I dragged my then-roommate to the game, an exhibition against the USA Under-18 Team. My roommate was perplexed. “We’re not even going to see them play against another college?” I hadn’t been able to get tickets at the first game ever at Agganis – a sell out the week before – and this was the only game I knew for certain I could attend, so I told her that I had to take whatever I could get.  I just wanted to get to a game.

So we settled into the sparkling new confines of the Agganis Arena, our seats right behind the BU zone and then-backup goalie Karson Gillespie, and set to watch what we both figured would be a blow out of these 17 and 18 year olds against this reportedly dominant college team.

And then, after nearly ten scoreless minutes of hockey, I saw my first goal at Agganis Arena. Scored by USA Under-18 forward Jason Lawrence, with an assist by USA Under-18 Team forward Phil Kessel.  The first ever goal I saw at Agganis Arena, right in front of me, was not even by Boston University, but by the USA Under-18 Team, and by these two itty-bitty kids who were the same age as my little sister. What the heck? My first college hockey game at my beloved graduate school, and they don’t even score the first goal against 17 year olds?

Before I got too depressed, the handy Agganis videoboard showed a graphic that pulled me out of this funk. You see, this Lawrence kid was coming to BU the next year, and he was from this place called Saugus, Massachusetts. I turned to my Beverly-born-and-bred roommate. “Saugus? Isn’t that the place with the crazy Chinese restaurant and the giant light up cactus?” I asked, my knowledge of the town totally dictated by our trips down Route 1 to get to her parents’ house for Sunday dinner.

“Yeah, that would be Saugus,” she laughed.

Excited that I actually factually knew where a town in Massachusetts was for once, had actually driven through it, and now had a reason to further remember the town, I settled in to watch the rest of the game, which BU eventually won, 4-1. The powers-that-be were kind enough to give Lawrence the third star of the game. And from then on, every time we drove up Route 1 to Beverly, I would turn to my roommate, or she to me, and we would say completely non-descriptly, “Isn’t that kid we saw score that goal from here?” The other would answer, “Yes,” and we’d continue to sing along to Kelly Clarkson (our obsession at the time) at full blast.

But more importantly, Lawrence’s goal helped me in other important matters short after. The topic of Saugus soon came up in conversation a few days later, as I was talking to the guy who would eventually become my fiance. We were not yet dating, and were talking at work one day about where we grew up. He told me that despite where he was from then, he had grown up in this town called Saugus. Had I ever heard of it?  “Yes!” I said embarrassingly proudly. “It’s the place with the Chinese restaurant, the light up cactus and the kid who is coming to play on the hockey team next year.”

“Exactly!” said my now-fiance, hopefully impressed. And the rest was history. (Okay, I am sure my fiance didn’t date me solely because I knew where Saugus was. But it probably helped, right? Truth be told, I am not sure he totally understood where Rochester was, but I didn’t hold it against him.)

So fast forward to today, Sunday, March 8, 2009. Senior Day at Agganis Arena, where Lawrence will be honored as part of the graduating class of 2009. Lawrence has always been my favorite Terrier, not only because of nostaglia, but because despite his tough years in the middle of his career, he always worked hard on the ice and genuinely tried to make a difference for the team. When it wasn’t in scoring, it was by being a leader, a quality evident in his work on the second line last year with mostly freshmen who always seemed eager for his direction. He’s always tried to improve himself – by either rehabbing earlier than expected from his bad shoulder injury last year, or by somehow becoming a speed demon on skates over this past off-season, and now being able to make spectacular scoring plays.  But maybe most importantly, I literally don’t know going to a season of hockey games at Agganis without him in the lineup for some team at some point during the season.

Which nicely leads leads into this fun fact: Lawrence is the only player in Agganis Arena history to score a point in every year the arena has been open. Five straight years. The only player who could beat or tie this record would be Vinny Saponari, who scored a goal in his visit to Agganis as a member of the USA Under-18 Team back in the 2007-08 season. So when you sit down at the game today, you can turn to your seatmate and inpart that fact, and then they’ll think that you are a super hockey geek. But that’s okay.

So thanks JLo for that fun hockey trivia we can impart on our seatmates today, for winning Beanpot games three times for us, for scoring that cool natural hat trick against UMass last week, for being extremely overly prolific against Michigan the last two years, for scoring 21 goals so far this season, for relishing your power play opportunities, for staying in the game somehow after being elbowed head first into the boards at BC in December, for not retaliating when Maine’s Simon Danis-Pepin literally sat on you during overtime at Maine on Valentine’s Day, for making Sportscenter three times, for your always enjoyable player introductions, and for the best Terrier Trivia ever recorded: your thesis on Gone With the Wind.   And thanks for scoring the first goal I ever saw in a college hockey game.

