The NESCAC is a great conference that provides many opportunities for former students and athletes. I recently had the chance to catch up with former Hamilton netminder Zach Arnold ('15) and former Williams captain Brian McNamara ('15) at a Columbia Law School graduation party. Here are some of the questions I asked them.
Q-How has being a NESCAC student-athlete affected your life?
ZA: I think the biggest impact that being a student-athlete had on my life was that you have a true appreciation for time-management. When you go to college, being a college student in general, it’s a full-time job, you have a tremendous amount of schoolwork. You’re also asked to be a college hockey player, which in itself is a full-time job as well. So in reality you’re asked to do two things that take up a tremendous amount of your time, and I think learning to juggle the two of them, is the best experience I had being a hockey player at hamilton.
BM-It has been a game-changer for my life, it let me meet a ton of different people that are still some of my best friends today, and it also taught me a lot of things about life that I still use pretty much everyday. It is honestly the competition, the learning how to deal with a lot of different things in life, it’s managing school and hockey, it’s changed everything and really shaped the way I live.
Q-What was your career highlight as a college hockey player?
ZA-This is an easy question. My career highlight was definitely my first collegiate start, which came about halfway through my junior year. I got the start in the Utica Auditorium, playing Utica college. There’s a lot of great things that go into it. Our career series between us and Utica was I think tied all-time. They were ranked in the top 10 in the nation. They always have a full sell-out crowd of about 4,000 people. So, it was a really special game, it was my first game in college, and we played them to a 4-4 tie if I remember correctly. It was really just a special night, one of my favorite games I’ve ever played in. I’ll remember it forever.
BM-My career highlight was when we got to play at Fenway Park against Trinity, an outdoor game, we won that game coming from behind. That was one of the more special moments that I had.
Q-Who was your favorite teammate to play with in the NESCAC?
ZA-I think my favorite teammate to play with is probably Joe Rausch, who was in my class at Hamilton. We had a lot of time together, and our careers at Hamilton didn’t start out very easily. We didn’t get a lot of playing time our freshman and sophomore years. When we were upperclassmen, we ultimately stepped up and got a lot of playing time together. I think the biggest thing I learned from Joe is his resiliency, which helped me out as well, because we both had a difficult start to our careers. We didn’t let that negative experience bring us down, and ultimately we overcame those challenges and had successful careers. We ultimately enjoyed our college hockey experience a lot together and that’s what means the most to us.
BM-My favorite teammate was probably Sean Dougherty, who I grew up playing with even before going to high school. He was our goalie and the reason I liked playing with him so much was that as a defensemen, he would pretty much be yelling at me the entire time, which was really more comical than anything. (I asked him about James McNamara, his younger brother who he played two years with, and he said jokingly, “Certainly not, James was one of my least favorite)
Q-What do you think of Clinton winning Kraft Hockeyville?
ZA-I think it’s first of all great for the town of Clinton and a tremendous honor for them. I think it’s well deserved because Clinton really is a world-class hockey town. It has been participating in hockey for over 100 years, they just had the anniversary of 100 years of hockey in Clinton. There’s just not enough good things you can say about how good of a hockey community it is, so I’m just glad they’re going to get the arena fixed up. It’s going to help give back to the community, and ultimately they deserve it. So it’s awesome, I think they made the right choice.
BM-I think it should have been Williamstown, Massachusetts.
Q-Do you have any advice for future NESCAC hockey players?
ZA-I think the main piece of advice I could give them is to try to enjoy it because you work so hard for that for your entire life, and ultimately it goes by so quickly. The four years will go by so quickly, so try and soak up every moment of it, enjoy it, and work as hard as you can, because if you’re very lucky, you’re playing at a high level of hockey, and if you’re very good you’ll have an opportunity to play beyond the NESCAC as well.
BM-I would suggest going to Williams College over Hamilton for sure, but the other advice I would give them is to enjoy all four years and just enjoy playing competitive hockey which is something I miss everyday.
Q-Do you have anything else to say for the fans at Hockey in the `Cac?
ZA-Nothing except “Go Hamilton Continentals!”
BM-Hockey in the `Cac has been something that I followed ever since I was a player, and just enjoy it.
Alright, that’s it folks. Thank you to Zach and Brian for doing the interview and thank you guys for reading. I’m LPfan2004, and I’ll see you next time.
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