A century of making high-school sports history in Rhode Island will end next spring for Mount Saint Charles Academy.
More than 100 championship plaques mounted on a hallway wall — and glass trophy cases filled with hardware — will remind future Mount Saint Charles students of the glory their predecessors earned while competing in the Rhode Island Interscholastic League.
A year from now, Mount colors will fly in the New England Preparatory School Athletic Council. That’s right. The red brick fortress on Logee Street in Woonsocket, built more than a century ago to educate the sons of French-Canadian millworkers, will be a Catholic prep school.
Why? I asked myself that question a few times after Alan Tenreiro, the academy’s president, announced the move Nov. 21.
Why would the school leave? This is a school that helped form the Rhode Island Interscholastic Athletic Conference in 1928 and four years later became a charter member of the Rhode Island Interscholastic League leave?
This is a school that won 26 consecutive state championships in boys ice hockey from 1978 to 2003 and has sent players to both the NHL and the Olympics.
Why would a small school with a big reputation dump long-time rivals like La Salle Academy, Burrillville High and Woonsocket High for prep schools few Rhode Islanders are familiar with?
The answer, I learned, is opportunity.
“We see the best chance for our future in the NEPSAC,” Tenreiro told me when we spoke last week. He is a Mountie through and through. A 1992 graduate. A soccer and tennis player. He knows the school, and the Interscholastic League, as well as anyone.
Mount Saint Charles is the first school of any athletics prominence to leave the RIIL since its founding. That alone makes this move stunning. The decision came eight months after the RIIL’s Principal’s Committee on Athletics voted 15-0 to sanction Mount for alleged recruiting, eligibility and programming violations and fine the school a total of $800.
“No sanctions were applied. We worked with the Interscholastic League and got a stay as we tried to work things out. We haven’t paid anything,” Tenreiro said.
He added: “We’ve been looking at this type of move over the last six to seven years off and on. Even before the hockey academy we did a survey, and 80 percent of parents responded that we should look at it.”
Ah, the Mount Saint Charles Hockey Academy, or Rhode Island Saint M’s as they are known in the hockey world. In 2019 MSC launched a high-level hockey program completely separate from its RIIL program. Separate coaching staff. Separate schedule of 50-plus games from September to April. Four age groups. Post-graduate opportunity. Now, 72 boarders residing in an on-campus dorm. Tuition, room, board and fees totaling about $43,000.
The Rhode Island Saint M’s play hockey a few notches above the Interscholastic League with its 16-game season. Think Juniors, national and international travel, USA Hockey championships. The program raised eyebrows in high-school circles when it started but proceeded without interference from the RIIL until this year.
The RIIL cited Mount Saint Charles for recruiting, offering non-school athletic programs and coaching out of season by adding soccer and basketball skills electives,.
“We lived up to the spirit and letter of the rules that were promulgated,” Tenreiro said.
Reaction from the Interscholastic League to Mount’s announcement has been silence. Mike Lunney, executive director of the RIIL, declined to comment. “We got to let Mount 12Saint Charles speak for themselves,” he said.
Dan Warner, principal of Narragansett High School for 25 years, currently principal of the Block Island School and chair of the Principals Committee on Athletics, also declined.
“It’s too soon,” he said and referred questions to the league office.
NEPSAC membership will provide Mount Saint Charles the opportunity to enhance its athletics program with multiple teams in different classes, a wider variety of sports choices and participation opportunities, and greater exposure to college coaches and recruiters at showcase events and tournaments, all that while remaining committed to its mission.
“Our core essence will never change. We’ll continue to teach good moral character and how to be successful in life,” Tenreiro said.
He doesn’t know in which NEPSAC class Mount will settle. “We’re a small school with 415 kids in the high school. Probably Class C,” he said. He emphasized the hockey academy Saint M’s teams will remain separate from the NEPSAC teams as they are now from the Interscholastic League teams.
One veteran of the Mount staff is less than thrilled with this development.
“This move makes me very sad. We’re a founding father of the Rhode Island Interscholastic League,” Richard Lawrence told me. In his 50-year career at Mount Saint Charles he has taught English, coached soccer and tennis and directed the athletics department. He has worked with RIIL executive directors the Rev. Robert Newbold, Dick Lynch, Tom Mezzanotte and Mike Lunney.
“I’m of a different ilk. I’m so grounded in the Interscholastic League. It’s where my history is. I wish things could have been worked out,” he said.
Lawrence saw Mount accept girls in 1972 after St. Clare High School in Woonsocket closed, add a middle school — and then a sixth grade — and four years ago build a dorm and open the hockey academy.
The goal was simple. Survive. Joining NEPSAC is a another step toward that goal.
“Every single thing we did with respect to athletics and expansion we tried to conform to the rules. The principals didn’t see it that way,” Lawrence said.
So six months from now, Mount Saint Charles Academy will say goodbye to the Rhode Island Interscholastic League, ending a relationship that began in 1932.
“We are trying to survive and flourish, not go off and win championships. The bottom line is this is how we’re going to make it,” Lawrence said. “It’s a historic step. This is historic!”
