Roller hockey club president and goalie Bobby Child, a graduate student, has seen the program come full circle since he joined the team in 2007. The team is 15-5 this season and just captured its first Southeastern Collegiate Roller Hockey League regular season championship since 2007, Child’s first year with the team.
“It is great for me because it has been such a part of my college experience,” Child said. “When I first took over, our first season was really rough. I have been trying to recruit and build the program ever since, so it means a lot to me personally to see us doing really well. Especially coming from being last in the region, to first in the region. It’s a really exciting time.”
State advanced to the Sweet 16 of the National Collegiate Roller Hockey Association tournament in 2007, a year after the roller hockey team’s deepest NCRHA run in its history, which ended in the Elite Eight. Child took over as president of the team in 2008, but quickly had to forget about thoughts of a third consecutive SECRHL title and focus on rebuilding a team that lost most of the players from the 2006 and 2007 SECHRL championship teams.
“Almost all the players graduated in those two years,” Child said. “So when I took over as president, we pretty much had to start from scratch. We had like two people left from those previous seasons. So we have been rebuilding the program ever since. We have been getting better over the past three years.”
Just as the club improved between each of the last few seasons, it has played better and better as this season has gone along. The team was ranked No. 16 in the country by the Independent Rankings Committee in its most recent poll and has defeated No. 8 Rhode Island once and No. 10 Central Florida twice in its past two tournaments.
Chris Davis, a sophomore in human biology and the SECRHL’s leader in goals and points, said the team’s recent wins against the toughest competition it has seen this season have been more satisfying than some of the wins over less stout opponents.
“We had a good record all year, but we really had not played any Division-I teams until the last couple weekends,” Davis said. “These past two weekends we have played all D-I teams. It is exciting to have a winning record against all them.”
Davis and Mike Iadanza, a sophomore in business, have keyed the team’s recent surge. Before dropping three of four games in its most recent tournament, the Pack was on a 12 game winning streak and had not lost since Oct. 4, 2009. Even after the losses this past weekend, the club is 13-3 over its last 16 games. Evidence of the duo’s offensive dominance abounds on the statistical leader board for the conference. Davis leads the SECRHL in points, assists and game-winning goals and is third in goals, while Ladanza leads it in goals and has the second highest game-winning goal and point totals.
“They actually did really well last year too and this year they’re doing even better,” Child said. “They’ve been playing with each other for a while and they each know where the other one is without even looking at each other. They work really well together and their skill sets complement each other really well. They are two of the top players in the region, for sure.”
Team captain Al Westin, a junior in business and international studies, said the 9-5 win Saturday over Rhode Island showed the team how capable it is of continuing to rise in the national poll.
“The best team we’ve seen was the No. 8 team in the country, [Rhode Island], and we completely destroyed them,” Westin said. “It wasn’t even close. By the end of the season, being a top-10 team is definitely within reach for us and that is something we will definitely shoot for.”
The club will travel to Snellville, Ga. Feb. 27 to compete with conference rivals Central Florida and Florida Atlantic for a trip to San Jose, Calif. for the national tournament. In addition to an automatic bid to the 24-team NCRHA tournament, the winner of the SECRHL Regional Championships will have its entrance fee to the national tournament paid for.
