Until now, I've never done a Breakout Past on the women's team, and there's a very simple reason for that: the information just isn't out there. Believe me, I'd absolutely love to do something like construct a list of every game played by the Lady Icers, but I just don't think it's possible. The ACHA has gone through about five different sites and is only good in bits and pieces. The Collegian's coverage is hit and miss. La Vie is also spotty, not just on the wins and losses, but on whether they even include the team in a given year. I'm not aware of any other sources out there.
I don't have any Lady Icers memorabilia either. If Alicia Lepore or Andrea Lavelle - or anyone else, I just picked out two giants of team history - wants to send me an autographed old glove or something, I could probably make that work. Actually, let's do this: open invitation to any Lady Icers alumnae for an interview that will appear in a future Breakout Past. Email me if interested (click on my name at the bottom of the right-hand column if you don't know my email). Boom, done.
Also email me if you happen to be the guy in charge of Lady Icers recordkeeping. Or if you have anything at all that could help me in any way. I think that about covers it.
Anyway, back on track. While those yearbooks are brutal for accurate, detailed information, they are actually helpful in another way - the pictures. With that in mind, here are most of the yearbook photos from the first five years of the Lady Icers' existence. While I included the specific years in the captions (which are otherwise as they appear in the yearbooks), it's important to know that there's a year delay in coverage due to, I assume, printing deadlines. So the 1998 La Vie actually covers the inaugural 1996-1997 season. The 2002 incarnation seems to cover 2000-2001 and 2001-2002 at the same time without even realizing it.
As usual, click to enlarge, although due to the wildly varying quality of the photos, some enlarge more than others. This concludes the longest explanation ever for a set of fully-captioned pictures. Enjoy.
1998: Ready and waiting, ice hockey goalie Kathy Beckford prepares to defend her net during an early morning practice. The Lady Icers celebrated their first year of competition. The team boasted a winning record of 4-2-1, playing such teams as Michigan and Boston University.
2000: Skating after the puck at practice, forward Lauren Shaw readies herself to play. The team practiced skating and stickhandling to improve its overall skills.
2000: Before an early morning practice, forward Michele Mahno dresses in her protective gear. In addition to practice time on the ice, the team ran and conditioned together in addition to holding weekly meetings.
2000: Singing the national anthem before a home game, the team lines up on the blue line to salute the flag. The newly renovated ice rink provided an area for the team to practice and compete.
2002: Senior wing Michelle Zulkowski tries to put one through the five hole. The Lady Icers skated to their 10th win of the season during this match against the University of Buffalo.
2002: Goalie Jen McDevitt celebrates after her teammate scores a goal. The team continued on their path of excellence, reaching goals that exceeded their expectations.
2002: Penn State's Lady Icers congratulate each other after a win. Although they did not go undefeated for a second year, the team still came out on top of their league.
2002: 2001-2002 Penn State Lady Icers Hockey Team. Alphabetical order: Coach Billie Willits, Lisa Baronio, Kate Connolly, Steph Feyock, Jess Gursky, Becky Holmes, Courtney Izette, Katie King, Andrea Lavelle, Jenna Lichenwalmer, Jen McDevitt, Alexandra McVicker, Kristen Patricelli, Erica Petrosky, Kristen Reed, Faryn Shapiro, Lauren Shaw, Kate Specchio, Michelle Zulkowsky.
This mini-installment of PIA Construction is brought to you by Ben Jones, the Penn State blogger who straight up grinded out a name for himself amidst a horrible situation and went legit. Not that he needs my plug (10,777 Twitter followers...seriously guy?), but be sure to catch his stuff on StateCollege.com. His work here is a major assist, since I wasn't planning on visiting State College again until July 20th (just in case you're dying to know when the next of these will drop).
Jones' work adds what have been the three go-to views of the site, at least for the time being.
Just so I can say I contributed something to the post, I slid renderings with the finished product in below the photos. They're generally slightly different angles, but use your imagination - that's what these posts are all about anyway. As always with this series, all pictures are clickable to enlarge.
First, the main entrance area:
The "overview" from behind the Shields Building shows that the steel work has now expanded to include most of the end opposite where the student section will be:
Finally, the "exterior," from near the main construction entrance off of University Ave.:
Sources close to former Icers forward Josh Daley have informed TYT that he has elected to transfer to Division III Wisconsin-Stevens Point for the 2012-2013 season.
