Mitch Horucy
Sports Editor
Photo by RILEY OLSON | Special to The Leader
For most North American sports, the path to becoming a collegiate athlete is straightforward.
Most, if not all, will play in high school, then come to college as a 17 or 18-year old freshman.
However, that isn’t the case when it comes to college hockey.
Hockey is also unique when it comes to the team’s makeup.
For example, the men’s soccer team here at Fredonia only has two players on its 25-man roster that aren’t from the state of New York.
When it comes to the men’s hockey team, only four members of the team are from New York.
“Everyone is on video now,” said head men’s hockey coach Jeff Meredith. “We watched a game last night in Saskatchewan.”
Recruiting players from outside of the area isn’t new for Meredith, though, as he’s been doing it since the 1990s.
“We recruited the junior guys out of Michigan, the North American League, and that was a time when everybody was still recruiting kids right out of high school,” said Meredith when talking about the 1994 and 1995 teams that went to back-to-back Frozen Fours.
He said quickly after that, there was an avalanche of teams recruiting from various junior hockey leagues around the country.
One of the players he recruited from a different corner of the world is his captain, Ethan Pitzman.
From Homer, Alaska, Pitzman traveled over 4,000 miles to Fredonia, although he’s used to the travel at this point.
After graduating high school, Pitzman traveled to both Minnesota and Wisconsin to play.
He played in his final year of juniors for the Northern Colorado Eagles, where he thrived with 43 points (17 goals and 26 assists) in 49 games.
It was during this season when he decided to commit to Fredonia to continue his hockey career.
Pitzman reached out to numerous teams in the SUNYAC, but Meredith was the first one to get back to him.
“He’s the ultimate recruiter,” said Pitzman.
Anyone who talks to Meredith can find out quickly that Pitzman is correct.
He has a stack of papers with information on recruits, who he calls weekly.
“If you keep showing up once a week and talking and listening and hearing what they’re saying and, you know, telling a story or whatever, that trust builds up,” said Meredith.
For Meredith, building these connections is incredibly important.
Photo by RILEY OLSON | Special to The Leader
His office is filled with photos of his past teams, but also photos of alumni off the ice.
On his calendar, he has the birthdays of all of his former players.
Having a family such as the one he created is special for a number of reasons, but it helps current players as well.
“If a guy sits on the couch here and he says, ‘Well, I’m interested in finance,’ right away I can think of a dozen guys right off the top of my head,” said Meredith. “[They may] be able to mentor him, reach out to him, help him, guide him, provide an internship.”
Pitzman got to experience it firsthand this past summer, as he almost got fishing gear from a Fredonia alum.
“Everyone is getting to men’s league eventually,” said Meredith. “It’s our job to help [the players] get to the next place in life.”
As mentioned earlier, the path hockey players take to get to college is a bit different than most other athletes that play colligate sports.
Pitzman played his entire high school career, which some don’t do, but then played juniors, which everyone on the team played some variation of.
Most players play for three years at the junior level, but Pitzman only got two based on his late birthday.
After that, they can go and play college hockey, however most are a few years older than normal college freshmen.
Pitzman came in as a “young 20-year-old” and is now 24 years old.
Despite the small age difference, Pitzman thinks he and the team fit right in with the rest of the student body.
The team is at home next on Friday, Nov. 21 at 7 p.m. against Buffalo State in their first of a three-game home stand.