Hockey club to compete in tournament
The Utah State University hockey club will travel to Salt Lake City this Thursday to play in the 2001 Rocky Mountain Collegiate Hockey Invitational Tournament.
Three other teams will be competing for the championship: Weber State University, the University of Utah and the University of Southern California.
The tournament will also act as a practice to test three Olympic Ice Hockey venues for the Salt Lake Olympic Committee. It will also
provide training for Salt Lake Olympic Committee (SLOC) results, off-ice official volunteers and sports services volunteers.
This tournament will be a good chance for Utah State to prove they are one of the best teams in the West. The Aggies are actually seeded last out of the four teams because seedings are based on rankings before the 2001 American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) Division II National Tournament.
A victory over Weber State in this tournament would be important in order for Utah State to move up in the rankings. Weber State had a decisive win last Friday, but the Aggies came out on Saturday looking for a win and got it.
“It was a total team effort,” team member Brandon Lang said. “Everyone played hard [and] with high intensity to get the victory.”
If the Aggies can come out with the same intensity and enthusiasm they did on Saturday, they will be a difficult team to beat, Lang said.
There is a unique twist after the games in this tournament. Each team will participate in a shootout between the two teams. The shooting competition will be done according to the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) regulations and won’t affect the outcome of the game just completed, but it will be used as a tie-breaker for placement in the final games.
The Aggies’ first game is on Thursday at the Country Ice Sheet in Salt Lake City at 8:30 p.m. against USC. The second game will be played at 5:30 p.m. on Friday at the Accord Ice Arena in Salt Lake against Utah. The last round-robin game will be played against Weber on Saturday morning at 7:30 a.m. in the Peaks Ice Arena, located in Provo.
The championship will also be played in Provo at the same arena at 8:30 p.m. The cost of admission is $2. For addresses and more information on the tournament, an e-mail can be sent to malnar@cc.usu.edu.