By Connor Bullock

The UCC Blues Varsity Hockey team has a lot to prove this year. Starting the pre-season with last year’s championship still in the back of our minds we knew we would need to come out storming. We started with four games, all exhibition, two against Ridley and two against Appleby.  Both are regular season rivals. We were lacking numbers, weakened by the football players on our team, and we had plenty of call-ups from the JV squad. After the four games we were still winless, losing twice and tying twice. They are both teams we conquered last year on our way to becoming regular season and playoff champions, however they proved to be better than last year.

Wednesday November 14^th the Blues travelled south of the border to Nichols’ showcase game where we faced off against SAC, our archrivals in everything sport- the team we defeated in the finals of the playoffs last year in a 4-3 thriller. SAC played strong throughout the entire game and limited the Blues’ scoring opportunities to the bare minimum. After the first two periods we lead 1-0, and with the hopes of UCC having their first win of the season, we let off the gas, allowing SAC to score two late goals to win the game with a final score of 2-1. The Blues have a busy next couple weeks, competing in two tournaments these next two weekends and then travelling down to Cornell for two more games and a tour of the campus. As we look for our first win we know we’re going to need support from all our fans. We’d like to make a formal request for Blue Army Reinforcements for some support the weekend of the 24^th. Remember, we haven’t a non-exhibition match yet. We will keep truckin’ along in hopes of repeating last year’s championship run.