Other entries in the Countdown to Senior Night Series: Profiles on Higgins, Smolinsky; Why this class is the Sportscenter Generation.

As I mentioned last month, Sportscenter doesn’t have a great online video archive, so I am without video for all of one of these appearances. I have found alternative video where available.

1) Chris Higgins’ falling down goal, Beanpot semifinal versus Harvard, February 6, 2006

Chris Higgins’ goal, which was representative of this senior class’ contribution as freshmen to the 2006 Beanpot victory, was as awesome of a goal as many BU fans had seen at that time. His ability to stay with the puck despite being covered by a Harvard defensemen like hot fudge on a sundae, and make the shot as he lost his balance made this goal,make this a goal that upperclassmen show to freshman to this day to initiate them to BU hockey.  (That is if they can find it on YouTube. I am having epic YouTube fail this week.)

The play made the Sportscenter Top 10, giving Higgins the first Sportscenter Class of 2009 mention. The play itself is viewable in this YouTube clip – head to 1:25 of the video.

2) Jason Lawrence wins a hyperventilating Beanpot semifinal with a goal that was so…not like him, February 2, 2009

We’ll delve into Lawrence’s crazy career in the coming days, but one of the contributions of his that will be etched in Terrier hockey lore was this high slapper to the right of Harvard goalie Matt Hoyle to win the 2009 Beanpot semi-final with just over a minute left in the game. Even Lawrence admitted to USCHO that that shot was not his usual, and that his father always tells him to “take the high slapshot,” but he rarely does.  But this time, he did, and what resulted ended up in the Sportscenter Top 10 the same night Kobe Bryant scored 61 points at Madison Square Garden.  Because Kobe had to go score a crazy amount of points and set a MSG record, Lawrence’s game-winner kind of got forgotten about. So…

3) Lawrence goes and gets another game winner; Yip assists Bonino; Scott Van Pelt yells, “Your mom goes to college!”, February 9, 2009

So the next week, although the Beanpot final wasn’t so tight against the Northeastern Huskies as the Harvard semi-final was, Sportscenter still featured the game because it was a relatively slow sports night (save for that whole A-Rod admitting his use of performance enhancing drugs, but we all knew that was coming) and because….well, it was a slow sports night and when you can get a clear NESN feed of a hockey game involving the top 2 college hockey teams in the country, you run with it.

Despite the story being the three Terrier short-handed goals, the video highlights from the game only featured Nick Bonino’s shorty with the primary assist by senior Brandon Yip and Lawrence’s game winner, his second in two Beanpot games, which Sportscenter anlayst Scott Van Pelt inexplicably explained by yelling, “Who goes to college? Your mom goes to college!”  Yep. Because that’s hard-hitting hockey analysis right there, yelling lines from Napoleon Dynamite. This is unlike the previous two Sportscenter appearances in this list because it was not a part of the Sportscenter Top 10.

4) Lawrence’s natural hat trick gives John Buccigross something to get excited over while reading the Top 10 copy, February 27, 2009

This latest senior class Sportscenter appearance occured last Friday, as Lawrence’ s third goal of his natural hat trick against UMass Amherst made #2 of the Sportscenter Top 10. They were all amazing goals, but this third one you could watch all day. He comes blazing down the ice, nearly losing the puck before he slaps it in the right corner of the net. I thought Bucci was seriously going to pass out doing the commentary. I think he was just excited that he had three hockey mentions in the Top 10.  (You have to feel for Bucci sometimes. I think he feels hockey deprived without NHL 2Night and after having to spend a few months earlier this season without Barry Melrose around.)

It remains to be seen, of course, if there are any more Sportscenter appearances by the Terrier Class of 2009 in the future. But I think we can all safely say that college hockey is just a tad less obscure to the general viewing public today than it was four years ago thanks to the help of this Terrier senior class, and their Sportscenter appearances are to thank for that.

Terrier fans, am I missing any mentions of this senior class on Sportscenter that you all can remember? Let me hear it in the comments if I am!

To kick off our series, I am reposting an oldie-but-a-goodie I wrote about Senior Day for the Binghamton University men’s basketball team in 2004. I was a senior about to head off to Boston University for graduate work, and the Bearcats’ opponent that day was the Terriers.  The original post – edited to take out the non-basketball stuff that followed the original post – is after the jump.

If you are interested in contributing a piece to the series – be it about senior days for your team or about this year’s Terrier seniors, email me at sportsgirlkat@gmail.com.

