An article written by The Daily Online.

by Mark Bergin
10/10/2002

A quiet meeting room inside the OlympicView Arena skating complex in
Mountlake Terrace slowly filled with decibels Monday night as the UW
hockey team trickled in. By 9:15, close to 20 players sat gathered around
coach Cindy Dayley ready to step on the ice just down the hall.

Dayley placed a white board in front of her team, pulled out a dry-erase
pen and practice began — off the ice.

At 9:35, “chalk talk” was over. The players moved into the facility’s
workout room, where, after stretching, they began a routine Dayley calls
one of the toughest in the nation. Still, no ice.

By 9:50, as the players took to running the bleacher stairs, some became
a little restless.

“What time are we on tonight?” asked junior captain Brett Lawrence.

“We’re on at 11,” came Dayley’s reply.

“Not 10:45?”

“No, we screwed up. It’s 11 on Monday nights, 10:45 on Wednesdays.”

The cost for ice time at OlympicView Arena is $255 an hour. For late
nights, the price falls to under $200.

Made up of full-time UW students and volunteer coaches, the Husky
hockey team can’t afford daylight practices. Instead, the players shoot
onto the ice the very minute their time begins and skate until morning —
12 a.m., to be precise.

Out of these less-than-ideal circumstances, Dayley, a banker by day, has
managed to produce one of the nation’s top teams — or so the players
will tell you. They were robbed of the chance to prove themselves on a
national stage last season when the American Collegiate Hockey
Association’s (ACHA) division-II ranking committee determined that a 26-0
record did not merit an invitation to the national tournament.

“We were definitely a controversial team at the end of the season in all
the chat rooms,” Dayley said. “Everyone was questioning if we were really
as good as we said we were, but we weren’t saying we were good. We
just had an incredible season and worked really hard to get it.”

All Washington got for postseason action came in the Pac-8 tournament.
Needing a conference championship to further embarrass the national
rankings committee, the Huskies fell to USC 8-5, giving every team ranked
ahead of them the chance to say, “I told you so.”

“Being 26-0 in the regular season was great, but that last loss hurt bad,”
said Brian Smith, defenseman and hockey club president. “We could have
lost every game and won that last one, and I would have felt better
about last season.”

With the pressures of controversy and injustice surrounding the program,
Washington did not put its best foot forward. In the regular season
against USC, the Huskies had outscored the Trojans 16-7 in three wins.

“The people in the stands said it was one of the best games they had
ever seen,” Dayley said of the UW’s heart-breaking loss. “I personally
didn’t feel that way, but I wasn’t in the stands.”

Having worked for recognition all season, the Huskies returned to Seattle
with their tails between their legs and one thing on their minds: next
year.

The UW hockey team begins the 2002-03 season Saturday on its home
ice against Walla Walla. With Washington’s revamped schedule, including
two trips to California, one to Utah and two home games with Weber
State, the national rankings committee — which cited last season’s soft
schedule as reason for the UW’s exclusion — will have no more excuses.

Neither will the Huskies.

“We showed last year that we could compete, but unfortunately we didn’t
get a chance to,” said Lawrence, an ACHA all-American last year as a
sophomore. “Nothing’s a given. We have to prove it ourselves, but I know
we have the talent to (make the national tournament).”

Since the arrival of Dayley and assistant Zoe Harris in 1998, the talent of
the UW hockey program has steadily risen to its current position on the
brink of national respect. With success have come new goals and new
expectations.

Lawrence’s older brother Craig, a UW grad student and backup goalie,
listed three team goals: “Win the Pac-8, go to nationals and win
nationals,” he said.

Spoken well within earshot of almost the entire team, the list met with no
objections, no backpedaling and no apologies.

“There’s no point in going if you can’t win,” Dayley said in all seriousness.
“Why spend the money?”

The Huskies’ attitude borders on arrogance but more squarely results
from a sense of resolve. The team got the shaft last year and is on a
mission for retribution.

“There’s a burn in our belly,” said assistant coach Zoe Harris. “Even the
new players are sensing it through osmosis.”

As the dry-land portion of practice drew to a close Monday night, Dayley
prepared to lead her team through its one-hour blitz of ice time. Players
were tired but excited. The 26 wins of a season ago are in the past, and a
load of work lies ahead.

“Last year doesn’t matter right now,” Dayley said. “That’s one of the
great things about sports. At the end of the season, there’s always next
year.”

Washington’s biggest next year in the hockey program’s 82-year history
starts now. And every late night is worth it.