Daley, a Pittsburgh native, arrived at Penn State last season after a successful Canadian Junior A career that included 23 goals with the SJHL's Battlefords North Stars in 2009-2010 and 31 more in a 2010-2011 season split between the MJHL's Dauphin Kings and Waywayseecappo Wolverines. With a highlight reel like this, he was definitely one of the more anticipated recruits for 2011:
He started off well enough, with a pair of goals in PSU's season-opening destruction of Lebanon Valley College. Then...not a whole lot. He played in 10 games after that, none of which were at the ACHA National Tournament, scoring two more times and adding two assists. Even within those 11 total games, he was largely used as a fourth-liner or a spare forward. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, he was left off of the list of Icers making the jump to the DI team in April. I suppose it could be said that of the 11 who will be on the Nittany Lions this fall, only four (Matt Madrazo, Jake Friedman, Mike McDonagh and Pete Sweetland) were not Guy Gadowsky recruits or rising seniors, so perhaps the odds were against Daley from day one.
His new school, Stevens Point, was once the dominant program in DIII, winning four national championships in five seasons from 1988-1993 and adding runner-up finishes in 1992 and 1998. While the Pointers haven't come close to those heights in recent seasons, second year coach Chris Brooks put a stop to UWSP's first streak of consecutive losing seasons since the mid-1980s in 2011-2012. He'll look to 19 returning players (including forward Kyle Heck, who scored 23 percent of the team's goals last year) - and one notable new one - to continue to rebuild the program.
Daley joins goaltender Tim Carr in departing from PSU to a Division III program. Carr joined Western New England in the middle of last season and put up team-leading goals against (2.49) and save percentage (0.928) numbers over his seven games. Forwards Tim Acker, Dan Meiselman, Dominic Morrone and Forrest Dell as well as defensemen Ryan Seibolt, Steve Edgeworth and Brandon Russo remain among the 2011-2012 Icers with unknown plans for next year.
Clockwise from top left: Chirs Lewis, Jim
Recupero, Tom Badali, Mac Winchester
Ice Lions forward Chris Lewis was named a second-team All-American by the ACHA's Division 2 coaches. Joining him in postseason honors were All-Southeast Region team members Jim Recupero (second team), Tom Badali (second team) and Mac Winchester (third team). Lewis, as one might expect given his national honor, was on the region's first team as well.
Please accept my sincerest apologies if this is all old news. I just learned of it today, and only because it was tweeted by Arizona State's account. Thanks as always for the timely and effective distribution of information, ACHA.
Lewis, the former Boston Bulldog, stepped in as a freshman and led PSU in numerous categories, including goals (35), points (59), power play goals (9), shorthanded goals (2) and penalty minutes (50). Recupero, Lewis' linemate and the senior captain, was second on the team in scoring, a count that included a dramatic overtime winner against DePaul at the ACHA Showcase. He also had a fantastic run with the ACHA D2 Selects in Europe in late December and early January. Badali, a senior goalie, won his first 20 decisions of the season and didn't lose until PSU's season ended in a loss to Grand Valley State at nationals. He put up unreal numbers in other areas as well, including a 0.943 save percentage and a 1.45 goals against average. Winchester, a former Icer, was a standout defenseman who also chipped in five goals.
Collectively, of course, the Ice Lions had a ridiculous season. The team finished 31-3-0, including a 25-game winning streak that lasted from October 21st until March 17th. Penn State was both the regular season and playoff MACHA champions, and of course appeared at the ACHA National Tournament in March.
Unfortunately, I was unable to find a press release on this, but...
Matt Bertani, who served as an Icers assistant from 2005-2008, is the new video coach for the New York Islanders. Quite an impressive career track, to say the least. He left PSU to assist with the Islanders' AHL team, the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, where he remained until now (surviving a head coaching change in the process, which shows a good deal of organizational faith). He's a dyed-in-the-wool ACHA guy, as he played with Mercyhurst's club team and he also developed some pretty diverse experience as a youth hockey coach prior to coming to PSU.
Actually, it's a meteoric rise and a great comeback story - you may recall that Bertani was nearly killed in a men's league game last year while suffering a broken neck in a collision. Congratulations Matt!
I hope that this isn't taken as minimizing the trauma of those who came into physical contact with Jerry Sandusky and who then stood as his accusers, but we were all his victims. The justice system has done what it could with him - he'll likely spend the rest of his life as the worst type of person one can be in prison - and for that I'm glad. I just wish it could give us back what we've lost in transit to this point.
