By Roxanne Truesdell
For their efforts during the 2003-04 season, the IceCats hockey team received numerous accolades from the American Collegiate Hockey Association.
Ten Cat players achieved Academic All-American status for the Division II ACHA league. The IceCats also had one player, goalie Tamio Stehrenberger, make the All-American West second team.
'Tamio is just an outstanding athlete,' head coach Matt Beaudry said. 'As well as making Academic All-American, we nominated him to be an athlete All-American, and they selected him as goalie for the second team.'
Players who made the Academic All-American team include Jimmy Burkart, Daniel Haws, Chris 'Haws' Hexberg, Greg Ingram, Randy Kannas, Travis Little, Mark Ostebo, Reid Robertson and Stehrenberger.
Beaudry said he is proud of his team for this accomplishment.
'I don''t think it means anything to anybody but us,' Beaudry said. 'But I think it''s, obviously, a huge reflection upon the quality of the players that we have on the team. Not only are they outstanding athletes, but they are superior students to make that type of grade point average, first of all, at one of the premier universities in the world. I think it''s a great reflection on them as individuals, and of course, we''ll take all the accolades for having them on the team because they are just great people all-around.'
These Academic All-Americans balance demanding practice schedules with their studies. The minimum cumulative GPA for the players is a 3.5. GPA is not the sole criteria, but is weighted heavily along with other things, such as special commendations, fellowships and scholarships, awards and other similar academic opportunities.
'It came as a total surprise,' Ostebo said. 'I had no idea it was going to happen. I was excited. I''m sure all the other guys were excited about it, too. It''s good to know your hard work pays off. It is tough, during the school year, to go to hockey and to try to keep up on schoolwork. A lot of the guys have jobs, too, so you kind of go to school, to your job, to hockey, and you don''t have much time for anything else. It feels really good to know that it finally paid off. It seems kind of overwhelming to be All-American. It''s kind of a big word.'
The IceCats finished their season as No. 6 in the West region of Division II with a 14-11-0-2 record. They hope to continue to excel and provide good competition next season and are already getting a head start on it.
'In our hockey world, we''re already starting conditioning,' Beaudry said. 'We already got players coming into town who want to play in the fall who haven''t played with us before. We are just in preparation phase. We are preparing the players physically.'
Beaudry said that a lot of people are interested and he is excited for tryouts to start in the fall because it looks promising.
'We''ve certainly got a lot of outstanding players coming back,' he said. 'We lost some really good ones to graduation, but we''ve got a lot of great players coming back and I think it''s going to be a great team. They have a lot of expectations and our fans should be pretty excited to come watch us this year.'