QU remembering Team IMPACT teammate
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Before he rewatched Quinnipiac’s game against St. Cloud State early Saturday morning (and again early Saturday afternoon), men’s hockey coach Rand Pecknold tweeted about an old friend.
“Thinking of our friend Michael Torello tonight after this huge win,” he tweeted. “We miss you Michael.”
Torello was the Bobcats’ Team IMPACT teammate since 2017. The Cheshire resident died last July 30 at 15, leaving his parents and three siblings and a hockey team.
“Obviously he was a big part of our program,” Bobcats senior defenseman Marcus Chorney said Saturday after practice at PPL Center on an off day between the first and second rounds of the NCAA tournament.
“During the summers, we’d go over to his house, have pool parties, have burgers, hot dogs, hang around him and his family. They’re super-special to us, and obviously he’s superspecial to our program, everything he did for us.”
Team IMPACT matches children facing serious and chronic illness with college teams, trying to counter the “emotional trauma and social isolation” those children may experience.
Torello had been diagnosed with kernicterus, “a type of brain damage that can result from high levels of bilirubin in a baby’s blood,” according to a page on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s website.
He attended games at ice level behind the home goal, a spot now marked by a sticker on the glass with his name, No. 1, and “impact & inspiration.” The Bobcats each skated to that spot and tapped that sticker with a glove after home games.
“Obviously we miss him,”
Chorney said, “and he was an inspiration for us this year, for sure.”
The Bobcats (32-6-3), ranked seventh in one poll and eighth in the other, meet top-seeded, secondranked Michigan (30-9-1) here on Sunday at 6:30 p.m. (ESPN2). A berth in the Frozen Four in Boston, April 7-9, is on the line.
The Wolverines have a Team IMPACT player on their own roster, Kellen O’Connell of Saginaw, Mich., who joined the team in 2021. (Michigan coach Mel Pearson said O’Connell was a Michigan State fan, but they’ve converted him.)
“The word I’d use is really ‘inspiring’ to all of us,” senior forward Nolan Moyle said. “He fights every day.”
Michigan senior forward Garrett Van Wyhe said O’Connell is truly a part of the team, and that’s part of the Wolverines’ culture.
“Sure, he’s our IMPACT player, but we treat him as family,” Van Wyhe said, “treat him as one of the players in the locker room.
“He’s there at practices. He’s there on the ice when we win, too. He’s definitely part of the team, and we’re really happy that he’s part of it.”
That’s certainly how it seemed to work for Quinnipiac with Torello, who came to the Bobcats’ coach’s mind after a hard-fought 5-4 tournament win.
“It’s Team IMPACT, and the way it’s supposed to work is we’re supposed to have an impact on his life,” Pecknold said, “but it really was the reverse of that.”