Melba Masse: A Life of Leadership in Vermont Athletics

Melba Masse was one of the lucky ones.

Enthralled with sports from a young age, Masse spent much of her childhood on the ski slopes of northern Vermont and playing basketball or “sandlot” baseball with her older cousins and neighborhood friends. And when she wasn’t kicking up fresh powder or diamond dust, she could typically be found around the radio, listening to New England’s favorite baseball team, the Boston Red Sox.

Had she grown up elsewhere, that sandlot may have been where Melba’s athletics dreams stalled – the sad reality faced by most girls in America in the 1930s and 1940s, some three decades before Title IX brought a tangible sense of equity to the high school landscape.

But Melba’s story had another chapter. She carried her keen childhood interest into an organized middle school girls basketball program; and with kindergarten through 12th grade all under the same roof in the Cambridge High School (CHS) building, she took advantage of bonus opportunities to hone her skills.

“When I was in junior high school, my cousins were playing on the high school basketball team.” Masse said. “So, I used to go fool around with them and watch and so on.”

All the “fooling around” landed her on the CHS varsity team as a freshman, paving a path to four years of hoops stardom that only intensified Masse’s already burning desire to compete.

Her interest in mathematics prompted her to enroll at Johnson State Teachers College (JTSC) (now part of Vermont State University), where she broadened her athletics horizons substantially. In addition to basketball, Masse landed on teams for softball, volleyball and soccer – a sport she had never played previously – and achieved a level of all-around excellence that made her a charter member of the school’s athletics Hall of Fame in 1982.

But while she may be enshrined for her success on the court and field, it was the diversity of her sports experience at Johnson State that ultimately set the table for her legendary career. A teacher, coach, administrator and true pioneer, Masse spent her illustrious tenure working tirelessly to reshape the Vermont high school sports scene – one she remains connected to, 70 years later.

Despite her multi-sport expertise, Masse “didn’t really know” she would coach or have anything to do with athletics as a professional, even upon her graduation from JTSC in 1954. Instead, she followed her original plan and accepted a position to teach junior high math at Essex High School (EHS) in Essex Junction, Vermont.

As fate would have it, the position featured two additional responsibilities: junior high and high school physical education instructor for female students.

“That was the opening they had, and because of my background and everything I played, they wanted me to teach physical education.” Masse said. “The basketball (coaching) position was open (as well), and they wanted me to coach that since I played.”

Masse began her 25-year coaching tenure with Essex’s basketball and cheerleading teams, and with a dedication to the fundamentals, steadily built a championship-level hoops program that won two “mythical” state titles in the mid-1960s.

Shortly thereafter, while completing her master’s at the University of Maine-Orono, she channeled her experience at Johnson State, utilizing her PE curriculum at EHS to introduce her students to two new sports: softball and field hockey. And although teaching softball was no issue, as Masse could adapt her foundational knowledge dating to the sandlot, field hockey was a completely different animal.

“I had never seen the sport,” she said. “The boys physical education teacher at the time, he and his wife had come from Maryland, and his wife knew field hockey. So, she helped me get started with it and convinced us to start the program.”

Masse also spoke with the few other field hockey schools in Vermont and sought out summer camps to learn even more about the game, often taking her teams with her to maximize everyone’s ability to learn on the fly.

“It was challenging, but it was competitive and fast, so I really liked it,” said Masse. “And it was new to (the girls), too, and they were all excited. So, it was a cooperative thing. And that made it easier.”

After cultivating her players’ interest and skills for several years, Masse was able to launch official field hockey and softball programs at Essex in 1968 and 1969, respectively. At that point, with EHS’ girls athletics offerings and her own coaching responsibilities growing simultaneously, Masse gave up her position as head basketball coach to focus on the new sports as well as another new task: raising the competitive stakes.

The passage of Title IX was still a handful of years away, but whispers of sanctioned state championships for girls sports had already crescendoed into full-blown conversations in Vermont, and Masse jumped at the chance to add her voice.

Having attended interscholastic “playdates” as well as collaborative physical education conferences for a number of years, Masse was able to parlay the networking she had done in those settings into truly groundbreaking state committee work.

“I was on the committee that worked on the first state championships for girls sports,” Masse said. “And it just so happened that field hockey was the one that (the Vermont Principals Association) (VPA) wanted to do first, because they thought it was not quite as competitive as basketball would be to start with.”

While opening the girls state championship era with field hockey may have been ultra-convenient given its timeliness with Masse’s interest, the committee’s trailblazing journey from inception to completion was anything but.

