If you have walked down the shiny new hallways inside of this amazing school in the past month, you may, or may not, have noticed a few people (including myself) have mysteriously gone blonde.
The reason for this sudden style change is the hockey team making the playoffs. The reason nobody in our school has ever seen this before is because it hasn’t happened in some students’ lifetimes.
It’s been 16 years since the last time somebody on the Knoch Hockey team could say they were excited for playoffs, but now, they once again can.
“I am very excited for the playoffs,” senior Captain Brady Linamen said. “We have a chance to do something special.”
That we do. After a slow start to the season, going 0-3 in our first three games, we won the next 12 games in a row.
“It was crazy,” said senior Assistant Captain Cam Christie. “We couldn’t stop winning.”
During this time, the team was led by “The Big Five.” This quintet (I looked it up. This means a group of five people) is who started every period for the team. The group consists of forwards senior Brady Linamen, Slippery Rock senior Synjun McHattie, and senior Cam Christie. On the defensive side, myself, junior Zack Weiland and Moniteau sophomore Tyson Voloch led the way. In the 20 games in the season, four out of five averaged more than a point per game, and they all had a positive plus/minus.
Enough of the glaze. Anyway, the past five games have not gone too well, losing four of them, including senior night against Morgantown.
“I don’t know what we were doing,” said Linamen. “We need to lock in.”
Enough of me, the schedule has been released for playoffs and it starts tonight, when the hockey team goes on the road to play the Ringgold Rams at the CFS Bank Event Center in Rostraver.
The winner of this game will play Neshannock, who we had lost against when we met in October, and have never won against in the entire history of the program. This will be the semi-finals at the RMU Island Sports Center in Coraopolis. The winner of that game will play in the Championship at the UPMC Lemieux Sports Center in Cranberry.
“I feel good about our chances,” said Linamen.
“It’s so different now than back at the start of the season. We are ready.” said Christie.
I feel the same way, I think our side of the bracket is much easier then the other side, and if we were to make a run, I don’t think anybody, especially on our team, would be surprised about it.
Alright, back to the hair. Instead of having a normal playoff run this year, we decided as a team to do something a little different. I mean, we have never experienced this before, so we have to make it special.
“It was kind of our whole goal all season to bleach our hair. We knew it meant a lot to make the playoffs after the rough patches we have had the last two years,” said Linamen. “I’m just happy we finally have a shot to win something.”
“We all kind of joked about (bleaching our hair) for playoffs every year that I’ve played, and then we actually made playoffs, so we kind of had to do it,” said Christie. “Pack the barn.”
