After three years at Marblehead High School, Mark Marfione decided to look for work in special education a bit closer to his home in Somerville.
A part of that search also involved looking for a new boys hockey team to coach.
What he found was a position in the special education department in Brookline, and an offer to be the high school’s new boys hockey head coach.
“I live in Somerville and the commute to Marblehead was getting to be a little bit much,” Marfione said. “I’m always going to miss Marblehead but just having a new opportunity is nice and I think it’s always fun going into a new league and kind of figuring out the league and seeing what you got to do to compete.
“It’s important for me to coach and work in the same district. It just makes sense to be on the same schedules as the kids and then get to see them in the day. I think it’s always the best setup. So that was the other plan going in, finding a school where I could coach and work at.”
Marfione joins the Warriors after three years in charge at Marblehead and five years at Cambridge Rindge & Latin before that.
Marfione consistently had both programs in the playoffs and contending for state titles. In five of his eight years as a head coach, he finished the year with double-digit wins.
In just three years with the Magicians, he tallied 47 wins including the 2024 MIAA Division III state title despite starting the season 0-6.
“We’re excited to have Coach Marfione joining our school as an educator and as a coach,” Brookline Athletic Director Kyle Williams said in a statement. “He has demonstrated success leading programs in both Marblehead and Cambridge and we look forward to him continuing the positive direction of our program.
“Coach Marfione is all about preparation and details and we believe he will be able to connect with our student-athletes to help them understand the value of hard work and doing the many little things required to lead a team to success both on and off the ice.”
As he heads into his first season with Brookline, Marfione said he’s picked up plenty of lessons during his last two stops.
“It was an amazing experience, I’ll always share it with the boys,” Marfione said of the crown. “But I think it’s just learning from everywhere you go and kind of just taking things with you from one job.
“I think for me, assistant coaches are always just as important as a head coach. I had some great ones in Marblehead, great ones in Cambridge… I think the most important thing is getting a good coaching staff around you, I think that’s something I really learned in Marblehead. Just trust the assistant coaches and have it be a group effort so you can really get to the details and find the strengths of every coach and let them show what their strengths are, and the identity of the team is going to take that on from all the coaching and the adults.”
With the Warriors, Marfione will be assisted by a new staff, some of which were interested in the team’s head position.
“Brian Colella is one of them, and the other one is Shane Devlin who played at Waltham, and him and Brian coached together,” Marfione said of his assistants. “It was just getting to talk to them and thinking they’re great fits. Also we have a former player who’s just an awesome kid, he’s only 20, his name is James Redding. He’s just an awesome kid and just really well versed in hockey and very mature.
“I think it’s always important to have some young guys on the staff that can be even more relatable to the kids. It’s just making sure the kids have every type of adult they need and all the support and people to kind of guide them the right way every step.”
Aside from his assistants, Marfione will also be relying on some of Brookline’s returning players to help with the transition.
In particular, Marfione will be looking to senior Owen Lacy who was one of the team’s leaders last season and is the only captain to start the preseason.
“I know he’s a good player just from hearing from other people,” Marfione said of Lacy. “I think he’s just someone that all the kids respect and seems like he does things the right way. He takes care of his schoolwork, he treats everyone with respect, he’s nice to the younger kids, the older kids, and everyone just kind of follows his lead.
“So he seems like he has a lot of the characteristics you’re looking for in a leader.”
Lacy however won’t be the only designated leader for the Warriors this season. Marfione intends to name other captains as the preseason continues, but wanted to wait and see how they fared in tryouts and practices before making anything official.
Though it’s still early, Marfione said that he’s been impressed with the character of his squad, even if he’s not sure yet how they’ll all fit on the ice together.
“Most important for me is not so much the talent as the kids getting along with each other and like each other and they’re dedicated,” Marfione said. “So far they all seem that way which is nice and then we’ll kind of see what we have for talent and build the best team we can.”
Over the last few seasons the Warriors have struggled to stand out amongst a crowded field in the Bay State Conference.
Last season the team won seven games, its most since 2022, including a midseason upset over Braintree, but failed to make the new state tournament for the fourth year in a row.
Regardless of the team’s recent history and the state of the rest of the conference, Marfione is not afraid of Brookline’s schedule.
“I’m excited, I know it’s got a great reputation as being one of the best, if not the best, public school league so I’m excited for the challenge,” Marfione said of the Bay State Conference.
He understands that with a new team and new group of players, comes a more gentle progression of the on-ice product.
“I’m not going to ask the world of them,” Marfione said. “Just to show up, be on time, and be coachable, be team first, work hard. If you have that, then we just gradually build throughout the year and keep getting better.
“I think you start as basic as we can then once we build day-by-day we get into more details and more details, and hopefully by the time tournament comes around we’re really good on the details and we’re ascending.”
What does not help is the relatively short window that Brookline has between its first tryouts and the start of the regular season.
After kicking things off on Monday, Dec. 1, the Warriors will have two scrimmages on Saturday and Sunday before opening the regular season at home against Algonquin on Saturday, Dec. 13.
“It’s a little tricky having them back to back, we don’t want to try to throw too much at them,” Marfione said of his scrimmages. “We’re not going to come in for a scrimmage with every system in place, every detail in place. Maybe install one or two things before the first scrimmage and gradually grow.
“Then after that you get the game tape and then we’ll have five or six ice times in between the last scrimmage and the first regular season games… Just really start with the basics and the foundations and then kind of build up from there and hopefully be ready for Algonquin.”
