Lindenwood 9, Towson 1

[alex]

Should we just hand them the trophy now?

[RUsigs11]

I know I haven't seen many of the other teams from the other regions, but Towson has consistently been the best team in ECRHA for 3+ years now, and even they looked overwhelmed by Lindenwood in this game. Lindenwood is a phenomenal team, and they are the standard for excellence in college roller hockey. However, the playoffs are there for a reason. Anything can happen in one game.

[ISFN]

Yea must be real fun playin for Lindenwood, I'm sure thoes kids have a blast.

[bigdaddy80]

**** Lindenwood

[ISFN]

Agreed

Hurting the sport more than helping it for sure.

[MBurke]

Agreed

Hurting the sport more than helping it for sure.

What's your reasoning behind that? I've heard some good differing viewpoints on it.

[ISFN]

Well I believe if they continue to dominate D1 your going to see more and more schools stay down at the D2 level and never move up which should be the case. You should want D1 to be the biggest and best division and as it is now I think D2 and D3 are the best because they both have a great amount of talent and almost all the games are close which is fun for the fans and players.

And one thing kids need to relize is none of thoes players on LU are going for free, most paying around 4 or 5k a year which is a joke, the school raises their tution to around 20k a year then says they'er giving stundents scholorships. When in all actuallity you can go anywhere in Missouri (and prolly any state) for between 4-6k so its not a good deal what so ever. And on top of that the school is horriable with its rules and everything, ask the kid who came from out-of-state (to play hockey) and stayed for 2 days and left.

I congrat all the schools for doing what you should be doing and practicing and training to get better insted of just geting the best out there to play for you.

Its one thing to recruit in-state, its another to get kids from all over, just think if all thoes kids from diffrent states had stayed in-state and attended a school there, just how good thoes teams and the league would of been.

Whats your thought on the subject Burke?

[MBurke]

I think everyone has a grip on the negative points of Lindenwood dominating year in and year out. I have heard some pretty compelling arguments to the contrary, though.

Many current tournament players don't play for a university team. Where are they? Many don't give the college game enough 'credit' for being high caliber. However, Lindenwood has changed that. If you mention them to just about anyone in our sport, they know who the team is. In some sense, Lindenwood has helped put college roller hockey on the map when it comes to the tournament circuits.

Is one dominant team nationally really good enough justification to stay in a different division? I don't think the "we can't beat Lindenwood, so we're not going to move up" argument holds a heck of a lot of water. Even if they were guaranteed to win every year, is it really worth mercying teams game in and game out for an entire season in order to have a shot at a national championship? Is all that worth one game? I personally wouldn't enjoy playing for a team like that knowing that I could move up and be in competitive games for my entire regional schedule.

[ISFN]

Well really nothing you or I say can nor will change the fact that they dominate. Its going to take players to change that, kids need to stay in-state with their friends and all attend one school. Its not going to take 8 all-star kids at one school to beat LU, as we saw last year at Nationals, if only Michigan had that one more player then things could have been different and thats what it will take is that one more player/goalie.

And if you think teams aren't moving up because of LU, look at Nuemann and UMSL, they amongst a few other teams have been at the top of D2 for a while now and both have won a title, so why wont they move up and step up to the challenge of LU and D1? Because they know it will be pointless and even though alot of people say they dont choose schools due to hockey, if a player is deciding between 2 schools and one is D1 and another is D2 (in hockey) I would believe that the fact that they wont have a chance at the national title in D1 comes to mind and believe many would choose that D2 school for that exact reason. Schools are basically Schools, now some have different majors and this and that but basically all are the same, so students/players will look at the different advantages like hockey, guy:girl ratio, location stuff like that.

[dan sangiorgio]

our school stays D2 for a couple of different reasons. But because we don't want to lose to lindenwood is not one of them. we haven't moved up yet because our school is smaller then some highschools, plus our school has only taken and interst in building our program in the last 2 or 3 years. we might have been able to play d1 last year and this year and be right there with towson for the d1 championship and have a shot and doing very well at nationals for d1. But staying d2 and winning for a couple of years gets adminstration to notice our team and take an interest. This leads to more funding which can lead to things like scholarships and equpment aka all the things lindenwood gets now. I see so many people complain that lindenwood has such an advantage, but no one ever asks them how they got that way it didn't just happen over night, they built it by winning and getting the school to reconize them. This is why our school is where it belongs for now. i think some people think because there school is d1 they are better then the d2 schools but thats not the case. truthfully i think our school would have had a better record in d1 last year then we did in d2. if you watch our game vs rutgers they had 2 or 3 solid players but had no depth thats why we were able to dominate them so badly in most of the second and third period, and we did so without steve klenk one of our best players and our starting goalie.
so do i think we are afraid to play lindenwood the answer is no. do i think lindenwood would beat us.......yes but we would give them as good as game they are gonna get in college hockey

[DGlass]

Hey, apparently nobody knows anything about the NCRHA.

Lindenwood (and Towson, the ECRHA's best...and RIT - former CRHL Champs) all BELONG in DII. Temple (for one) BELONGS in DI.

DI - Schools over 18,000 students.
DII - Schools below 18,000 students.
DIII - Community and Junior Colleges
B - Secondary, tertiary, etc. teams


DI is NOT for the best teams, it is for the biggest schools. It is a backwards and outdated method of grouping schools.

Because of the way the NCAA is organized, DI is automatically assumed to be the most talented teams and DII to be less talented. The top DII teams would probabaly be able to play with the bottom DI teams but they shouldn't have a chance in hell against a premier DI team (anyone Arcadia University's basketball team even belongs on the same court as OSU, Florida or Pitt?).


