World Ball Hockey Championships
Update June 10
First up in June is the International Street and Ball Hockey Federation (ISBHF)'s World Ball Hockey Championships hosted by the defending champion Czech Republic. Ball Hockey is essentially ice hockey sans skates/ice avec a ball instead of a puck. The rules are generally the same as the frozen version of our fair sport, save the expanded blue line. The offsides rule is the same, only once the attacking team enters the offensive zone center ice now becomes the demarcation between zones.
Two NESCAC players took part in the World Ball Hockey Championships - held from June 1st through 10th - and both for Team Greece. Williams starting goalie Michael Pinios ('19) played out as a defenseman for the hellenic ball hockey team and Colby forward Phil Klitirinos ('18) played up front. Both are from Quebec, which NESCAC scholars will note is nowhere geographically near the home of the ancient philosophers they study, but the tournament rules allow for players to play for their ancestral homeland if at least one of their grandparents had citizenship for the country in question.
The two players are coming off different trends this past season on the ice. Pinios had a mediocre sophomore campaign after busting out of the gate his freshman season as a Second Team All-NESCAC goalie and Co-Rookie of the Year. Klitirinos, meanwhile, bounced back from an injury-riddled sophomore season in which he appeared in just nine games to score 25 points (7-18-25) in 24 games in 2016-17.
All games from the tournament were streamed live with English commentary, for those that are jonesing for some NESCAC puc- err - ball. For the Williams piece with some more background on Pinios' participation in the tournament, click here.
The Greeks ended up finishing in fourth overall in the tournament, as they did in the 2015 edition of the tournament. They lost their first three games of pool play to Canada, India and Slovaka respectively, though they picked up a point with an OT shootout loss to Canada to open the tournament. They were fourth of five in Pool A1 headed into their final game of pool play against winless Finland. Greece blanked Finland 4-0 to earn a spot in a play-in game to the Quaretfinals vs. Haiti.
Pinios, scoreless before the knockout round, netted two points (1-1-2) in a 3-1 win over Haiti, including the game winning goal on a short handed tally from behind his own redline. You read that right, and to view it, check out the video of this game at about 31 minutes in here.
The Greeks then beat the USA 4-3 in OT to earn a trip to the semis against Canada, whom they would lose to for the second time in the tournament. Canada, the homeland of both Pinios and Klitirnos, featured a former DIII player in Adrian's Shaq Merasty.
Most of these games were played to a nearly empty 10,000 person arena in Pardubice, Czech Republic. The Greeks, however, had a packed house sendoff to the tournament as they faced the host Czechs in the bronze medal game, which they lost 4-3 to the host nation.
Pinios ended up with four points for the tournament (2-2-4), good enough for third best on the team, while Klitirinos went scoreless in the eight contests.
The defending champs, Slovakia, defeated the Canucks in the final for their second straight World Ball Hockey Championships, which we all now know is a thing, thanks to the NESCAC participants.
Maccabiah Games
Fast forward a month, head back to the ice, and travel 2,700 miles (err 3,700 kilometers, rather) south and we arrive at our second international competition for NESCAC players this summer. Ethan Cohen ('19) of Middlebury and Chad Goldberg ('18) of Tufts will head to Israel in July to compete alongside other DIII and DI hockey players on Team USA in the 2017 Maccabi Games in Israel.
We had full coverage of the last Maccabiah Games (aka The Jewish Olympics) click here, for our interview with NHL Network broadcaster and Team USA coach Billy Jaffe, click here.
in which Max Greenwald ('16) of Middlebury and Ben Chwick ('14) of Colby won the silver medal with Team USA in 2013. For our primer of the Maccabiah Games by Benet Pols,
Goldberg and Cohen are both coming off pointless seasons with a combined total of five games played, all by the Panthers sophomore. Cohen, a 6"0" Brooklyn native, has struggled to find playing time in his first two years in the Green Mountains with this season's handful of games the only contests he has dressed for in the first half of his collegiate career.
Goldberg, on the other hand, was selected as a tri-captain of the Jumbos for his junior season. After an injury plagued freshman and early sophomore campaign, the Agoura Hills, CA native tallied sixteen points (7-9-16) in 19 games in 2015-16 and figured to be a pivotal part of the Tufts offense in 2016-17. A history of concussions, however, kept him sidelined for his entire junior year. You can watch Goldberg discuss his injury history in episode 10 of Inside Tufts Hockey, created by his teammate Pat Lackey, here.
This year's installment of the Maccabiah Games will take place from July 4th to 18th. The Americans will compete against Canada, Germany, Russia and Israel in the Open Division ice hockey tournament. Cohen and Goldberg will play alongside other DIII and DI NCAA players on the Open Division team, which consists of 18-25 year olds. There is also a Masters Division for players 40+ years of age (USA coached by former Open Division coach Billy Jaffe this year) and a Juniors Division for players born in the years 1999-2002. Cohen's brother Elias will be on Team USA's juniors while their father Steve will be on the masters team for a full-on family affair.
And who's that as assistant bench boss for Team USA's Open team? Why it is none other than Wesleyan alum Casey Fratkin ('14).
We'll post more info on the Maccabiah Games as it gets closer to the tournament. The next step is Team USA's training camp, which will open in late June.
Can you say the countdown is on!! Three weeks till training camp! #Macc20 🇺🇸🏒🇮🇱— Maccabi USA Hockey (@MaccabiHockey) June 4, 2017
It will be a long shot for Greece to medal in the Ball Hockey Championships and for USA to upset Canada for Maccabiah gold, but we are true believers in our boys from the 'Cac in their summer tournaments. Here''s Bouncing Souls' anthem "True Believers" from 2001's How I Spent My Summer Vacation.
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