A letter to NESCAC seniors on senior day

It's the last regular season hurrah on senior day for Danny Palumbo (#7) and
other NESCAC seniors this weekend. 

Dear Senior NESCAC men's hockey players,

You are not special.

Not the message you expected, huh? You wanted a message that reaffirmed that you worked hard, sacrificed, were a great teammate, etc.? Perhaps we'll get there, but let's start with you not being special.

These will likely be the last few weeks of competitive hockey that you will ever play. A dozen or less of you will become professional hockey players for a short period of time. And by professional, I mean you will get paid a pittance sum to take long bus rides to play in such hockey havens as Columbus, Georgia and Huntsville, Alabama. A handful of you might be fortunate enough to make the jump from playing Polar Bears to taking on Solar Bears ( ECHL) and perhaps one of you will make it all the way to the AHL like Jon Landry (Bowdoin '06).

But the rest of you are left looking for jobs and spots in graduate school like the rest of your classmates. These are the same classmates that likely did little to follow your hockey career as they went to the same demanding school that you did and had plenty to keep themselves busy besides rooting for your team. Even if you did hold more sway in your institution than other sports teams, you still only played at the D-III level.

But is hockey really like other D-III sports? Is playing in the NESCAC like other D-III hockey schools? And are you really like your classmates?

You've probably noticed that you've been buying beer legally a little bit - perhaps a lot of bit - longer than your fellow khaki rocking 'Cacers. And your buddy from home that played baseball in college? He had his senior day two springs ago. Unlike many of your classmates or other D-III athletes, you had to go to an extra year of prep school or juniors to play your sport of choice in college. Some of you even chased a D-I scholarship to oblivion, settling on the 'Cac after aging out of juniors.

As for other D-III hockey players, they get a head start on their team activities in the fall and their conference doesn't have 90% of its schools appear on the list of the top 100 most selective college and universities.  Low acceptance rates don't determine a good academic experience and the NESCAC as elitist conference trope gets old pretty quick, but needless to say you came to the NESCAC as much -if not more - to fulfill the student part of student-athlete.

You may have caught on by now that your academic experiences aren't the only benefits of a NESCAC education. Life is often about connections and the NESCAC offers plenty of opportunities, especially the brotherhood of hockey alumni that you may have already hit up for a summer internship.

But there will be plenty of time for job applications, MCATs, apartment leases, and all the other fun vicissitudes of adulthood. At the risk of veering off into coach speak, these last few weeks should be about bonding together with your teammates to go as far as you can go in the NESCAC playoffs (if you make them) and if you are lucky enough, in the NCAA tournament.

In a 2013 Hartford Courant article, Trinity coach Matt Greason talked about leaving the National Team Development Program, where he worked with future NHL players, to come coach at his alma mater. "They (the NTDP players) wanted to see where they would get drafted, wanted to see where they would play pro, maybe an Olympics down the road. These guys just come together and the only thing they care about is Trinity hockey and winning." 

In other words, NESCAC coaches like coaching you because they know this is the end of the line for you. This is your NHL. So try and make it one last hell of a hurrah. 

And before the puck drop, senior day specifically should be a moment of pause, reflection and gratitude. While your hockey career is almost over, it's not over yet. Savor in the fact that you got to play competitive hockey for as long as you did, much longer than most of your house league mite teammates with whom you learned to play. Think of all the tournaments you went to in youth hockey, revel in the days of school you got to miss to travel far and wide to lace them up. Remember your first celly and fondly recall the games of knee hockey you played in hotel rooms because you couldn't be away from hockey even on room temperature surfaces.

And not to recall Barack Obama's tactics from the 2012 presidential election, but you didn't build that hockey career yourself. Without the sacrifice of other people, especially your parents, you would have never gotten to this point. So remember to be grateful for your parents for their sacrifice: financial, temporal and emotional, and remember to verbalize this gratitude to them.

And be grateful for your coaches. That youth coach that sparked your passion for the game? Send him an email before you leave school. Maybe you had a psycho coach in squirts that got in bar fights and would rattle your cage. Thank him too, I guess. And last but not least, thank your current coach (and his assistants). Maybe he is your favorite coach and maybe he is not, but either way he's the last coach you'll likely have and he might have an indelible effect on your life whether you realize it or not.

Hugs and Kisses,

Hockey in the 'Cac


PS. Did you think you were going to get away without a musical tribute? Since we are taking a walk down memory lane on senior day, here's the Beach Boys rendition of "Graduation Day"