The NCRHA should either restructure their divisional alignments or enforce their current rules. Until they do one of those two, this league is still a joke. Knowing the ECRHA better than other regions, our DII is infinitely more competitive than DI.



Oh, and to go on-topic: Remember, this sport is still young and the talent pool small. A team like Lindenwood, with their resources, clearly has an upper hand in the minimal amount of recruiting that occurs but there are still plenty of talented players out there who will want to go to Florida, UCSB, Towson, Colorado, MSU, even Army.

Get off your asses and organize your team. Don't expect blatant handouts from your school. Prove to them you are worth the investment of five-, ten-, twenty-, even fourty-thousand dollars. Prove you are an upstanding club - do community service, teach clinics at a local rink, compile team grades and show you have a 3.4 cumulative GPA (even enforce a minimum GPA or hold study hours) while practicing twice a week and playing in the college league and in a house league.

College Roller Hockey starts and stops with the teams. Alright, that's a rant and hits below many belts but it gets to the point. I ran Pitt for 3 years and we raised our budget from ~$12K to ~$40K. You can't do it alone, get the rest of your team involved. Everyone can do something to help your team on and off the rink, preferably both.

[TheSnake22]

first, inline hockey is not an ncaa sport, so your point doesn't really apply... second, there are a good number of schools who compete in division 1 football, basketball and other sports with enrollments of well under 18,000 (see mid-majors). the idea actually is to compete at the highest level, so if you can cut it with the larger schools, you belong in division 1. gonzaga has an enrollment of around 7,000 and are consistently in the top 25. the other thing that ncaa divisions decide are the scholarship rules for schools, which plays a huge roll in where a team can compete. this obviously is something that doesnt apply to inline hockey yet as well. division 1 schools have considerably larger budgets to give full rides, where other schools are only allowed to give fewer or partial scholarships.

i think lindenwood is a progressive institution in college roller hockey, and if inline ever wants to move towards being an ncaa sport, however unlikely, more schools should follow some similar steps to draw the best players to their programs.

[eXpress19]

I am a 17 year old student attending Perkiomen Valley and honestly I'd have to agree with the statement that if I am looking at 2 different schools, I'm going to go to the one with the best shot of a national title, regardless of division. I have already been accepted by Neumann College and plan on attending there and playing for the hockey team because they have a legit chance every year of repeating. I think a national championship would be a great thing to be apart of. So I hope that helps you understand why students choose where to go and why...

Go Express

[Lindenwoodhockey]

I think the wrong thing to do is to blame Lindenwood. There has been a lot of hard work that has been put into that program including convincing administration that the roller hockey program is important to the university, hours put into recruiting players in the early days of the program, and the hours in practice to get our teams to the top level. I think if you ask any of our players, they are very happy to be a part of our winning program. We ask a lot of them to be involved in the college community and balancing the life of a student-athlete, but they get a lot in return. Some players have transferred out of school here, but you will find that at every institution. I believe we are a good model for other schools and we work very hard to continue to promote the positive growth of college roller hockey.

p.s. And just think if those kids wouldn't have listened to Herb Brooks, we wouldn't have won that gold medal in 1980!

[JLambertUMSL]

On behalf of UMSL (I saw our name mentioned a couple times)...

We see no need to move up. Our region is extremely competitive. We had a phenomenal team last year that came together perfectly and performed brilliantly all year. Mercying teams game in and game out? That isn't going to happen this year, and most years it doesn't happen.

Our region is going to be tough this year. SLU tied us last Sunday, we beat Truman State 3-0 (with an empty-net goal), and beat Wash U 8-6 after being tied 6-6 with less than 5:00 to play. Missouri State only lost 6-5 to Wash U, and we play them Saturday in a game that is going to be a lot tougher than anyone would have expected.

Don't lump us in with Neumann. They've been in the national championship game four years in a row. That's the DII dynasty, not us or anyone else.

What about Nevada? They've made the final four in all three years of their existence, have won consecutive WCRHL championships, and had a team much more dominant than our '05-06 team when they went undefeated and won the national championship.

What about UT Dallas? They've cleaned up their region for how many years in a row?

So why do all these teams stay in DII? One good reason is because in any given year, half the DII field has a legitimate shot at the national championship. Last year, more than half the teams could have realistically gotten hot and won.

Neumann, UMSL, Brockport, Nevada, Long Beach State, UTD, UCSD, Wash U, and Hofstra had the horses to win it all. That's nine of the sixteen teams, and I'm sure I'm forgetting someone.

Neumann/UMSL/Brockport/Nevada: they all played on Sunday and all could have won.
Long Beach State: They looked talented enough to me. They did tie Neumann.
UCSD: Fast, and one of the best goaltenders in the country.
UTD: They have the talent every year.
Wash U: They were good enough to beat us at Regionals after we'd been ranked number one for weeks. They were plenty talented to win it all.
Hofstra: Probably would have been a final-four team with Mosenson.

Two-thirds of the playoff games were decided by three goals or fewer (10 of 15). We had an overtime semifinal and a national championship game that was inches away from going to OT (that one still burns).

It makes for a more exciting Nationals, and clearly more passion than in DI and DIII, whose champions, upon winning, act no more excited than if they'd just mercied some poor league opponent in November.

Hell, we even had a cinderella story (Elon).

There's no reason to switch, because it's too much fun in DII.