2 schools, 4 teams, 0 wins
At Finlandia and Post, it’s 75 losses and counting this winter
Since the NCAA began recognizing women’s hockey, there has never been a season where a school has seen both its men’s and women’s teams lose every game on the schedule. That might change soon. Meet the hockey programs at Finlandia University and Post University. Their four teams are a combined 0-75-0 this season and most haven’t been close — the average score of their games is 7-1.
And yet both schools press on, somehow undeterred.
“We are 10 steps ahead of where we were last year,” said Post forward Trevor Buchas, the first captain in the program’s history. “I know the scores don’t reflect it. But we are.”
Finlandia’s men (0-23-0) have two games left, the Finlandia women (021-0) and the Post women (0-19-0) have four each, while the Post men (0-12-0) only have an exhibition remaining on Saturday. Post’s men have won three games against club teams and play another such exhibition Saturday, though those aren’t reflected in the official record.
“We have a good group,” Finlandia men’s coach Joe Burcar said. “I’m somewhat surprised we haven’t won a handful of games because of what we have, a bunch of young men who work extremely hard, good in the classroom, good in the community. We just haven’t had the results.”
Finlandia’s men have lost 41 straight going back to last season.
That drought is nothing compared to the school’s women’s team.
Finlandia’s women have lost 69 in a row — the last win coming on Feb. 8, 2014. Finlandia has three seniors who were freshmen and played in that game; it’s the lone win for Alena Fiala, Theresa Wolf and Sara Martin, who have a combined 249 appearances in college.
“Our locker room is a positive place,” Finlandia women’s coach Matt Marchel said. “We don’t let negativity creep in. Obviously, things can go really, really south really fast when you have the seasons we’ve had. But we have a good group of girls that think positive and try to get better every day. We only compare ourselves to us yesterday. As long as we’re moving forward, hey, we’re doing good things.”
If both schools wanted, they could spew excuses from one end of the rink to another. They don’t. Finlandia is located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula — a ninehour drive from Detroit, a place so small and remote that it’s tough to get many opponents to give them home games.
Post’s programs are new; men’s coach Pete Whitney was hired in April 2015, five months before the Eagles played their first exhibition game. Women’s coach Heath Issacson was hired in May 2015, and his team last led a game on Nov. 13 — 939 minutes and 44 seconds ago, to be precise.
The Post women have been outscored 147-7. They went nearly two months without a goal in one stretch this season. But Pace actually led the team they’re playing this weekend, Lebanon Valley, earlier this season. So there’s hope.
“I was pretty honest with the kids when I was recruiting them for this first season that this is a building process,” Issacson said. “Yes, we expected to be better this year, but we’re building on a three- or fouryear plan.”
He expected to have 16 players when the season started. But it took some time for five to get through NCAA requirements, meaning he was down to 11 for a while. He’s had three defencemen in his rotation all year. Backup goalies have played some forward. And once, because of injuries, there were a total of three people in the bench area during play — Issacson, an assistant coach and one skater.
“Years from now, we’re going to look back on this and laugh,” Issacson said.
Post’s men recently went to Fredonia in New York for a two-game series, losing 14-0 and 15-1.
The ride was worse than the games.
The 400-mile drive from Waterbury, Conn., to Fredonia was made much longer because of a misunderstanding between police at a checkpoint and the bus driver over a ticket from long ago. It took hours to clear that up. Then on the trip home, the bus broke down and a 4 a.m. planned arrival became an 8:30 a.m. arrival.
“Our team has a good grasp on reality,” Whitney said. “Adversity? It’s no big deal. We deal with it every day in different ways. The guys are great. They buy in. They’re playing for each other. We’re going to be fine — and we are going to get there.”