Gamecocks club hockey makes strides towards national prominence
When sophomore Eric Patterson’s peers find out he’s on the hockey team, he is usually met with confused looks and further questions.
“Anyone that sees me wearing anything to do with hockey pretty much asks me,” he said.
Patterson is one of 26 USC students who make up a South Carolina club hockey team that has been on a steady path to national relevance ever since coach Brian Bauman took over the program four years ago.
The Gamecocks play in the Southeastern Collegiate Hockey Conference, or SCHC, which is the club hockey equivalent to the Southeastern Conference and includes 10 of the SEC’s 14 affiliates. The SCHC belongs to the larger American Collegiate Hockey Association, or ACHA, that governs more than 350 programs across its three men’s divisions.
In the 2013-14 season, the Gamecocks shattered a number of their previous records on their way to a 21-9-2 mark, the most wins in school history. In the process, South Carolina scored more goals than ever before (154) and Patterson set the individual program record for goals scored in a year (22).
While the South Carolina hockey team has not sought varsity distinction — nor does it plan to, Bauman said — the sport of college hockey is a whole different animal than football, basketball and other mainstream sports. And with a very limited number of varsity programs across the nation, the club ranks are a viable alternative for many varsity-caliber athletes.
“The drop-off is not as big as most people would think,” Bauman said. “So you’re getting a lot of kids that are playing at a high level. You see many all-state kids from up north that are not making NCAA teams, and they decide that they want to go play club.”
In college hockey’s varsity ranks, there are Division I and Division III levels with no middle tier in between. Those two divisions combined include 133 total programs. When that number is compared to college football’s 252 and basketball’s 350 teams in Division I alone, it isn’t hard to see how some of the country’s best high school hockey prospects can get lost in the shuffle.
As far as Gamecock hockey goes, many different paths have led the 26 members of the team to South Carolina’s home ice at the Plex in Irmo.
While Patterson is from Chapin and wanted to stay close to home, his teammate Mike Foster is a Lancaster, Pa., native who considered schools with varsity hockey programs before finding a home in Columbia.
“[Playing college hockey] was the goal in high school,” Foster said. “But it got to a point where education and where I was going to go to school was more important.”
The South Carolina team has representatives from 13 different states, including imports from Maine, Minnesota, New York and Massachusetts.
Foster, a junior, has been with the team since his freshman year and has been an integral part of the success the program has seen lately. Just this past weekend, the Gamecocks’ regular season record earned them the honor of hosting the ACHA’s regional playoffs.
South Carolina played its first game Friday against Christopher Newport, defeating the Captains 2-1 behind a late goal from Taylor Wolf with less than five minutes to play in the third period. The win would allow the Gamecocks to advance in the bracket to face the University of Miami the following day with a berth in the national tournament on the line.
South Carolina’s season would end there, as Saturday’s 7-4 loss to the Hurricanes would halt the Gamecocks’ record-breaking campaign.
While Patterson, Foster and the rest of their teammates made no secret of their goal to reach the national stage, they cannot help but acknowledge how far the program has come at South Carolina. And with the 2013-14 season in the books and just three departing seniors on the team, the sky appears to be the limit for Gamecock hockey once next September rolls around.
“Since my freshman year it’s been amazing, just to see the growth of this team,” Foster said. “When I first started, I think we had nine rookies that season, and it just took off from there. It went from a team that could barely make the playoffs to now hoping to make a national tournament.”