Cortland Punches Their Ticket To Missouri!!
Yesterday was a very exciting day for Cortland Roller Hockey! At 8pm last night, the team gathered together at a teammate’s house to listen to the National Collegiate Roller Hockey Association’s Selection Monday podcast. The team anxiously listened in hope that they would hear Cortland announced as a team receiving a bid for Nationals.
After listening to all of the Division 1 bids, the podcast finally started to discuss the Division 2 Nationals bids. Shortly into this portion of the broadcast, SUNY Cortland was announced as an invitee to Nationals in Independence, Missouri. The NCRHA National Championships will take place between the dates of April 7th and April 13th at the Independence Events Center. This beautiful 2-rink complex will be the host of over a hundred games throughout the week including the National Championship game for each of the 3 divisions.
Cortland was one of 6 ECRHA teams to be invited to Nationals, but Cortland will not have to face any of those other teams in pool play. The Dragons have been placed in Pool C with 3 teams that they have never played before. Cortland will faceoff against the Chico State Wildcats, the Akron Zips, and the Denver Pioneers. Defeating these teams will not be an easy task as all 3 of them obviously had strong years that got them to the National Tournament. Chico State finished with a regular season record of 12-4 and finished 3rd in their conference. Akron finished with a record of 10-5 and made it all the way to the regional championship game before falling to Western Michigan. Lastly, Denver finished with a record of 13-3-1 during the regular season, which was enough to give them 1st place in their conference.
The way the tournament works is as follows. Each team plays everyone in their pool 1 time. The top 2 teams in each pool automatically make it into the playoff bracket. The remaining teams have to play an elimination game to get in. After that, the bracket is single elimination all the way through the finals. With Nationals just a few weeks away, the anticipation and excitement is beginning to rise, and we can’t wait to see how it unfolds.