While most MSU students were recovering from the weekend or anticipating the MSU-Purdue University basketball game Feb. 4, the tasks on the Sunday morning to-do list of the MSU Roller Hockey Club were entirely different.
The team was taking advantage of rare rink time at the Mid-Michigan Roller Hockey Arena in Lansing - preparing to defend its back-to-back Collegiate Roller Hockey League championships.
Team captain and chemistry senior Mike Mackert said the team has practiced less than 10 times this semester and has already taken two road trips, including a trip to Las Vegas last month where it won the North American Roller Hockey Championships Winternationals tournament.
“We don’t practice as much as we’d like but we travel a lot,” said Mackert, who is also the club president.
The team will get a chance to play at home this weekend when it hosts a slew of regular-season games at the arena. Among those will be a match at 7 p.m. Saturday against the University of Michigan, which will have an extended format. The Ohio State University, Purdue University and the University of Illinois will also participate in the weekend games.
General management junior Juliano Passi said after traveling so much, it will be great to finally get a chance to play in front of friends.
“It’s nice because all the teams are coming to our town,” said Passi, a Brazilian who decided to attend MSU because of its reputation for roller hockey. “It will be nice to have friends watch and know that it’s a serious sport. It’s a club team but at the same time it’s a serious sport and we can bring that to Lansing and show them what roller hockey is.”
Despite its club status, the team has taken on the mentality of a varsity sport since volunteer coach Rejean Tremblay took over four years ago. Tremblay’s son Daniel, a 2000 MSU graduate, was a member of that team and asked his father to give the team a hand. Since then, Tremblay, whose daughter also attends MSU, has led the team to a 113-4-3 record.
After coaching and playing at nearly every level of hockey, Tremblay studied roller hockey, using his background in ice hockey and knowledge of soccer, before taking the position.
“I took all these aspects of every other game and tried to look at it and study it and apply it to roller hockey,” he said.
Tremblay has transformed the program by incorporating more discipline than the club previously had.
“Some clubs, they go (on the road) and it’s a big party all weekend long. They don’t care if they win or lose,” he said. “This team is here to win and give Michigan State a good name. They are businessmen and gentlemen and they should be given credit ’cause not many people know about kids like this.”
Mackert said though Tremblay can be hard on the players at times, they still enjoy playing.
“If any of the guys thought it wasn’t fun because they’re getting yelled at during practice they wouldn’t be doing it,” he said.
As president, Mackert takes care of all the team’s off-rink needs, such as traveling arrangements. Next season, Tremblay plans on giving every player an additional off-rink responsibility.
“Everyone on the team is going to have a job,” he said. “It is going to be a lot more structured. I think it’s going to be great ’cause the kids will get something out of it. I’m not only here to teach hockey, but also about life.”
Like their coach, most of the players have an ice hockey background, but Tremblay said that trend is beginning to change.
“When I started four years ago, everyone had played regular hockey,” Tremblay said. “Now a good number of the kids have never played regular hockey. But on the other hand they have a little lack of aggressiveness because an (ice) hockey player has that aggressiveness that maybe a roller hockey player does not have because they don’t need it as much.”
Unlike ice hockey, roller hockey’s rules do not demand its players to be as physical and as strong, so smaller players have a chance to excel. A rule against checking and an absence of a blue and red line allow the game to flow with fewer play stoppages.
Tremblay said the game has grown in popularity during the last 10 years because of these rules, since the players can focus on the skill aspect of the game without worrying about getting hurt.
“A lot of kids’ parents don’t like body checking,” Tremblay said. “It’s a lot more of a pure game than ice hockey. The injuries are very minimal. That’s the beauty of the game, you don’t have that many injuries - a little bruise here and there but nothing major like in ice hockey.”
