Photo courtesy Quinnipiac Athletics
By: Kyle Levasseur
The majority of college students will be home or at a relative’s house, stuffing their faces with turkey and pumpkin pie this Thanksgiving. However, the players of the Quinnipiac men’s ice hockey team are no typical college students. Instead, they will be in Belfast, Ireland preparing to compete in the the second annual Friendship Four tournament.
Quinnipiac (7-3-1, 3-1-0 ECAC) will be one of two ECAC teams in the tournament. The other being St. Lawrence (6-4-2, 3-0-1 ECAC), which beat Quinnipiac earlier this year, 2-0, at home. The two will face off against each other in the first round of the tournament on Nov. 25.
Comprising the other half of the tournament are Hockey East’s University of Vermont (6-3-1, 2-2-0 Hockey East) and University of Massachusetts (3-5-1, 1-3-1 Hockey East) who will also play each other on Nov. 25. The championship game will take place on Nov. 26, and every game will be aired on the New England Sports Network.
In an interview with USCHO Live, Quinnipiac head coach Rand Pecknold talked about the decision to join the tournament.
“I hesitated on it at first but in the end I thought it would be a unique experience for our student-athletes, not only hockey-wise but culturally,” Pecknold said. “Unfortunately for us we had to give up our St. Lawrence home game, and I knew that was a big one to give up because I think St. Lawrence is the best team in our league this year.”
With the tournament being so unique compared to the average regular season game, extra preparation is put in. Yet, Quinnipiac associate head coach Bill Riga, says it comes off the ice.
“As a staff and as a support staff we have to prepare,” Riga said. “But for them (the players) they came out today and it was all about Cornell.”
Quinnipiac will be flying into Dublin, Ireland this Sunday, the day after they play Colgate on the road.
“I asked our president (John Lahey) if we could go a day early so we could get an extra day in Dublin, and he said yes, so that’s great that he’s going to pick up the tab for that, and give our student-athletes an extra day of cultural experience in Dublin, Ireland before we move on to Belfast,” Pecknold said.
“Our job after this weekend is to get them physically ready for it,” Riga said. “It’s a quick turnaround, it’s a long flight and coach (Brijesh) Patel, our strength coach, has done a lot of research on jet lag, hydration, and when they should sleep and when they should not sleep.”
Patel is the strength and conditioning head coach at Quinnipiac. Being with the team since 2008, Patel has been a key part in helping elevate the program to one of the top teams in the nation. His job may be one of the most important on the staff, especially for this trip.
According to Patel the first step is preparing the player’s body schedules so that they’re rested properly.
“The biggest thing is that we want it to feel like a normal trip as much as possible in terms of how their bodies are going to feel,” Patel said. “The big thing is the time difference, being that Ireland is five hours ahead, so we need to make sure than we can properly adjust our own body schedules to that schedule. We try and educate our guys about trying to get to bed this week as early as possible-ideally at least one hour earlier than they normally would if we didn’t have this trip, and then try and get them to get up and hour earlier than they normally would as well to try and get their bodies adjusted slowly but surely so it won’t be really shocking to their systems once we get there.”
After that, the team has to get acclimated to the five hour time difference.
“As we get on the flight, we want them to adjust their watches five hours ahead, so we can at least get them to understand what time it’s going to be. So if our flight is at six o’clock at night, it will be eleven o’clock,” Patel said. “Once we get there we want them to try and stay up and get adjusted to the natural circadian rhythm that your body has because of the sunlight, and it’s going to be daytime when we get there. We want to make sure that we get their body adjusted to that, and then we’re going to treat Monday like a normal day, try to get to bed at a normal time, to get their bodies adjusted for Tuesday when we start practice.”
It’s an all-hands-on effort to get prepared for the trip, and Patel isn’t the only one putting in extra time. The equipment staff also has to change their routines to get ready for the trip.
Assistant athletic director for equipment services, Jamie Schilkowski, says it’s different getting the equipment ready for the tournament than a normal regular season game.
“We’re very fortunate that our staff has traveled to Italy several years ago for their preseason travel, so we know what it’s like to travel internationally. Obviously going for a week is a little better than the two week trip we took to Italy, so a little less packing,” Schilkowski said. “These are big games for us, these games actually count. We’ve had calls with the people in Ireland just to work out logistics, you know landing, how we’re transporting things, extra sticks and stuff like that. We’re just being prepared for how many practices we have, how many games we have and just go based off how things are going so far this year.”
While Quinnipiac is coming off a weekend in which it dawned it’s new Veteran’s Day camouflage uniforms with the new Quinnipiac ‘Q’, Schilkowski says there are no special surprises planned for the tournament.
“It’s just business as usual for us. It’s going to be a great experience for our staff our players, and Quinnipiac all together being represented in Ireland on the international stage…We’re going to continue to use our normal uniforms and get that Quinnipiac brand noticed internationally, regionally, and nationally on the games that are being televised.”
The Friendship Four is the first of two regular season tournaments for the Bobcats. The next one being the Three Rivers Classic on Dec. 29-30.
