Press "Enter" to skip to content

Club hockey seniors talk legacy after final home game

When the final horn sounded last Saturday night, the seven seniors on the Bradley Club Hockey team bid farewell to the Owens Center.

“Knowing that’s the last time I’ll put on a home Bradley jersey, it’s disappointing,” assistant captain and forward Doug Miceli said. “But, looking back on these four years, it’s just been a great experience.”

The 5-2 loss to Robert Morris University in Peoria was disheartening for the players and fans that attended the game, especially for the seniors that would put on a home Bradley uniform for the last time.

“The fans played a huge part,” Miceli said. “It’s too bad we couldn’t get a win for them.”

However, the contributions these seniors leave behind to the team go far beyond their play on the ice.

With club teams not being part of regulated NCAA sports, and not an official university team,
team presidents are tasked with finding innovative ways to bring students to their games.
One of those ideas, turned success was creating Bradley hockey T-shirts for students to buy. If students wore the shirts to a game, they would be granted free admission.

Senior forward and captain Cam Cordts said the T-shirt idea was pushed forward with the larger budget the club hockey team receives each year.

“We manage a budget of almost $60,000 a year,” Cordts, also the team’s treasurer, said. “I’m in charge of that, I work with the head coach on that.”

Miceli said that the team’s promotions and marketing is part of the reason the club is more well known on Bradley’s campus.

“We’ve posted flyers [and] we’ve wrote our games on the sidewalk in chalk,” Miceli said. “Just getting the word of mouth out there, it’s just little things like that that help out.”

With the special promotions that the seniors have set up this year, the juniors and underclassmen can take what the seniors have put into place and build on it in years to come. According to Cordts, that setting the example for those under him to follow is the most important thing to the graduating senior.

“Just really getting to know some of the younger guys that will have the stuff that I do in their hands next year and prepping them for that; that’s really important to me,” Cordts said.

Copyright © 2023, The Scout, Bradley University. All rights reserved.
The Scout is published by members of the student body of Bradley University. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the University.