If you stepped inside the Northford Ice Pavilion in Northford, Connecticut, on a Saturday night, chances are you would find these guys. They dress in either white or yellow jerseys with "Quinnipiac Club Ice Hockey" stitched across their chests, and they are probably in the middle of a long winning streak. The team is close to, if not at the top of their conference and it looks as if they've been playing for years.
They certainly have, but not in the way that you would think.
Before 2019, club sports were not recognized at Quinnipiac University, a Hamden, Connecticut school known for its 21 Division I teams. Many still existed and held their own, but did so unofficially, with no support from the school. That was the case for the club hockey team. Founded in the spring of 2013, they were called the Brave Hockey Club. It was a team of Quinnipiac students looking to play hockey on a more competitive level.
Today, the Quinnipiac Club Ice Hockey team is official. Just under a year ago, the university announced the affiliation of club sports for the first time. 10 teams, including ice hockey, made the inaugural list of official club teams that would receive recognition, financial support and an opportunity to represent the university while competing.
The process took many years, but the team exceeded every expectation in its first official club season.
THE ROAD TO RECOGNITION
There was no easy way to get information on the Brave Hockey Club. Brandon Vattima, former president of the team, was in the right place at the right time when he learned there was a chance he could still play hockey in college.
"At the involvement fair I saw a couple of kids wearing Brave jerseys and I was able to talk to them," Vattima said. "Two minutes later they got kicked out by campus life since they technically weren't supposed to be there because they're not a Quinnipiac club."
Some players learned about the team from friends who were already on it while others found out from doing some online research. For Kurt Borgman, it turned out to be the latter. Similar to Vattima, Borgman had a chance to talk to them at the involvement fair. But he already knew exactly who they were.
“I did some Google searches and looked on the Facebook page to see if there was a team in the first place,” he said. “I found the president’s name, shot him an email and even though he didn’t get back to me I knew the team was a thing.”
Borgman spent three seasons on the unaffiliated team and one on the affiliated one. He noticed the biggest difference to be how independent they were and no one was above them, telling them what they can and cannot do.
“The cool thing about being not affiliated was the fact that we had nobody watching us,” he said. “Our leadership pushed through and was leading the way, allowing us to figure things out ourselves.”
With all that independence came challenges as the pressure of being an official club team started to set in.
“We underestimated the amount of work that was going to have to be done to run the team,” Borgman said. “We had to take control and authority to keep us moving smoothly.”
Vattima became president of the team for his junior year and first year of graduate school. This was around the same time that the process of bringing club sports to Quinnipiac starting to take off. He was also elected to the Student Government Association (SGA) where he worked on an official club sports proposal.
After talking with other universities including Sacred Heart and the University of Rhode Island, Vattima completed the proposal in December 2017 and was prepared to show Quinnipiac that it has the potential to a working system not only for athletes but the university as a whole.
THE PROPOSAL
The Club Sports Proposal was split into a number of sections detailing its goals, potential management, team operations, conduct and more.
There were four goals for club sports:
1. To provide educational and leadership opportunities to every member of the Quinnipiac University community.
2. Promote involvement for all students as well as alumni and family.
3. Increase student satisfaction by retaining and recruiting students.
4. Provide students with more competitive recreational opportunities within the parameters of the University.
These goals would become possible by implementing a management team. One faculty member listed is Mike Medina, the director of campus life for recreation at Quinnipiac. Medina joined the university in 2004 and spent years attempting to cultivate plans for club sports.
"We heard from students that we were missing a big piece of recreation in club sports," he said. "After years of proposals, we started to get a lot more support for the recognition process."
Medina was already familiar with the club hockey team as well as other teams run by students, but they did little monitoring of them. Instead, they recognized that there were Quinnipiac students participating in sports with little guidance and still had to be held to an appropriate standard. He was confident that club sports would bring a number of achievements to teams like club hockey.
"As soon as he brought groups on, they were going to have more success," Medina said. "Now they have the financial component of having a university behind you as well as having administrators who will work with you.
Since club sport athletes would be held to a higher standard if affiliated, Vattima developed several operations to meet those standards. All students must participate in a tryout with no guarantee that they will make a team and those accepted to teams are required to complete a waiver. Official rosters are submitted to the Quinnipiac University Club Sports Council (QUCSC) with confirmation that students are full-time, meeting a 2.0 GPA minimum and in good conduct standing with the university.
