WCHC Sports -Holy Cross Men's Hockey Fan feedback received to WCHC via e-mail regarding Holy Cross Hockey. comments welcome: wchc@holycross.edu ------------ Just listened to the recap of the game vs. Minnesota. I was at the Friday game and it was the single best sporting event I ever witnessed. I am a UND alum and big Fighting Sioux fan but I was cheering for the Crusaders against the Gophers. Holy Cross played two great games of hockey and I will always root for Holy Cross except when they face North Dakota. Thanks for a fantastic weekend and some great memories. What a great game to see and what music to our ears to hear the Holy Cross announcers and their play by play highlights. Kudos to a great and valiant effort by the Holy Cross Crusaders and their great, if small, fan base that attended the West Regional in the Ralph at Grand Forks. I have never witnessed a sporting event quite like the game I witnessed last Friday. Congratulations to a "class" group! Thanks for the memories I am a diehard UND Sioux Hockey Fan. Our family has traveled to several of the WCHA rinks to watch our team play with class and pride. After last Friday night's game, we now have a second favorite hockey team - the Holy Cross Crusaders! The manner in which they competed on both Friday and Saturday night is something to be very proud of. I had an opportunity to visit with two of HC players at the East Grand Forks Applebee's on Saturday night and they were wonderful representatives of the hockey team and school. Truly class acts! Thank you Holy Cross hockey for making the NCAA Western Regional in Grand Forks, ND, the best hockey event ever. Beautiful piece guys.....hope everyone at Holy Cross enjoyed the weekend as much as we did. That was college athletics at its best. Everyone here in Grand Forks will always remember what your team accomplished. Thanks for the mix and the memories! Hopefully you can show your players these responses! As a Fighting Sioux fan, I gained respect for your hockey program after the 2004 West Regional Tournament, when the Holy Cross hockey team played a hard fought close game with North Dakota. This past weekend, I gained a lot more respect for your hockey program, after upsetting Minnesota, and than coming back on Saturday night to play another hard fought game against North Dakota. My seats at the Western Regional were two rows up behind your goalie's right arm for 2 of the 3 periods against the Gophers and not a long ways down from the HC fan section. I live in Minneapolis/St Paul and detest all that is Minnesota hockey. It was awesome cheering for your team and I think as the night went on and the Crusaders hung with the Gophers, UND fans adopted your school as our very own. I think I yelled louder for the OT game-winner than I have for any goal I've ever seen the Sioux score, and I've seen hundreds of games since I went to college there from 1988-1992. My favorite memory of seeing the Sioux in person is either the 1997 WCHA championship game or the 1997 Frozen Four title game, but the HC/MN game ranks right up there. Best of luck to you and to your Crusader hockey team in the future. I am a die hard Sioux fan and was at the regionals last weekend, and I have never had so much fun at hockey games. I hope your hockey team knows that we all love them in ND, and if they would have beaten us I think everyone would have been fine with that, sad but allright with it. It was the first time I saw an opposing team not get booed. I remember watching Holy Cross playing UND at Regionals several years ago and thinking your team and coach were the "Real Deal" and that we'd see you again soon. Although we were unable to attend the games last weekend in Grand Forks, we were watching on TV and cheering for HC against Minnesota. I am partial to Fighting Sioux hockey for several reasons, one being the way they pride themselves in being tough and self-assured, yet humble. That seems to be the same way the Holy Cross players and staff conduct themselves. Honestly I know little about Holy Cross, the hockey team, or Atlantic Hockey and anybody outside of the conference that says they do is probably stretching the truth quite a bit, but I definitely have a new favorite hockey team in that conference and it is Holy Cross. Congratulations to the players, the coaches, the team, the school, and to you guys, you brought this event home. You/They have a lot to be proud of, it definitely will be a time in you life you will never forget, enjoy it.Good luck in the future and hope to see, and hear, you in many more times in the greatest hockey tournament in the world. I was at the game and that was absolutly incredible! Your team never gave up....ever....and that my friend was as refreshing as the win. I don't know if you were there or not but that place was about to explode after the Crusaders scored and in a wierd kind of way, in helped the Sioux prepare for Michigan because as we all know anybody is beatable at anytime. One of the engraved visions in my mind was between the the HC/MN game and the UND/UMich game. Some of the Crusader hockey players were in the concourse area giving high fives to all the fans, signing autographs, the Fighting SIoux band was playing, it was absolutley electric. Your team, the fans and the school are first class. Thanks for an everlasting memory! Congratulations! I was one of the 10,000+ fans at the West Regional at the Taj Ma-hockey (a.k.a. Ralph Engelstad Arena) cheering for the Crusaders in the game against the number one seed, Minnesota Golden Gophers. What a thrilling night to be a part of! It's darn near poetic how Holy Cross went from being the "Team without a Prayer" to being the team that pulled off a "Miracle on Ice" in just a matter of hours. Just want to echo my complete respect for the Holy Cross team and fans at the West Regional in Grand Forks at the REA. We've attended many many games at both the old and new hockey arenas and have to say the game you played against the Gophers is one of the most memorable ever. I probably can not add much to what has already been said, I'm sure. Just add myself, husband, and parents to your new list of fans! After Saturday I shook the hands of a few Holy Cross parents waiting for the team on main concourse level. I thanked their team for one of the best weekends of hockey I'd ever seen and asked them to pass the message along. I hope they did. Names like "Lefty" Curran and Reggie Morelli or or Jon Casey and James Patrick or Ed Belfour and Tony Hrkac are legendary in Sioux Hockey history. I have a feeling names like Tony Quesada and Tyler McGregor will be the same in Crusader Hockey history. Best hockey experience I have ever witnessed with no Sioux players on the ice. Hope you and your fans enjoy