2008 Woodie Awards
Puck Passion
Junior Brandon Burriss and senior Alex Berlin bring ice hockey to DePauw
By: Brian Fisher
Issue date: 11/13/07 Section: Sports
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It's 11 p.m. on a Thursday and a handful of DePauw students are not cracking open their books in the library - they're stepping onto the ice in Bloomington, Ind.
This fall, DePauw established it's first-ever ice hockey club team, which sparked an immediate interest from several former hockey players.
"A lot of the guys that are playing used to go up to [Fishers, Ind.] every once in awhile to play stick and puck," said team vice-president Alex Berlin, a senior. "It was the nearest place we had to play and the closest thing we had to real hockey."
So last semester, Berlin and team president Brandon Burriss, a junior, had an idea: Why not form an actual team? They discussed the possibility of being able to assemble a club team and decided that it would be worth the effort.
"Hockey was a huge part of my life growing up," Burriss said. "It was the one thing I gave up to pursue a better education at DePauw. After not playing for this long, I started to miss it and other guys felt the same way. I really wanted to get back into the game."
Over the summer, Burriss began to assemble the team. He sent out e-mails to players he knew would be interested, and it did not take long for others to jump on board. By word of mouth, they were able to accumulate enough players that were committed to the team.
"I wanted to make sure that I had a base of at least 15 players," he said. "We had to get enough people first before anything could happen."
That was when the ball really started to roll. Burriss and Berlin held an interest meeting where it looked like their idea was really starting to take shape. The appropriate paper work was filed and the University recognized them as a club team.
The last thing to do was simply to get into a league.
"We were able to get into a men's league in Bloomington that is mostly teams from fraternities from [Indiana University] or IU club players that don't play anymore," Burris said. "It's a competitive league."
This fall, DePauw established it's first-ever ice hockey club team, which sparked an immediate interest from several former hockey players.
"A lot of the guys that are playing used to go up to [Fishers, Ind.] every once in awhile to play stick and puck," said team vice-president Alex Berlin, a senior. "It was the nearest place we had to play and the closest thing we had to real hockey."
So last semester, Berlin and team president Brandon Burriss, a junior, had an idea: Why not form an actual team? They discussed the possibility of being able to assemble a club team and decided that it would be worth the effort.
"Hockey was a huge part of my life growing up," Burriss said. "It was the one thing I gave up to pursue a better education at DePauw. After not playing for this long, I started to miss it and other guys felt the same way. I really wanted to get back into the game."
Over the summer, Burriss began to assemble the team. He sent out e-mails to players he knew would be interested, and it did not take long for others to jump on board. By word of mouth, they were able to accumulate enough players that were committed to the team.
"I wanted to make sure that I had a base of at least 15 players," he said. "We had to get enough people first before anything could happen."
That was when the ball really started to roll. Burriss and Berlin held an interest meeting where it looked like their idea was really starting to take shape. The appropriate paper work was filed and the University recognized them as a club team.
The last thing to do was simply to get into a league.
"We were able to get into a men's league in Bloomington that is mostly teams from fraternities from [Indiana University] or IU club players that don't play anymore," Burris said. "It's a competitive league."
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