This story will likely fade from the national media's consciousness now, although the appeals, the civil suits, the Freeh report that already smells like a sham designed to pin this all on "football culture" (whatever that means), the hopeful unmasking of all in Penn State administration who kept what I suspect was a "well-known secret" at the highest levels of university governance...all of those things make this an awkward sort of semi-closure. They will keep picking at the scabs and delaying the already imperfect healing process. The good news? We are Penn State. Emphasis on "we," because Penn Staters, collectively, are what makes Penn State great. Keep excelling at whatever it is you do in life. Live the last verse of the alma mater. Do it while wearing a PSU shirt, if possible. Take the hits you'll undoubtedly receive for doing so, but keep moving forward.
We are Penn State, and we will eventually take our university back.
PS. I'm absolutely stunned that more people haven't pointed out that Sandusky is one of the jokers in the unlicensed Penn State Football Heroes playing card decks sold at PSU retail outlets for several years. The actual cards simply have footballs in the top left and bottom right corners, so I took some artistic license there.
The October 26th game at Army is one of my favorites this year. The Black Knights are one of just three currently-active Division I programs played by Penn State's original 1940-1947 varsity team, and the only one on this year's schedule (Cornell and Colgate are the others). I'm glad that fact hasn't gotten lost.
Penn State will play on Oct. 26 at Tate Rink, the first visit by the Nittany Lions to West Point since 1947. The school dropped varsity hockey after that season and has competed as a club program in recent years. Penn State will compete as a Division I independent this season and join the new Big Ten conference in 2013-14.
"Recent years?" Makes it sound as if the Icers started up in 2004. Oh well, nobody's perfect.
Included because it brings up an interesting idea, forwarded mostly by people who hate Penn State: could the NCAA sanction PSU to the stone age? While anything is possible, I don't believe they will, because the simple fact is that none of what happened affected the on-field product in any way. When the NCAA speaks of "lack of institutional control," it's in the context of breaking NCAA rules, which are in place (generally) to ensure fairness in the realm of athletics (that's what the first "A" is for, after all). I question whether the NCAA has the jurisdiction to punish PSU for this. I also question why this story gets coverage from ESPN, but that's a different rant.
Even if the NCAA wants to bring penalties on Penn State athletics, where do they begin? As I said, this is not a football crime, regardless of how it has been portrayed. If a penalty comes, it has to be big. It has to be everybody from women’s basketball, to wrestling to baseball and fencing. A hockey team that doesn’t yet exist would be penalized. Will the NCAA punish hundreds of athletes because of the wrong-doings of an administration? Has there ever been an NCAA punishment that didn’t involve a single athlete committing a single infraction?
Every once in a while, I come across a little reminder of big-time status that blows my mind. This is one of those, even though there aren't any tickets up yet.
With the NHL Entry Draft in the Steel City Friday and Saturday, local media did not disappoint with the easily-predicted "yay Pittsburgh hockey!" articles. But hey, good PA hockey is good for Penn State. And Robert Morris. So yay, indeed.
The headline more or less says it all. Hockey East finally has their 12th team, and hopefully UConn will prove worthy of it because a successful big school in a big conference is good for college hockey. They're adding the full 18 scholarships (up from zero) and will play home conference games at the XL Center, formerly the Hartford Civic Center, also formerly the home of the Hartford Whalers. So yeah, I'm dropping some Pat Verbeek on you.
And just because I haven't done this in a while, here's how the conferences stack up, beginning in 2014. The only change from 2013 to 2014 will be the Huskies' arrival in Hockey East from Atlantic Hockey.
Big Ten (6): Penn State, Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Ohio State, Wisconsin.
NCHC (8): Colorado College, Denver, Miami, Minnesota-Duluth, Nebraska-Omaha, North Dakota, St. Cloud State, Western Michigan.
Hockey East (12): Boston College, Boston University, Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, Massachusetts-Lowell, Merrimack, New Hampshire, Northeastern, Notre Dame, Providence, Vermont.
Sounds like TPegs might finally be looking to shut Canisius up. Yeah, I thought their begging for a handout was a little gauche - and before you accuse me of hypocrisy, Pegula actually has a connection to Penn State and initiated the discussion with the school. So there. Anyway...
Sources said the Sabres are proposing a multi-rink facility, with a themed sports bar/restaurant to be developed by Delaware North Cos. for the block. The rinks would be used as a practice facility for the team as well as the home base for some of the area's collegiate hockey teams. It would also host amateur and youth tournaments.
According to Business First, the Sabres/Delaware North project also includes a hotel component, parking for 1,000 cars, and retail along both Main and Perry streets. There would be two rinks, one with spectator seating for a couple of hundred, the other with up to 1,500.
That's actually smaller than the rink of Division III Buffalo State, where the Griffs currently play. Then again, they drew 626 fans per game last year, fourth worst in DI, so I think they'll be okay.