your teams play as much as we do. First off, congrats to the whole campus at Holy Cross for pulling off the biggest upset in recent memory in the NCAA tourney. That was possibly the greatest night of hockey I have ever witnessed. I have never heard the crowd in the Ralph so loud. I live in West Virginia, and have devoutly followed Fighting Sioux hockey for 28 years. They are without a doubt the nation's premier program but you guys are now my second favorite. The enthusiasm and love of the game that you, your team , your fans, and even the mother's of the players showed is refreshing and infectious. The player pigpile in a semi-game was classic. It made me laugh but I loved every second of it, it was like watching the Russians get beat before the medal round. It was truly incredible the way your team electrified the arena, and gave us momentum going into the Michigan game. I will be the first to admit that I didn't expect much from Holy Cross coming into the big arena against high flying Minnesota, but it just goes to show that college hockey is the greatest game on earth. My compliments to the hockey team for showing outstanding character and poise in beating Minnesota and sticking with North Dakota giving them a tough game. I will never forget that weekend as long as I live, and hope to see Holy Cross carry this seasons success on to the next. I'm hoping they work on scheduling the Crusaders as an exhibition or non conference game soon, as I'm sure the entire Grand Forks community would be thrilled to have them back. Thanks again and help us cheer on our Sioux next weekend in Milwaukee, we here in north dakota love to see good hockey no matter who it is. HC hockey is good hockey. another reason is that they earned respect from us. to tell you the truth, that is very hard to get from sioux fans. what the school of Holy Cross has just accomplished will get the respect for not only them, but college hockey in general. i was at the bar that night (i live in boise, id, now) and it was a basketball crowd. by the end of the HC/MN game everyone's attention was focused on hockey. then our game followed and the bar was in UND's favor! please give my compliments to coach paul pearl and the rest of the team. I thought your team did a wonderful job and I was very happy to be cheering for them, not only because they were playing the Gophers, but as the underdog. I hope that everyone from Holy Cross had a great stay in Grand Forks. We were very happy to have you all here. I look forward to keeping track of the Holy Cross team next season, as I have become a fan. On now to Wisconsin with hopes of returning to North Dakota with a National Champions Trophy. I hope that the HC players, coaching staff, students and supporters will be cheering us on as well. it was such a great game and was so much fun watching the joy of the HC players as they skated off pointing to the crowd that was supporting them. after that game it was like the sioux had just won a huge game and we hadn't even played yet. walking in the hallways of the REA sioux fans were high fiving and just having a blast. FSN North tv programming was there and the sioux fans where letting the minnesota based network know what they thought about the game. it was such a great atmosphere. GREAT JOB HOLY CROSS!!! the next night it was UND's turn to take on HC. it was tough cheering against a team that you just cheered so hard for, but to me it became almost impossible to cheer against them as the game went on. the sioux came out and they played how MN should have played. they were physical and they just started to abuse the smaller HC team. I remember thinking that it won't be long before HC won't want to bring the puck up the boards and they will be timid at neutral ice. instead HC never backed down and continued to skate hard. They would just pick themselves up off the ice and skate on. they continued to try to hit with the more physical sioux and the HC player would initiate contact and end up on the ice. but it never failed, they got up and skated on, as determined as before. i have seen many teams give up when they are physically overmatched but that never happened. HC skated harder then i have seen any team that gave up so much size, speed, and talent. But they just kept coming and worked hard and often outwork the sioux and kept the game close. at the end of the game i felt like i should cheer for HC because they had earned my respect. i have never gone to a game and actually came away liking an opposing team the way i did after the UND HC game. but that was because they had earned it through their hard work and determination. So from now on you can count me in for cheer loud and proud for the crusaders from holy cross!! unless of course they are playing the fighting sioux, then its a different story. I was one of many die hard Sioux fans cheering loud and proud for your boys in purple the entire game. It was really something to see HC come back to tie it up and win it in OT. Those boys deserve a lot of credit. I'm glad we could get behind them and gave them an experience they can take with them. It was surely a great experience for me and I'll never forget it. It was a great day for college hockey and a great day for sports in general, to say the least. I was fortunate enough to witness all three games last weekend and see some great hockey. I also met some of the Holy Cross players at Suite 49 after the Saturday night game, and I want everyone to know that they were all as classy off the ice as they were on it. The Fighting Sioux fan base is a very knowledgeable and proud group, and every one of us that witnessed the Western Regional will agree that Holy Cross has alot of reasons to be proud. Your team played the game the way hockey is meant to be played, and I for one will be cheering for the Crusaders in the future, unless of course they play the Fighting Sioux. Hopefully this will prove to be a defining moment in your program's history, and we will see you in the national tournament every year from now on. I love the Sioux and I hate the Gophers. I want to thank your hockey team for beating the dirty Gophers and giving their fans something to cry about. It's the greatest thing in the world to see your bitter rival completely embarassed. It was spine tingling to hear the Sioux fans go nuts when you guys beat the Gophs in OT. Then to watch the Crusaders play the Sioux with such passion the next night was great. I was one of the thousands of Sioux fans to give your boys a huge applause to make the tournament team. ------------------------------------------------ Technical Problems? Christian Santillo, Chief Engineer & Webmaster 3/30/06 | 21:55E |crs

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