We practice about two times a week and have
a workout once a week and on the weekends
we have two games against one team.
So we do that about every week.
We have a division two team which is more
of our traveling team where we go a bit farther
out and we play better in competition and
then our D3 team stays a little bit more around
town.
We refer to this as club hockey and, in fact,
it is not NC-Double A and that’s because
there’s not that many NC-Double A programs
in the country.
Well, we go through recruiting process that
we developed over the years we’ve got a
great relationship with admissions here at
Illinois State and then we’ve got great
relationships with the different triple A
and junior programs around the Mid-west.
You gotta know where you’re at…don’t
get beat to the net…try to play close to
the boards here.
I started playing hockey when I was about
seven years old, my neighbor needed a goalie
for his team so I just hoped into that…stayed
in that ever since.
It’s just nice that we have this club that
you can allow yourself to play on past high
school.
And, look at football, if you don’t play
D3, you don’t play NC-Double A, you really
don’t get a chance to play after high school
and I think that’s the greatest thing about
hockey, you can play till you’re fifty two.
And it’s always a big commitment.
There’s a lot of things that, when we talk
to people, do you really do that much work?
And yeah…we do it because we love it.
It means a lot because it somewhat helps us
focus on school because you’re not out partying
all the time, you’re working out here.
So, it’s a fulltime job for these guys plus
they gotta get great grades which they go.
We gotta awesome GPA every year.
Coming in, I didn’t know anyone, kind of
had the team behind my back, got to meet everyone,
kind of found my place on campus and then
just having a great team this year, having
a lot of fun off the ice and on the ice.
So, it keeps us close together.
We take a tour bus and go on all the trips
so it ends up being a big party on the bus
basically when we go but it’s a controlled
party where we have to do our homework for
a couple of hours and, when we are gone on
away trips, we always have to get up for breakfast,
go to meetings, watch film and there’s always
a study hour in there to try to keep our teams
GPA up.
It’s a band of brothers, it’s really a
family.
When we are on the road, it’s a fun time
because there is no…I’m not managing these
guys.
They respect the people and places that we
encounter.
They understand that they’re representatives
of Illinois State.
We do have a great record right now and I
think the reason for it is that we have an
old team.
We have a lot of fourth and fifth year players
this year.
It’s never really happened before.
I think we’ve got everything…our biggest
thing is probably depth, all four lines can
play hockey and our defense’s pretty goal
and we defiantly have the goalie.
So we have players here that are very serious
about their hockey life, they’ve been playing
since they’re six years old.
We have a group of friends that basically
go out and we’re brothers throughout the
week and throughout the year…protect each
other till the end.