The Battle of the BUs–A Senior Day In Every Sense

Today’s men’s basketball game at the Events Center was not only the last home game of the season for the men, but also senior day. And I found it fitting that the senior day game opponent was Boston University.

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention to my away messages, profiles or who haven’t spoken with me in the past…oh, year, I am currently in love with Boston University. Sure, I applied to five graduate schools, but since I decided I was going to go to grad school, Boston University has been one of my top choices. They were the first school to accept me (the letter was waiting for me two days after my birthday in my school mailbox). They might not have the best program in Higher Education, but they have tons of opportunities for internships and assistantships (especially in new facilities management–they‘re in the process of building the “Student Village,” a huge building project for athletics, residential life and student affairs, which working with would look soooo good on a resume), and they are just such a cool school in general. I walked around there in August and just couldn’t believe how much I liked it–I didn’t want to come back to Binghamton for another year. I was tempted to finish up my credits at Binghamton in the fall and start at Boston University in January, but I was talked out of it by a lot of people, seeing that I wanted to try for Harvard and Boston College as well. But the more I think about it, the more I want to go to Boston University. But I have to wait and see what happens.

So I attended today’s game and couldn’t decide who to cheer for–my current school, who I’m becoming increasingly disenchanted with knowing that there’s so much else beyond Binghamton, or what very well may be my new school. Well, seeing that I had student tickets and didn’t feel like being beat up (which could happen, as evidenced by what occurred at last week’s Nazareth/Fisher basketball game), I put my Boston University shirt away and wore the green Binghamton hoodie and went along with the “Let‘s Go Bearcats” chants.

The Terriers (Boston University) are currently #1 in the America East conference, and this game showed why. Marsha, Jamie and I were watching the warm-ups when Marsha remarked, “They just don’t miss,“ gesturing to the Terriers’ free throwing. They don’t–they only missed once that I recall during the game. While the first half was close, with Nick Billings being the whole Binghamton team as usual (it’s not that he can play, or that the others can’t, it’s just that he’s seven feet tall), the Terriers dominated in the second half, working with leads between 10-20 points most of the time. The final score was 69-53, but if our two seniors hadn’t been inspired to get in there and make the best of their last minutes on the Events Center floor, it probably would have been more like 75-50. The Bearcats turned over the ball constantly, and their shooting was way off most of the game. They couldn’t make a free throws at all in the second half, and easy points weren’t made because they were over-shooting the net. They announced that the official attendance at the game today was 4,823 at the end of the game. However, the end of the game lacked so much hope that people began to leave in droves after the 8 minute mark. I turned to Marsha. “Official attendance, 4,823. Official attendance after the 5 minute mark: 1,000.”

It had been noted all week that the Bearcat men had never defeated the Terriers since joining the America East three years ago, and I think the pressure of trying to overcome that in the new building on senior day was a bit too much for them. There are so many expectations for this team to do well so early on in their Division 1 career, seeing that we just built them this new venue, and we moved into a conference that caused us to eliminate one of our traditional sports (wrestling). They’re growing well, but to expect them to have beat the number one team in the conference right now wasn’t really feasible.

On another note, the Events Center is a bit…small? I was disappointed somewhat, and I don’t know why. I imagined an arena…which to me congers up mental images of the Blue Cross Arena up in Rochester. This was on a much smaller scale–the BCA holds 12,000 for concerts and the Events Center, when completed, will seat 8,000. Right now a sell out for basketball in the Events Center is 4,823. The Center is pretty sterile right now, more than likely due to the fact that they’re not really done with it. I fear that it’ll become out of date quickly, but I could also see how it could be easily renovated if that did happen. I don’t know. Did I expect more? Yes. Do we need more as a mid-major D1 school with more student apathy than the Yankees have money? No. On a semi-side note, one of my biggest fears as I leave Binghamton is that the backlash from students and faculty about the alleged “overspending on athletics” is going to deter any more growth in that area–we need more athletic opportunities because unlike what most Binghamton students think, athletes do possess brains. Also, with the local community being as stubborn as it is, I think athletics is going to be the school’s only way to make its point that we are now the economic center of the Broome County area, and therefore, should be accommodated as such.

As the crowds left the Events Center this afternoon, I felt like this was the beginning of the end. It was Senior Day for the two graduating players, but it was Senior Day for me as well–watching my last Binghamton basketball game, having what could be my new school defeat my current school. The next time I’ll be in the Events Center will more than likely be 77 days from now for Commencement. Binghamton may have been where I spent the last two years, but I’m ready to move on.