Hitting the rink with the roller hockey team

Sports columnist Brian Dzenis spent his Tuesday night practicing with the club roller hockey team.

At The Temple News, I’ve done my fair share of watching and analyzing Temple sports teams, but last week, I became a participant when I spent a practice with the club roller hockey team.

I have a bit of a hockey background, and as far as skills are concerned, here’s what I bring as an amateur hockey player: Most of my experience comes from playing Dek hockey, that is, hockey played wearing sneakers instead of skates.

I first donned roller blades this past summer, and while I am not a complete fish-out-of-water on them, there are two major flaws in my game.

One, I cannot stop. If I’m skating and want to stop, I explore two options. The first is to crash into the boards, which can be painful. The second is to spin around in a circle until I stop moving, which can take a little bit of time, but at least I don’t run into anything.

Two, I cannot skate backward. This immediately rules out playing defense, and it would make navigating around the rink easier.

Senior defenseman Mike Peterson generously offered me a ride to Sportsplex in Bucks County, where the team practices once a week. I arrived and talked with coaching team Jamie Babcock and Steve Siliani, plus a few players, whom I warned about my limited skills.

Before I could hit the rink, I had two minor equipment issues to work out. I showed up in shorts and a T-shirt, thinking that would go with my skates, helmet and other protective equipment. It turned out I needed roller-hockey pants and a jersey. Babcock lent me both.

The jersey, which was bright yellow and from a team called “Lethal Bananas,” made me laugh. Its nameplate on the back read “Bananarama.”

Both the jersey and pants carried what some players call the “hockey smell,” a polite euphemism for body odor.

“I don’t think I’ve washed that jersey for a few months,” Babcock said, “same thing with the pants.”
No big deal. In my opinion, if you’re playing hockey and you don’t smell bad afterward, you’re doing it wrong.

Then, it was time to hit the rink.

The first drill involved skating in a single-file S-pattern up and down the rink. I was the last guy in line because of my lack of speed, but I turned OK.

At the recommendation of Babcock, I stood aside for the second drill, when the team practiced breakouts. A breakout occurs every time the team gains possession of the puck in a game. A defenseman carries the puck around the back of the net while the forwards spread out and move up the rink. During this drill, I realized roller hockey is a four-on-four sport, as opposed to five-on-five in ice hockey, which completely changes the game’s philosophy.

“The biggest difference between roller hockey and ice hockey is that the game is a lot more open. With there only being four guys out there, there is a lot more room on the rink to operate,” Siliani said. “There is also no icing and offsides in roller hockey, so in roller hockey, you can have guys set up on two opposite ends of the rink.”

In an ironic turn of events, the one drill I didn’t participate in happens to be the one during which I fell down during the entire practice.

As I stood next to Siliani and watched the team’s breakouts, which end with the team shooting the puck against the goalie, senior forward Mark Diviny skated backward toward me to get into position to shoot. He didn’t notice me, and I didn’t realize how close I was to the action until it was too late. He backed into me, and I went down.

“I was just in total confusion, and I didn’t realize you were behind me, so I tried to receive it on the backhand, didn’t look, and then I crashed into you, and we plummeted to the ground,” he said. “I was counting on no one being there. The thing about hockey is you have to have awareness out there on the rink.”

For the next drill, the coaches split up the team into two groups, the A team and B team, in a varsity/junior varsity setup. They assigned me to the B team. The drill involved one-on-one matchups between a defender and a forward. I was a forward, and I matched up against sophomore defenseman Evan O’Connell. I struggled mightily at first. I lost control of the puck and turned it over the way redshirt junior quarterback Vaughn Charlton turns the ball over on the football field. Eventually, I adjusted the way I was holding my stick and was able to move with the puck without losing it.

“You shot on me a few times and beat me a couple times,” O’Connell said.

Well, that depends on your definition of a shot. My shots look as though I’m scooting the puck in the general direction of the net. I don’t have much experience shooting a puck, as Dek hockey uses a ball.

The last drill involved one-on-one, two-on-two or three-on-three battles between the forwards and defense for a puck dumped in one of the corners. The forwards would have to shoot the puck, and the defense would have to carry it to Babcock. I did my best not to be a liability. By the time I reached the action, it had moved elsewhere.

And just like that, practice ended.

I’m glad I got the opportunity to practice with the team, and I’ll say this: Club sports are a serious business. Everyone involved is very skilled and committed to their craft. The roller hockey guys, who are responsible for keeping up with their own conditioning apart from practice, do this on their own time and without scholarship money.

