Twin Billing

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2003

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Not much separates Erin (blue sweater) and Amber Neil (white sweater)—on or off the ice. Go ahead and look again. The Neil sisters are used to double takes
By Bruce Wood

Eleven minutes, one and a half ounces, and one cowlick were all that separated Amber '03 and Erin Neil '03 at birth. Not much more has come between them since.

Arriving together at Middlebury in the fall of 1999 after a year at Lake Placid's National Sports Academy, the twins from Port Crane, New York, proceeded to help the Panthers skate away with the American Women's College Hockey Alliance Division III national championship their first two winters. As juniors, they finished one-two on the team in points, while leading Middlebury to the inaugural NCAA Division III championship tournament. And this winter, Erin repaid Amber for beating her out of the blocks on June 10, 1981, by getting point No. 100—all of one game ahead of her barely older sister.

The Neils' statistics on the ice are similar. Their appearance, sans helmet, pads, and skates, is almost identical. Neither is much of an artist, and both admit the world would be a safer place if they were told to lip-sync instead of sing. They share the same infectious giggle, and their uniform numbers are one digit apart (Erin is 22 and Amber 23). So they really are identical, right?

Well, no.

"I was told they were fraternal," their mother, Cindy, says. "When I found out I was having twins, I joined a mother-of-twins club. I found out that [predictions] are wrong 30 percent of the time, and I kind of think this is one of them."

Their father, Mike, who put the girls on skates at age six and carted them up to a rink in Clinton, New York, to give them their first try at hockey a couple of years later, learned over time that it is a wise parenting idea not to compare the twins. He had no choice when they were tiny.

"You really had trouble telling them apart when they were babies," he says. "Baby A, Amber, had one cowlick in the back of her head. Baby B, Erin, had two. That was it. They were so much alike. They are supposedly fraternal, but I think you could argue that."

Though regularly confused for each other, the sisters pulled the age-old twin prank of trying to pass for each other just once in high school. "It was in biology class when we sat in each other's seat, and the teacher had no idea. We thought about doing it [more often], but we didn't want to get caught," Erin says.

"When I look at her, I don't see it," Erin continues. "Well, I kind of see how she looks like me, but I'm like, No, that's Amber. I don't see how people can't tell us apart. If it's acquaintances, sometimes we'll say hi to people we don't even know to make it easier. But if it's our teammates, it's annoying because they should know us by now."
To be sure, there was some confusion on the Kenyon Arena ice in the early days, what with another set of hockey-playing twins just a year ahead of them. But Amber, at 5-foot-5 the shorter by an inch, and Erin, who plays forward to her sister's defense, have different styles on the ice.

"It's been difficult at times because they've kind of gotten lumped together," says Bill Mandigo, head coach of women's ice hockey since 1988. "Erin is a smooth, sweet skater and very fast. Amber is very smart and tough on the ice, with an offensive approach for someone who plays defense. We put her in the middle of the power play in the slot because she has an unbelievably quick release.

"Amber plays the game with a little bit of an edge, and every once in a while you have to let her know to calm down. And Erin, my goodness, just watch her skate. They are completely different out there. You just have to watch them to see it."

Like any twins, they really are different. Like any twins, they also are the same. More the same than they know.

Listen to Erin describe Amber's play: "She is really determined. She's always had a lot of fire and gets mad a lot quicker than I do. If they steal the puck from her, she's going to get it back. Sometimes I wish I could do that more often."

Now listen to Amber describe Erin's play: "As a hockey player she never gives up. She always wants to beat the other person to the puck. She'll get mad and get the puck back from them. She'll dig and dig until she can get it."

Mandigo says the Neils have Division I talent, and they might have ended up playing at that level if they hadn't enjoyed such a positive experience at the National Sports Academy, where the small-town girls started to come out of their shells.

"When we were looking at colleges we visited Northeastern and Colgate and Cornell, which were close to home," recalls Amber."North-eastern was in the city with a fence around it. We wanted to leave as soon as we got there. We came up here and everything was brand- new. You could just tell people were treated well, and everyone was nice. The scenery was a lot like Lake Placid, so it felt like home."
Now, after four years in the Champlain Valley, the sisters—who started their careers playing on boys' Mite and PeeWee teams coached by Mike Neil—know their competitive hockey days are probably over. Although a scout from the Quebec Avalanche of the Canadian pro league chatted them up and invited them to watch a game when they were in Canada at the beginning of January, they don't expect to be chasing pucks north of the border.

"There are no benefits," Erin says a little sadly. "I feel like that would be more of a setback, because our lives aren't going to be hockey, hockey, hockey after this year."

Sure, when they are home visiting their parents they'll fill in when the police and firefighters are running short of players for their games at the Broome County rink, and with their love of children, coaching kids in the game that has brought them joy is a given.

But a little work experience and graduate schools, plural, come first.
That will mean the sisters go their separate ways for the first time. Neither expects the separation to be permanent.

"Because we have different majors and different goals, we'll go to different grad schools," Erin says. (Erin is a neuroscience major, and Amber majors in psychology.) "It will be good for us. But we are each other's best friend, and any best friend would love to live near their best friend."

Where that will be, they can't know. But Amber has a hunch.
"It will probably be in the Northeast, because that's where the hockey is," she says. "We always talked about building our own ice rink complex together.

"We're going to have two rinks in it and call it Twin Arenas."

Bruce Wood covers college athletics for The Valley News, a daily newspaper in Lebanon, N.H.

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