it's a gift that we are receiving. Knowing and having a connection with these student-athletes is like having another family."

"Family is probably the most important thing in our lives and we feel very grateful. And it's not just our immediate family. We have this extended family," Mary said.

"Family is the priority in the household," Bob added. "Family and Cornell."