Before I left practice, I had one last question for Babcock – would I make the roster?

“At this point, no, but if you keep skating and you get your legs under you and move out there, it’s all about skating,” he said. “If you can skate, you can play.”

Brian Dzenis can be reached at brian.dzenis@temple.edu.

Rolling on the rink

Temple’s club roller hockey team defeated perennial powerhouse Neumann University, 4-2.

The few parents, close friends and girlfriends aware of Temple’s roller hockey team witnessed a team searching for support score a 4-2 upset victory against perennial powerhouse Neumann University Sunday.

“I thought, ‘There’s no such thing as college roller hockey,’” senior president Mike Peterson said before he joined the team his sophomore year. “This isn’t a well-known sport. I laughed at first when I heard there was an actual league from my friend’s little brother. And that’s the problem. There are so many good players at Temple, but we have a hard time getting our name out there. A lot of people have the same reaction as me.”

The club team, which was founded in 2001, is completely student-run, from fundraising to reserving practice space. The players support both A and B teams, which carry a combined 27 players on the roster.

The Owls faced a Neumann team Sunday that won a Division II National Championship in 2006 and made it to the finals in 2003, 2004 and 2005. With its first victory against Neumann in team history, Temple claimed its third win in the four games it played during the weekend. Teams play multiple regular-season games then to save students time and travel. Four or five games are played throughout four weekends in a semester.

“This was a team we needed to beat,” senior captain Victor Novelli said. “We know where we stand now. West Chester lost yesterday, and these are two of the best teams in the country. This gives us a good idea of where we match-up with the competition.”

Temple jumped out to an early lead with three goals in the first period. By the third period, Neumann had manufactured two late goals to close the gap. But then, sophomore Ben Hovne, whom the team called up from the B squad just for this game, made it 4-2 and put a stop to Neumann’s momentum.

“[Neumann] just had way too many penalties, and our goalie played great. It was just a big team effort,” Novelli said.

The team has qualified for nationals once since its inception. The March Madness-style competition takes place in four divisions and features champions from seven regional conferences, as well as teams that meet certain criteria to decide the national champion.

But even if the team makes it back to nationals, players said support is still hard to come by.

Sophomore treasurer and goalie John Mehler said players are trying to “reach out to a fan base” by starting a Facebook page, which had more than 80 members its first week. The team also posts fliers around campus, supports a Web site in addition to the university’s club-team Web site and would like to see all club teams unite to set up tables along the Bell Tower or Liacouras Walk to try to stir interest. For right now, word of mouth seems to be the best way to attract fans and players.

“Everybody figures a college is going to have an ice hockey team, a soccer team, a football team, et cetera,” co-head coach and Temple graduate Jamie Babcock said. “But with roller hockey, people just play for fun and don’t think of it as a serious sport and realize how involved and widespread it is, and that should change.”

Tom Rowan Jr. can be reached at thomas.rowan@temple.edu.

Temple’s ice hockey club team, kicked off its season with a 5-0 win

After losing in the first round of the regionals and the second round of the MACHA playoffs, the ice hockey club team hired alum Jerry Roberts.

While the National Hockey League’s Philadelphia Flyers opened their season with a 2-0 shutout last Friday, another Philly hockey team, Temple’s ice hockey club team, kicked off its season with a 5-0 win over The College of New Jersey.

The win marked not only the team’s first win of this season but also the first win for new coach, Jerry Roberts. Roberts is a Temple alumnus who played club ice hockey. He said it was a natural fit to coach here.

“I take a lot of pride in the program and in Temple University,” Roberts said. “It was a very easy choice.”

Roberts played for the team when it won three straight Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Hockey Association (MACHA) championships from 2003 to 2005 and served as a scout under the previous coaching staff while also coaching area youth hockey teams.

“There were a lot of question marks coming into the season, but I think he’s handling it very well,” senior forward and captain Mike Roeding said. “He’s got the right attitude, and guys have taken to his philosophies.”

Roberts’ style differs drastically from the previous regime, which placed heavy emphasis on set plays and forechecks.

“That may be good for a professional or semi-pro team, but for us, it didn’t work all of the time, and the philosophy of this coach now is about reading and reacting,” Roeding said.

The new freewheeling style of play allowed the Owls to dismantle the Lions quickly in the first period, which featured goals from Roeding and sophomores Taylor Lockhart and Patrick McHugh. In the second period, sophomore Jordan Lawrence netted a goal, and senior Ryan Frain put an exclamation point on the night by scoring on a breakaway. The defense killed five penalties, including a five-on-three in the second period. Senior goalie Mark Berkheimer stopped 31 shots en route to the win.