Good standing applied not just to the individual athletes, but the teams as a whole. Two instances mentioned in the proposal were hazing and the drug/alcohol policy. If any instances occurred, teams would be at risk of suspension or termination from club sports.
Vattima included a wide range of information in his proposal, but a big focus was all the benefits it would bring to Quinnipiac. For athletes, it offered leadership opportunities, work-study jobs and other skills that could be applied outside of their respective teams. Club sports would also put the university at another level entirely.
"Admission rates would go up and retention rates would go up," Vattima said. "If we can add 10 teams that suit 500 men and women, that's how many more students the school could bring in and keep here."
In the spring of 2019, Quinnipiac President Judy Olian announced that club sports were officially joining the university. The wait was over, and club hockey finally got the recognition they were waiting for.
“Being affiliated and being part of that first group was special," Borgman said. "We now have money from the school, an organized tryout process and we can even host events on campus."
Former captain Mark Russo, who graduated in 2020, remembers the exact moment he heard that club sports were coming to campus.
“I was in my backyard and I saw it on Twitter first before it was sent in our club hockey group chat,” he said. “We were thrilled thinking ‘the school is going to help us’ and it was one of the greatest things.”
Dylan Webb spent his freshman season on the Brave Hockey Club in 2018. He learned how to make schedules and learn other roles on the team so he could help out along the way. Now, he holds the role of President and oversees all the work that can be done on the team's end. Even with only one year on the unaffiliated team, Webb could see the difference when they became affiliated a year later.
"When we made that transition to affiliation a lot more is expected of you," he said. "We need to realize that we are representing Quinnipiac wherever we go."
Webb also works closely with Medina to keep the university informed of what's going on. Medina oversees most of the behind-the-scenes work that takes some of the pressure off the players so they can focus on playing.
"The team didn’t have to worry about paying rink bills or managing an off-campus bank account," he said. "We were doing everything on our end as long as they kept us in the loop."
A COACH CLOSE BY
When the team became official, they needed a head coach that was qualified to work at the college level. They didn’t have to look too far because one assistant coach from rival Fairfield University took the job. Coach Lloyd Jacques learned of the opening from Vattima and was already familiar with Quinnipiac's team. Three weeks before the fall 2019 semester, Jacques offered to take the job and get them on a path to success.
"I coached against Quinnipiac three to four years prior," Jacques said. "They could have been really good but they didn't have a ton of structure at the time."
Now in charge of what he calls "a bunch of ragtag kids," Jacques found the most challenging part to be choosing a lineup for each game.
"Everybody should have played each game and wanted to play each game," he said. "It was hard for me to tell someone they wouldn't dress that day.”
There was no way to know how his first season would go, but clearly, he did something right because Jacques was awarded the 2019 Empire Conference Coach of the Year.
CULTIVATING SUCCESS
Not every team can come together in its first official season and have a good relationship with each other, be able to put up a 12-game winning streak or go the furthest in playoff situations. That's what was so special about the club ice hockey team; they took what they had and turned it into something better than they could have ever imagined. Sophomore starting goalie Adam Kampersal played two years of junior hockey for the Hartford Wolf Pack before attending Quinnipiac and joining the club hockey team. He immediately noticed the team's resilience to never give up in a game, which was something he hadn't experienced before.
"As a goalie, I can’t impact our scoring," he said. "All I can do is worry about stopping the other team and I knew if I allowed a bad goal I can let it go because my team will go down and score again."
And that is exactly what they did in the conference semi-final game against Farmingdale.
“We were down 3-2 going into the second period and we came out and put up four goals back to back to back to back,” Kampersal said. “It makes the game so much more fun knowing that your team is able to do that for you.”
Kampersal credits that mentality to having a range of guys on the team that each fill a different role. Some guys don't get on the box score often but are the loudest on the bench. Others are small but can check the biggest guys into the board with ease.
"You want everyone to be super skilled, but sometimes you want a guy that players more as a teammate," Kampersal said. "You need a bunch of different pieces to build the perfect puzzle.
