One of the weird quirks of Union college, where I teach, is that the hockey teams compete in the NCAA’s Division I, something that doesn’t usually happen for a school with only 2200 students. That might seem like a ridiculously terrible idea, but last night, it worked surprisingly well: Union beat perennial hockey power Minnesota for the NCAA National Championship. It was an amazing game
I’m not going to pretend like I’m a huge fan– Kate and I watched on tv, the only hockey I’ve watched all season– and I’m certainly not going to use first-person pronouns to talk about it (I really hate that…). I had nothing to do with this– I’m fairly sure I’ve never even had any current hockey players in class. This is all theirs, the product of lots of hard work.
But this is a huge deal for all the students. We even got a few glimpses of some physics majors on ESPN– two of them, including one of my research students, play in the pep band. Pretty much all of them will remember this forever as one of the biggest things to happen in their time in college. And that’s worth celebrating and acknowledging.
So congratulations to the hockey team, some of whom celebrated in the most 2014 way imaginable, as seen in the “featured image” up top. The guys in hockey gear are Matt Bodie, Shayne Gostisbehere, and Daniel Carr, three of Union’s standout players– Gostisbehere in particular played an amazing game, and was trending on Twitter at one point, which is a miracle given his surname. The dude in the suit taking the selfie is ESPN’s John Buccigross (the resulting photo is here). This isn’t a you-kids-get-your-selfies-off-my-lawn thing, by the way– I think it’s pretty funny, and kind of awesome.
2014, ladies and gentlemen, and the Union College Dutchmen, NCAA Division I National Champions.