“What we were looking for tonight was a lot of intensity and a lot of effort because at the beginning of the season, our passing wasn’t down yet, and there’s a summer’s worth of rust built up,” Roberts said. “Of the things that we can control like effort and intensity, we did that very well, and that’s what gave us the win.”

“We didn’t have anything set in place,” Roeding added. “We handled their forecheck very well, and we broke out nicely.”

As the season progresses, Roberts said he and the older players have to work on developing the younger players. The current team makeup features more seniors and juniors than sophomores and freshmen.

“It’s like you have two polar opposites. We have a lot of senior talent at the top and young talent at the bottom,” Roberts said. “We need those older guys to help bring the younger players along.”

The younger players already appear poised to inherit the team, as three sophomores scored in Temple’s win over TCNJ.

“As far as taking in the leadership from the senior guys, I think they’ve been doing a really good job with that,” Roeding said. “They know their role on the team, and it’s been coming together nicely.”

Last year’s squad lost in the second round of the MACHA playoffs and subsequently exited the regional championship in the first round.

“We still expect to be a contender within our conference, and we expect to make a showing at regionals,” Roberts said. “Hopefully, we learned something from last year, and we’ll do better this year.”

Brian Dzenis can be reached at brian.dzenis@temple.edu.

Major commitment is paying dividends for ice hockey team

Club teams at Temple can sometimes go unnoticed, but the ice hockey squad is one that deserves recognition.

Last year, the Owls finished third in the Southeast Division of the Division II Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Hockey Association with a 17-9-1 record, missing nationals by just one game. With the team looking to improve from last season, it was up to the players when it came to offseason training.

“Due to ACHA rules and everything, I really can’t be with them, but a bunch of them got together every single week and trained for speed and agility,” coach Aaron Voegtli said. “They also shot pucks and lifted weights. They really got themselves in shape, and it is paying dividends because we would usually have problems with three game weekends, and we skated right through it this time.”

Voegtli expects his team to make it to the regional tournament again this year and hopefully, to the national tournament as well.

“We’ve got the depth to do it,” he said.

The Owls opened their 2008-2009 season on Sept. 26 with an away game against Penn. Senior forward and captain Mike Roeding netted three goals and senior goaltender Mark Berkheimer stopped 23 of 25 shots en route to a 7-2 victory. The next day, the team played its home opener against Rider at the Flyers Skate Zone. Junior forward Ryan Frain led the team with a hat trick, as the Owls cruised to a 13-3 win. Freshman goalie Morgan Ostendorff was solid in net, stopping 19 of 22 shots. Finally, the Owls met archrival William Paterson to conclude their opening weekend. The last time these two teams met, the contest turned into the second longest game in college history, as it lasted for more than two hours, with the Owls losing 3-2.

With that, the Cherry and White are looking for revenge and their first win over William Paterson in four meetings. Behind a hat trick from junior forward Chris Altomare, the Owls won 6-4.

“It felt good because they are nationally ranked and they are one of our biggest rivals, to put three on them it felt pretty nice,” Altomare said.

Berkheimer stood tall in the net and made 22 saves on 26 shots in the contest.

“It was huge going down there and beating those guys after they beat us the last three times” Berkheimer said.

The biggest game of the year for the Owls took place last Friday, as Penn came to town in the first-ever match-up between the two squads. The Owls rallied back from a 3-1 deficit to force a 3-3 tie with the Ice Lions. They pulled another comeback last Saturday, as they fought back from a 2-1 deficit to defeat the College of New Jersey 5-3.

Yet, setting all of that up is a story of its own.

The Owls compete at the Division II level in the MACHA Division. The team consists of 25 skaters and three goaltenders. They play against teams from local schools such as Saint Joseph’s, Villanova and Penn.

Since ice hockey is an expensive sport, the squad receives funds from Temple. The players are then responsible for making up the difference.

This year the team had an overall budget need of about $65,000. Campus Recreation allocated the hockey team $22,000. Campus Recreation receives a large sum each year from the General Activities Fee. The money is then split among all club teams depending on their financial needs. The allocation for the ice hockey team depends on referee and equipment costs, tournament fees and its past performances.

The focus remains on the ice, and with the Owls off to a 4-0-1 start, the team’s morale remains high.
They face off next with Seton Hall Friday at 8:30 p.m. at the Flyers Skate Zone in Northeast Philadelphia.

John Mehler can be reached at john.mehler@temple.edu.