Brandon Kirchgessner, a freshman last season, also never experienced a team quite like Quinnipiac Club Ice Hockey. The team always gave it everything they had no matter how important the game was.
"We never had kids in the locker room say 'It’s just another hockey game,'" he said. "The whole year it was our top priority."
Another special part of Kirchgessner’s first year was that he always had at least one fan at the games. He could look behind the glass or in the stands and be guaranteed to find a family member, whether the game was in Connecticut or Pennsylvania.
“I’m from Jersey, so my dad would drive an hour and a half to every game,” Kirchgessner said. “When we went to Nationals, they actually got an RV and drove it down there.”
They played their best after winter break of that year. After a 12-game winning streak, including some playoff games, they found their way to the Empire Conference Championship against Fairfield at the end of February. They didn't take home the trophy, but they still earned a spot in the College Hockey Federation (CHF) Federation Cup Tournament. After going 3-0 in pool play, the tournament was canceled on March 12 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just like that, the team’s magical year came to an end.
Webb believes that if the tournament didn't get canceled, they could have made it all the way because the enjoyment they had on the ice outweighed what every other team was trying to throw at them.
"We were just out there having fun and that's why we were rolling when we got to Nationals," he said. "I really think we were going to win, nobody was going to be able to stop us."
Borgman agreed that once the team got hot, they just had to put their heads down and keep going.
“We really had to buy into what we wanted to do,” he said. “Let’s make people know that they don’t want to play us.”
THE BROTHERHOOD
It's clear that the team's on-ice talent contributed to their successful first season, but Russo had something else to say when it came to what really caused them to be one of the best teams in their conference and the CHF as a whole.
"I think the biggest thing was the chemistry we built off the ice," he said. "In past years we didn't really hang out as much."
Russo wasn’t the only guy to mention the team’s off-ice relationships. Every player believes that those friendships are what translate to games and help them play as well as they did last year.
“Everybody was boys with everybody from the super seniors down to the rookies,” Vattima said. “Once we caught our wind everyone was on the same playing field and we knew what we wanted to accomplish.”
Kirchgessner only experienced one season so far, but he's grateful for all the friendships he has that made his first year so memorable.
"Just from the start we pretty much bonded right away...," Kirchgessner said. "Off the ice, we're like a brotherhood."
Even when there were no more games to be played, you will always find the team together.
“After games, we’d go to the bowling alley or just hang out and play poker,” Webb said. “We are with each other all the time and then when it’s game day we can run teams out of the building.”
To hear what more players said about the team's off-ice chemistry, check out the video below.
Russo experienced both sides of the Quinnipiac club hockey program and gives stick taps to the founders for doing an incredible job and keeping them afloat so they could get to where they are today.
"From when they started they were wearing practice jerseys and playing local teams," he said. "Now we can play teams from Florida and Ohio and be able to get to Nationals."
Webb had an opportunity to talk with some of the guys from the original Brave Hockey Club who helped him into the leader he is today.
“They said we’re doing a great job,” Webb said. “The seniors my freshman year showed me what it meant to be leading the team as President.”
Borgman, another graduate, is thankful for the time he had with Quinnipiac Club Hockey.
"I’m happy I made the team in the first place and was able to build some good relationships through these four years," he said. "It definitely made my college experience much better than what it would have been if I wasn’t on the team."
Vattima was given the team from the founder and former president, so the pressure was on his shoulders until he eventually passed it on. He succeeded, bringing the team to new heights but he also learned important leadership lessons.
"For somebody that came into the school and didn’t even know we had a club team and seeing what it could offer me, it taught me the importance of tradition and what that means," Vattima said. This hugely shaped my college experience and who I am as a person."
Although the spring season is still on hold due to COVID-19, Quinnipiac Club Ice Hockey left its mark in their first season of affiliation. Jacques is looking forward to the new heights this team will reach in the future.
“Everybody tasted it last year so they know what it takes,” he said. “I’m expecting big things and looking forward to playing.”
From an underground, rowdy group of guys to national championship contenders, their best moments are yet to come. It would not have been possible without its founders, people like Vattima that wanted the best for the team and players, past and present, that proudly wear the Quinnipiac Club Hockey logo.
And the history of the Brave Hockey Club will be remembered forever.
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