At the ninth annual Pink the Rink, a fundraiser by Community Hospital to raise money for cancer research, the CMU Mavs hockey team took on the Grand Canyon University (GCU) Lopes at the River City Sportplex on Sunday, Feb. 15. The Mavs won the match-up 2-1.
Pink the Rink is a fundraiser for all types of cancer, with the proceeds going to the Community Hospital Oncology Department. Last year’s event raised $36,000. Across the first eight years the event has brought in $225,000 for cancer treatment at Community Hospital.
Head Coach Timothy Winegard, attributes this success to the players who play for him.
“[The team] sells t-shirts, sweatshirts, and hats. There’s a kickoff event that [the players] organize at Mama Ree’s. [The players] get silent auction items from local businesses or other places,” Winegard said.
He also mentioned that Quincy’s Bar sponsored the jerseys the team wore on Feb. 15.
The game went well for the Mavericks, despite going down by a point early in the first period. The defense took a moment to find their footing, when the puck got in behind sophomore goalie John Hickam.
Hickam was able to bounce back.
“I had to really focus on, during the Pink the Rink game, controlling my rebounds.”
This allowed him to avoid second chance points by the Lopes.
It took only two and a half minutes for the mavericks to score when sophomore defense-man Levi Krantz put the puck in the net after a clean pass from freshman forward Dylan Sowa.
“I got lucky and was able to cheat down into the high slot behind GCU’s defense-men during a battle in the corner,” said Krantz.
After the puck got free from the corner, Sowa was able to get the puck to Krantz for an easy back-door tap in.
CMU took the lead, never to give it back just under two minutes into the second period. Senior forward Larry Simmons netted the puck once again. From this goal onward, Simmons and the team were focused on maintaining the lead for the win.
Simmons said that the Mavs simply “[stuck] to the game plan to wear them [the Lopes] out with our disciplined fore-check.”
Both teams were kept scoreless in the third period. As the finishing buzzer rang out, the Mavericks skated off the ice, victorious, to the raucous cheers of a sold out home crowd.
“Getting to support this cause as a team has been nothing but an honor. It took a lot of time, effort and teamwork to put this fundraiser together,” Hickam said. “Not only from the Pink the Rink game itself, but also coming up with items for the silent auction and T-shirt sales as a group.”
Unfortunately, there will be no postseason for the team. Even after winning back-to-back games against Colorado College over Feb. 21 and 22, 6-0 and 7-3 respectively.
The post season is determined by “…an algorithm that weighs strength of schedule, goal differential, wins/losses,” Coach Winegard explained. “The top sixteen teams in the country go directly to nationals, out of 148 teams.”
He said he was pleased with the season his players played. They ranked 26th out of 148, beating some of the top teams in the country: Florida Gulf Coast, the Colorado School of Mines and Air Force.
