There’s a new big-time team on campus. The players have a website as impressive as their record. They have a motto that reads “Unfinished Business.” They happen to be playing BU’s signature sport on wheels rather than blades.
Oh, and they’re currently on the opposite coast playing for the national championship.
The BU inline hockey club team left early Wednesday morning from Manchester, N.H., to the Los Angeles suburb of Upland where the Terriers will challenge several of the nation’s 24 best indoor hockey squads that qualified for the tournament.
Six pools of four teams will play each other in round-robin format before a seating committee. From there, the top eight teams will receive byes en route to a single-elimination round of 16 to be played this weekend.
“First of all, we’re honored to be a part of it. It’s a result of a lot of dedication and hard work,” said second-year BU coach Robert Mariano.
BU landed itself in arguably the toughest pool along with Pennsylvania State University at Altoona (8-1-1), Purdue University (19-2-2) and the University of Missouri (16-6). If BU can manage a good showing among these three teams, it stands a good chance to stay high in the seedings and play for the national championship Monday.
As astounding as that may be, consider that BU would do so in just the second year of existence as a team and as a league.
Over the course of two seasons, BU has gained a reputation as one of the top teams in the New England Collegiate Roller Hockey League with its 19-1 overall record.
Last season, BU finished 10-0 in conference play, but lost in the semifinals to the University of Vermont, who eventually lost the league title to BU’s arch-rival, Northeastern University.
The rivalry between the Terriers and the Huskies is far more intense than the series record displays. The Terriers swept three games from the Huskies last season and took two more from them this year, including the league championship.
Each squad owns a league title and may be seeing one another in California despite being in separate pools.
If so, there’s no concern on BU’s part.
“We’ll beat them gloriously,” Mariano said.
Mariano, a 25-year-old BU alum, competed on the inline hockey team when it had no affiliation with a league. An undefeated debut season was followed by a 9-1 record this winter.
The Terriers’ only loss was to first-year team Wentworth Polytechnic Institute in the third game of the season.
“We had beaten them before, but we took them too lightly,” said junior Brian Scully.
Understandably, amid a near perfect record, most of the players will tell you the loss is the biggest setback the team has ever faced.
But it wasn’t as daunting an obstacle as the fundraising involved in getting 19 players and one coach to California for the tournament.
BU needed to raise nearly $10,000 in two weeks. To get the money, the players asked student groups, college governments, companies and individual donors.
The exact amount of donations was never revealed, but in the end, the sacrifices pieced together nicely. In exchange for money, the players agreed to staff the BU-sponsored Fight for Life Walk and Spring Thaw later this spring. The team also received significant financial support from the Student Union Programming Council.
Not bad for a team no one knows about, partly for the fact that it plays all of its games at the Greater Boston Indoor Sports Center in Revere.
BU won’t have it easy from here on, though.
The Terriers have only competed in one other tournament as a team — that coming in New Jersey in November. There, they challenged their first round opponent Penn State-Altoona, ultimately losing, 5-3, in a four-period format customary to other league rules.
“We really haven’t had a chance to play against a top-caliber team,” said Josh Falcone.
What BU must do now is prove it can compete with programs that are five and seven years old.
And, more importantly, the Terriers want to put up a respectable showing for Northeast inline hockey altogether, a feat that will be better accomplished with a strong effort by Northeastern as well.
BU must also contend with a lack of experience. There are only four seniors and six new skaters on the team.
“Nobody’s expecting us to do too much,” Scully said. “We want to show them we can.”
BU does have one thing going in its favor: it’s not the favorite. The Terriers have entered nearly every single game as the guaranteed winner, a role that they grew comfortable with, but are just as easily willing to pass on to the other teams in the tournament.
“We’re in a position where we have almost no pressure on us,” Falcone said.
If anything, it instills more confidence, especially from the coach.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we won the whole thing,” Mariano said.
And despite only learning of the team recently, neither should the rest of BU.
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