Princeton University Athletics
Pier Pressure
February 10, 2000 | Women's Ice Hockey
It's lunchtime, and Mollie Marcoux '91 is skating. She is living in the highest pressure world of New York City business, yet she can still lace up her skates at lunchtime for a quick game of hockey.
For probably the best women's hockey player in Princeton history, what could be better?
This is an interesting world, the one in which Mollie Marcoux now lives. She is at heart a small-town girl, and now she is in the biggest city there is.
"I was worried about living in the city," she says. "I wasn't sure I was going to like the lack of ability to get out and go hiking and biking and things like that. But at least here, I can look out my window and see the boats going by on the river."
And when she does, she's facing away from the other eight million or so New Yorkers. She's in Manhattan, but it's a different kind of Manhattan.
This is one with skating rinks and basketball courts and golf clubs. This is one where celebrities on their way to high-powered functions walk past middle managers on their way to a workout. This is Chelsea Piers, and Mollie Marcoux is right in the middle of it.
"This is a great place to be," she says. "It's a perfect place for me."
Prior to a major renovation project earlier this decade, Chelsea Piers was probably best known for being the destination that the maiden voyage of the Titanic never reached and for being the port from which the ship the Lusitania departed in 1915 before it was sunk by a German U-boat in an event that would lead America into World War I. By the 1960s the Manhattan piers were used less and less as air travel became the preferred mode, and by the mid-'80s only four piers were still left standing.
A redevelopment project that began in 1992 saw the four piers (Piers 59-62) purchased with the idea of building a recreation area centered around two ice rinks and one roller rink. Today the Piers activities range from skating to bowling to golf to a sports center and a field house, as well as conference and banquet facilities and even a television studio, where such New York-based hits as Law and Order and Spin City are filmed.
Marcoux's own experiences in New York began with a different kind of New York, the one located about four hours northwest of the city. Marcoux grew up in Ithaca, but the hometown Cornell let her get away to Princeton when it came time to choose a college.
The soccer/hockey player would win eight letters as a Princetonian. In her first two falls the soccer team was 10-18-2, in her last two falls she would help the Tigers go 20-9-1. Today she ranks fifth all-time in scoring at Princeton.
It was in hockey, however, that she truly made her mark. She graduated as the school's career leader in goals, assists and points, though she is second in all three today. She still holds the school record for goals in a season with 35.
She was the 1988 Ivy League Rookie of the Year, and she is one of only four Tigers and seven Ivy players to be a four-time all-league selection. She was also named in 1990 to the ECAC Team of the Decade. Last year she was named to the Ivy League's women's hockey Silver Anniversary team.
After graduation Marcoux went to the Lawrenceville School, where she worked in the Admission Office, coached soccer and hockey and lived in the dorms. She left in 1995 to go to Chelsea Piers.
"I knew I wanted to get into some kind of sports marketing," she says. "I had a friend from Lawrenceville who knew Roland Betts, who started Chelsea Piers. I've been here for four years now, and I've done everything. I started just after the Piers opened. When I first started only half the athletic facilities were built. The ice rink was open, and the roller rinks were open. The other stuff was just about finished."
She began doing marketing for the entire complex and also helped in areas such as designing corporate sponsorships. Since then she has worked with the summer camps that the Piers run, taking a program that didn't exist and helping build it to what is today, a series of nine different sports camps.
"They've had such incredible vision when they built this," she says. "They just wanted to build an ice rink, but the state made them take all four piers. They had some extra space to fill, so they tried to think of things that weren't available in Manhattan. In Manhattan everything is so vertical. They had the space here, and they tried to think of ways to fill it. They started with 100 employees, now they have more than 1,000."
Of that group, Marcoux now oversees approximately 200 in her new role as manager of the events center, which is located on Pier 60.
"I basically run the center," she says. "It all grew out of the demand for events space. After they built most of the areas, they had some space left over that was supposed to be garage space. Instead, they saw the incredible demand there was an events center. We had a few little rooms, but they decided to completely expand it. Then they came to me and asked me to run it. I said to them, 'what are you, crazy? I don't know anything about food services or banquets or anything like that.' But their philosophy is to take people here and let them grow. They gave me the chance."
As a result she has overseen an operation that specializes in everything from small parties to bar mitzvahs and weddings to high-powered big-city soirees.
"We have black tie affairs, celebrity benefits," she says. "One day you see Barbara Walters. Then you see Henry Kissinger. Peter Jennings. You never know who will be next. We share an entrance with the gym. We have a very elegant entranceway, but it's still next to the gym. Barbara Walters gets out of her limo, and someone rollerblades right past her. It's a different setting for an events center, but it works."
Marcoux may be making a big splash in the big city, but she's still only an hour from Princeton. And she still gets to play hockey, and she was also part of a soccer league run out of the Piers.
"I definitely miss Princeton," she says. "It's refreshing to get back there for a weekend. Jim [Barlow, the men's soccer coach] is one of my best friends from Princeton. I've stayed in touch with the hockey program and the soccer programs. Julie [Shackford] is taking the women's program in the right direction."
Mollie Marcoux is headed in her own direction, which appears to be straight up.
by Jerry Price