By Brittany Burke
The CCSU club hockey team has had to forfeit three of its wins during the second half of the season due to an ineligible player.
“It was just some paper work and a timeline thing with a roster freeze from the league, just administrative paper work, just one of those things, nobody’s fault on either end,” said Head Coach Ben Adams.
Andrew Coronna transferred to CCSU for the spring semester and began playing for the Blue Devils in January. It has recently come to the attention of the Coaching staff and American Collegiate Hockey Association that Coronna was an ineligible member of the Blue Devil team.
When Head Coach Ben Adams found out about Coronna’s possible ineligibility, he took it upon himself to go to the ACHA and notify them. In catching the mistake themselves the Blue Devils were able to avoid a more serious punishment.
“I was the person who called the league regarding the issue and followed their recommendations to proceed. I tried to head off the issue before it was found by another team or the league in which the penalty would be much more severe, I lobbied for a personal suspension instead of forfeiture of games. The league denied my request and issued their ruling which you have heard,” said Adams in the same email.
While Adams was able to catch the ineligibility, Coronna had already played in six games, resulting in three losses and three wins. During this ranking period the Blue Devils were able to churn out wins against the second, fourth and sixth ranked teams. However, the forfeiture will result in the ineligibility of those wins.
“I found out that we had a player who’s transfer registration went through and then credit hours were held pending medical records. The school which was supposed to send the report delayed and, in that process, the league froze the rosters. Once I found out about the delay/ lack of credit hours the player did not play another game, unfortunately he had played a couple of games,” said Adams in an e-mail to the hockey parents and team.
Coronna’s inability to play was said to stem from missing health forms between the school and league which resulted in a roster freeze, unknown by the coaching staff.
The Blue Devils were ranked tenth in the division before the office controversy and were dropped down to thirteenth place as a result. CCSU will spend the last leg of the season fighting to get back into to the top ten in order to advance to post season.
“We finished thirteenth and we beat the eleven tonight and we have the one next week and if we take care of business we’re in the top ten and we’re still fighting for a road to nationals through regionals in Danbury and it’s a familiar place for us the last couple of years we’ve been in regionals and we’re playing hard; we’re playing well,” he said.
The Blue Devils got back on track by beating Western Connecticut State University this past weekend, which was ranked eleventh.
“I think the guys responded very well,” said Adams. “We have two games now remaining and a lot of people have said if we win we’re in [top 10] …it hurt us but I think that if we come to play the next two games, and we get in it’s just one of those adversity things that we learn from and we grow from and we won’t let it happen again.”