“We had many, many meetings – it didn’t happen quickly,” Masse said. “It took us a few years to really get it organized and figure out how we were going to run these things. And it was hard for some people to accept the fact that girls needed to have state championships, too. Girls sports were always being looked at as ‘not as competitive’ as the boys.”

Unsurprisingly, when the dust finally settled in 1970, there was no doubt whose team was most competitive, as Masse’s Hornets became the first girls team in state history to hoist state championship hardware.

Essex would claim a second field hockey state title under Masse’s leadership in 1975, part of a hugely successful year that also included the coach’s only state softball crown.

Masse would relinquish her softball coaching duties in 1976, a precursor to her closing the book on her high school coaching career – along with a brief stint as EHS athletic director – in 1979.

But 1976 also signaled yet another new beginning for Masse, as she helped found the Northern Vermont Athletic Conference (NVAC) and served on several of its sports committees the first few years. In the grand scheme of things, stepping away from some of her work at Essex wasn’t so much an “end” as it was a change in scope, as her statewide impact increased exponentially when she became the NVAC’s executive secretary in 1980.

Masse collected dues, paid bills, handled game protests and took care of many other matters for the league and its 40-plus member schools, but there is no question as to the two job responsibilities she is best known for over her 40-year tenure.

The first piece of her lasting NVAC legacy would have to be the Vermont Student Athletic Leadership Conference (VSALC), an initiative she co-founded and co-chaired for 25 years with Dan Marlow, athletic director at Bellows Free Academy (BFA)-St. Albans High School.

“Dan and I had been talking about how it would be good to get some of the NVAC’s top students together to talk about what could be improved with athletics here in the state,” Masse said. “Each school would pick some of their best (student-athletes) and send them, and we’d bring in speakers to talk to them about sportsmanship, leadership, things like that. Then, other schools in the state wanted to join us.”

And join them, they did. From the time of the first NSALC, which hosted roughly 50 student leaders at Castleton State College in the mid-1980s, the Conference has more than quadrupled in size, and grew at a rate that forced Melba and Dan to reconsider the logistics.

“It got big enough that we had to move it to a hotel,” said Masse. “Schools started sending six to eight kids, and it grew to over 200 kids. I think it’s even bigger now.”

Her “Queen of the Master Schedules” moniker was earned for her service to all 25 NVAC sports – primarily over her last 15 years working with the league – but is most closely associated with ice hockey for a number of reasons.

For starters, Masse’s history with ice hockey goes all the way back to 1973, the first season Essex was able to play inside its newly constructed indoor rink. Melba started attending games on Saturday mornings and gradually became more involved in the athletic director’s game management staff. Fellow athletic directors at two nearby schools – Mount Mansfield Union High School and Winooski High School – took note and hired her to run their games as well, which made her a natural fit for the scheduling role when the VPA-certified Vermont Hockey League was formed the following season.

Even though Essex and BFA-St. Albans are two of the state’s few exceptions, most schools do not have their own hockey rinks for games. This brings a significant layer of complexity to the scheduling procedure as much of it is predicated on communication with third-party community rinks regarding available ice time.

“The first thing I do after our annual alignment meeting is I send out a form to all the rinks so they can let me know what they’re going to give their schools for ice time,” Masse said. “Then, I have to fit the games into the slots that are available, and I have to do a lot of shuffling. And sometimes I have to contact the rinks to see if there’s not some other time that’s available.”

If the tense of that quote didn’t give it away, the biggest reason Masse is so revered for her skillful scheduling of ice hockey games is that – now well into her 90s – she STILL does it, having assembled all 50 VHL seasons.

“Nobody is jumping to take my place,” she said.

The truth is, nobody could.

A 2001 NFHS Citation recipient and member of the VPA, Vermont Sports and New Agenda Northeast Women’s Halls of Fame in addition to her standing at Johnson State, Masse had her contributions to high school ice hockey immortalized during the VPA state finals this past March. At a ceremony held prior to the Division 2 girls state title game, the VHL dedicated its new rotating state championship trophies – given out along with the VPA crowns – in Masse’s honor, a fitting tribute to a leader who epitomized greatness in the eyes of so many.

“I have been very satisfied with the career I had and what I was able to do,” she said. “All of the friendships that I’ve made throughout all of these years, people I still keep in touch with, I just really enjoyed it.”

Yes, Melba Masse was lucky to grow up in Vermont. But Vermont has been much luckier to have her.