Men's Hockey Team Wins on the Ice, Struggles with Identity off the Ice

The six conference championships in 11 seasons, the 11 straight national championship appearances, the mascot madness, the ice girls, the pep band, the
crowd – Stony Brook University’s men’s hockey team looks every bit like the powerful squads on the lacrosse field, baseball diamond, gridiron and hardwoods.

There is one significant difference, though – these Seawolves are just a club team. There are no scholarships and they don’t play in a state-of-the-art rink. Despite the student activity funds the team obtains annually, the players still fork over $1,000 each season to play. Head coach and general manager Chris Garofalo is hoping all
that changes soon, that the team can drum up the support of the university to make hockey an NCAA program in the near future.

“We’ve had way too much success for them not to take a serious look at us,” said Garofalo. “Long Island is a hotbed for hockey. We’d get fans, get gate money and make revenue, I know it. It would be a successful program. The kids on campus go to those games more than go to football games. There’s something about hockey that makes people want to watch it. It’s a shame because I feel like the school is missing the boat.”

The program’s resume is indeed impressive. At one point, it won four straight Super East Collegiate Hockey League crowns. In 2003, the Seawolves lost to Colorado in the national championship game, and the following year they bowed to eventual champ Oakland (Mich.) in the national semifinals. Stony Brook has often skated circles around its competition, over the years posting gaudy records like 32-3 and
33-5-1.

Even if the Seawolves aren’t an NCAA team, they do their best to look, act and play like one. Garofalo, who played for the Seawolves from 1992-1996, has routinely recruited players from both near and far. This year’s roster fields players from Port Jefferson Station, Kings Park and Centereach as well as Valencia, Calif., and Vero Beach, Fla. Home games are played at in Hauppauge, drawing a modest crowd – “a few hundred” by Garofalo’s estimation. However, he calls the show put on there “on par with an NCAA atmosphere.”

“Everybody’s right on top of the rink, the ice girls throw out T-shirts, we have raffles – it’s a fun environment to be a part of,” Garofalo said. And for those who can’t be there, the games are streamed live online.

While the hockey team has flourished, SBU’s varsity sports have enjoyed unprecedented success as of late. In fact, when Jim Fiore was appointed the athletic director in 2003, the school had won just one conference championship; in 2009-10 alone, it had six. Thanks to $30 million of state money that was secured, the athletic facilities have received a makeover all over campus. Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium, where many of the school’s fall and spring sports play, including football, was dramatically renovated recently. In turn, the gridiron gang has seen its attendance more than quintuple over the last decade. SBU’s basketball arena got a facelift, too, and the team earned its first America East championship and postseason berth last winter. The Seawolves men’s lacrosse team, ranked in the preseason top five, is a legitimate national title contender this spring.

So with so much brewing on campus, how close is the team to its dream, NCAA membership?

Of the hockey team’s situation, Fiore said via e-mail: “I have enormous respect for the folks associated with the SBU Club hockey team as they are terrific young men and very passionate about their sport. Unfortunately and for many reasons, moving to NCAA intercollegiate varsity status any time in the near future is highly unlikely.”

Outside the Seawolves’ home ice at The Rinx, the stands are cement blocks. The facility’s attendance capacity is in the hundreds rather than the thousands, a far cry from where an NCAA program would need to be. Garofalo estimated that even a low-level hockey rink would cost $10 million, for which the team can’t count on New York State given the economic turmoil in Albany. The other option is a private donation, but even if that was locked up, the university would need to sign off on a rink being constructed on campus, and then clear more money to maintain it, pay the coaching staff and more.

Long odds or not, Garofalo and the rest of those invested in the hockey program won’t soon give up. The Seawolves take a 15-11 record into their final home games of the season, Saturday against Drexel (8 p.m.) and Sunday against Lehigh (3 p.m.). Garofalo looks around and sees the scene that he’s helped built but can’t help but envision it being even better.

“We have a good program now and we’re happy being where we are,” Garofalo said. “That said, we’d love to take it to the next level. That’s our main goal. We’ll just keep working hard, put our head down and hopefully one day they’ll notice. … The success we’ve had without the school’s support is enormous. I can only imagine what it would be like with the school behind us.”