With just three short days until Ohio’s first-round match-up in the American Collegiate Hockey Association National Tournament, Bird Arena was barren.
Normally, the Ohio hockey team would have been in the midst of an up-tempo practice. Instead, the players were next door at the Grover Center gymnasium. That day they were playing handball. A week earlier it was dodgeball and another week, soccer and basketball.
Conventional wisdom suggests that the practices leading up to the season’s end — especially for a team with national title aspirations — would be the most important, requiring extensive attention to detail.
But Ohio coach Dan Morris doesn’t often deal in the conventional.
“We were kind of shocked when he came in with the suggestion,” senior captain Mark Tracy said. “Typically that’s not the kind of way he goes about things.”
After his team was swept by No. 1 Lindenwood at Bird the final weekend of January and split a series with No. 12 Robert Morris the following weekend, Morris decided to make some drastic changes.
He wanted to cut down on-ice practices.
“At first, I think it freaked out the assistant coaches most,” Morris said. “Your first reaction when you need to fix things is to coach more.”
But, the ACHA season is a grueling marathon, running from October through March. The physical and mental grind — the hours upon hours spent on the ice or on a bus — can take a toll on players, a fact Morris said he was well aware of.
“Having been through the process of burning guys out before, I think you learn and understand that maybe the best thing for them is rest or doing other activities away from hockey,” Morris said. “When you start to burn out, it’s a chore to be together.”
So, he made a proposition. He would condense the four-day practice week into only a two-day schedule. He also gave the players an optional day off and saved one day for fun, off-ice training.
“He wanted to get some completion going off the ice to alleviate some of the pressure and it’s worked thus far,” Tracy said. “Having that extra day off the ice has helped out immensely.”
The Bobcats are undefeated since the change, sweeping Kent State to wrap up the regular season and following that with an impressive run in the Central States Collegiate Hockey League playoffs, which culminated with a 4-0 victory over Lindenwood in the finals on Feb. 20.
The key to the success of the new practice method is the competitive element, Morris said. Tracy along with assistant captains Billy Hemann, Brett Molnar and Michael Schultz each picked teams that have been kept together for each different game.
And, as anyone who’s ever set foot in a hockey locker room will realize, the stakes are as high as they come.
“We have laundry duties on the line,” Tracy said. “Since we don’t have equipment managers, stuff in the locker room is taken care of usually by the rookies. Now it’s put on the shoulders of the losing team of the week.
“That’s a pain in the butt for the guys that are losers. That’s why we compete so hard to get the win.”
Morris said he had entertained the idea in years past, but never felt comfortable implementing the alternative practice routine. But with this year’s squad, he said he finally had the right mix of players.
“I think it’s an approach that would probably only work with this group of guys,” Morris said. “You’ve got to be careful when you walk that line and give guys that much free time. But, they’re all good students so they use the time wisely.”
Tracy said that the leadership core has enjoyed and appreciated the new approach, and the rest of the team has followed suit.
“We’ve played in all kinds of games — league championships. We’ve been far into nationals. The younger guys believe in us that what we do is going to breed winning and they’ve bought into it,” Tracy said. “So far, so good. It’s been great.”
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