If someone tried to read a list of all that Judy Parish Oberting ’87 accomplished, there would be little time for anything else on November 1 when she is inducted into the New Hampshire Legends of Hockey Hall of Fame.  

The short version: She earned 12 varsity letters in soccer, ice hockey, and lacrosse at Loomis Chaffee; is second on Dartmouth College’s all-time scoring list in women’s hockey; in 2022 Dartmouth’s alumni magazine named her one of the college’s 100 greatest athletes of all time; and in 1990 she represented the United States in the inaugural International Ice Hockey Federation Women's World Championship. 

And we have not yet gotten to her coaching career: In five seasons, she coached the Dartmouth women’s hockey team to a 114-40-8 record, earned National Coach of the Year honors once and was a finalist another season, and reached the Frozen Four in the 2002–03 season. Judy also was given the American Hockey Coaches Association's Women's Ice Hockey Founders Award in 2023 for her contributions to the growth and development of the sport in the United States. 

Judy grew up in West Hartford, Conn., and started playing hockey at the age of 5. At first, she says, her experience was “learning to be a member of a team with the boys and feeling like I could keep up and compete. ... It gave me a lot of self-confidence, taught me I could do anything, and I still believe that.” 

In February 1987, when she was a senior at Loomis Chaffee, Judy was selected as The Hartford Courant girls athlete of the week. Her coach, Chuck “Bruno” Vernon, told the newspaper, “The people from Dartmouth and Yale tell me she’s the best they’ve seen.” 

It didn’t take long for Judy to live up the press clippings.  She was named ECAC Women’s Hockey Rookie of the Year, breaking the Dartmouth record for goals, assists, and points scored by a freshman on her way to an outstanding career playing for head coach George Crowe. She was an assistant to Coach Crowe for five seasons before succeeding him.  

She left after five seasons as the head coach. At the time Judy was pregnant with her second child. “I felt so strongly about the program staying at the level it was,” she said, “and I wasn’t sure I could do that with more children. I have zero regrets. I was glad to be home with the kids, but the opportunities are different now. It made sense in the moment to where the sport was and where I was.” 

Today the salaries for college coaches are much higher and there are more assistant coaches and support staff to divide duties, such as being on the road recruiting, making it easier for a coach to balance work and home life.  

Judy, a mother of five boys, would end up coaching her sons in youth hockey, largely the Pee Wee division of 12- to 13-year-olds. 

Judy said she was fortunate to have “two amazing mentors” in hockey in coaches Chuck Vernon and George Crowe.  

“Bruno was way ahead of his time, way ahead of his time in terms of skill development and providing opportunities,” Judy said. “He developed players like no other. He was insistent on fundamentals, held us to a high standard, was the best teacher and also very much a life coach. George was very different but equally influential. He just knew the game. Both were creative in how they taught and saw the game, willing to take chances, very competitive but loved the game and had fun with the game.” 

“As someone who believes in women coaching women,” Judy continued, “I had two of the best coaches that I could ever imagine and they were both men. They were so committed to us.” 

Today Judy and her husband, Kip, own a seasonal restaurant — Dennett’s at the Wharf — in Castine, Maine, on the Penobscot Bay at the mouth of the Penobscot River. This summer the restaurant on the wharf is undergoing renovations, so they are operating out of the dock with takeout food. Judy said many of the workers are women, so it is like “I’m back coaching women again.” 

“Running a restaurant,” she said, “is very similar to coaching a hockey team. All of those skills, whether it was playing or coaching, have come back around and are very transferable. It's great to take those skllls into a different field. Leadership, team-building, getting the front of the house to the back of the house working together to achieve a goal. It’s a seasonal restaurant, so for three to five months, which is the length of a hockey season, we are working our tails off to run the business together. It's exhausting, there are highs and lows, people have a hard time, and the staff has to work together to lift up the people that are struggling. It's the same thing. Teamwork has been part of my life for a long time.”