If you polled a group of current students on what comes to mind when they think of Binghamton ice hockey, chances are, the Binghamton Senators would rack up quite a few votes. But two decades ago, long before the Ottawa Senators’ minor league affiliate played its home games at Broome County Arena, another team in town demanded coverage in this paper: Binghamton’s short-lived Division III ice hockey program.

Binghamton’s D3 team lasted just five seasons, from 1987-88 through 1991-92, before being cut for financial reasons. And on paper, the final tallies look uglier than an Alex Ovechkin mugshot. According to Tim Schum, author of From Colonials to Bearcats, the team skated to an 11-101 overall record and once lost 56 straight games. But hockey’s ascension to the D3 ranks saw it become a program as beloved as it was expensive, and though its varsity tenure was short, the program still lives on today.

Hockey got its start at Binghamton University in an unorthodox way. Like dodgeball, it began as an intramural sport.

It was the early 1970s, and the sport was starting to really take off in New York. The National Hockey League expanded in the late 1960s and again in the 1970s, including in New York, where the Islanders entered the fold in 1972.

By 1975, two intramural players, student Alan Parker ’76 and physics professor Bob Pompi, decided to gather up the best skaters on campus and create a club team.

The team played its home games outdoors at Grippen Park ice rink in Endicott. Players raised money for equipment and traveling through fundraisers and book sales. Pompi, who joined Binghamton’s faculty in 1968, ran practices, created a schedule and became the team’s first coach. They were off and running.

Well, sorta.

‘We didn’t really have a grand plan in place,’ Pompi said. ‘Maybe there was a grand plan from 9 to lunch, but then there would be another grand plan from lunch to dinner, and another from dinner through the evening. We made everything up as we went along. But I remember those first players. It was a group of people, maybe a little ragtag in talent, but they had an incredible amount of heart.’

After a few years, Pompi moved the Colonials to the new Polar Cap (now named the Chenango Ice Rink) in Chenango Bridge. But playing against established club and varsity programs wasn’t easy, and Pompi’s players were often overmatched during those early seasons. Schum wrote that in one game against Skidmore College, BU goalie Jeff Regensburger ’84 faced 108 shots.

‘It took us three years before we won our first road game,’ Pompi said. ‘But we were just absolutely thrilled to be playing.’

In 1981, Pompi became the team’s general manager, handing the coaching reigns over to former D3 player Wayne Finley. Finley guided the club to its first winning record in 1983-84, and Binghamton joined the International Collegiate Hockey League the following fall. Led by coach John Stella in 1985-86, BU won the league title, defeating rival Broome Community College in a televised championship game.

‘For some of the guys, winning that championship was like winning the Stanley Cup,’ said Stella, who is now a deacon at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Binghamton. ‘I coached for a lot of years, and you’re lucky to come across a team like that in your lifetime.’

Though the club had been unsuccessful in lobbying for a campus rink, it fought hard for varsity status. Pipe Dream soon joined the discussion, publishing an editorial after the 1985-86 season directed at the athletics department titled ‘Stop Holding Hockey Back.’

‘Student Association representative Robert Chasin and Phillip Stillman will receive $260 from the SA to pay for a flight to Portland, Maine, in order to meet with an architectural consultant to discuss funding an ice hockey rink on campus,’ said an earlier Pipe Dream story, from Jan. 29, 1985. ‘Stillman said he foresees that the SA would back bonding to raise the $6 million.’

Backed by student support and SA money, the Colonials entered the 1986 season as one of the most popular and expensive teams on campus. And it didn’t take long for University President Clifford Clark to notice.

Pompi credits Binghamton Hockey Hall of Famer Jim Matthews with putting the finishing touches on the University’s jump to D3. Matthews, who brought professional hockey to Binghamton in 1973 when the minor league team he founded, the Broome Dusters, became Broome County Arena’s first hockey tenets, asked Clark to go to a club game with him. That night, Matthews, Clark and more than 1,000 students watched the Colonials dismantle Broome Community College, 18-2.

‘If you think the BU Zoo at a soccer game is something else,’ Pompi said, ‘you should have seen these people at ice hockey.’

One week later, the athletics department announced that hockey would be elevated to D3 the following fall. And just like that, the Colonials had transitioned from intramurals to club to varsity in about 10 years.

‘What the guys really learned, was how hard it is to be successful,’ Stella said. ‘The first goal was to be successful as a team. Then we worked toward a championship. I can’t say that getting varsity status was always our No. 1 goal. But for several years, our guys wanted it. And they achieved it.’

But the party didn’t last long.

Although the Colonials played and defeated D3 teams while competing on the club level, they didn’t receive the money or time needed to develop into a successful varsity program. After finishing 4-12 in 1987-88 during a required NCAA transitional year, BU suffered through two straight winless seasons as a member of the State University of New York Athletic Conference. Elmira College assistant coach Patrick Dwyer took over in 1990, but after two more disappointing seasons (7-39 combined), third-year athletics director Joel Thirer pulled the plug, a move that Schum wrote allowed the athletics department to recoup $42,000 of the $55,000 needed to balance its books.

Forward Adam Kudelka ’95 remembers hearing the news.

‘Dwyer called me about the possibility of the program getting cut in case I wanted to look to transfer out,’ Kudelka said. ‘And then one day they had us all meet in a conference room in the West Gym, and Thirer gave us the news. We were definitely bummed.’

Kudelka, who now works for Morgan Stanley and makes recruiting trips to Binghamton, understood the athletics department’s decision, but thought Dwyer had the team moving in the right direction.

‘We obviously weren’t very competitive and we didn’t have a facility on campus, but the freshmen were getting a lot of ice time my first year,’ Kudelka said. ‘I felt like we were on the upswing. If Dwyer was given a few more years to recruit, I think we could have been competitive.’

Instead, Kudelka’s teammates began raising money, and Binghamton reverted back after the 1991-92 season.

‘The club team had a nice following on campus,’ Kudelka said. ‘People were allowed to drink at our games, which probably helped. We just had a lot of fun with it, and we were real competitive. We joined the American Collegiate Hockey Association and played teams like Penn State, Syracuse, and Drexel. We played some schools that had bigger club programs than we had when we were D3. When we went to Penn, there were probably a few thousand people in the stands.’

Today, Binghamton’s club team competes in the Northeast Collegiate Hockey League, an eight-team conference in the ACHA. Last season, BU won its first league title with playoff wins over Rutgers and Cornell.

Pompi, who retired from the physics department last spring, still enjoys catching a club game from time to time. And he keeps in touch with many former players.

When forward Brian Gaon ’85 passed away in 2005, about 30 ex-Colonials ‘ and many of their children ‘ reunited to play a scrimmage in honor of Gaon. They all wore his No. 10 on their custom-made jerseys, and his name was memorialized in Binghamton’s Memorial Courtyard.

‘It was bittersweet,’ Pompi said. ‘I was happy everyone was together again. People traveled from California and Colorado to be there. But it was really sad that Brian wasn’t with us anymore.’

Last summer, the group came together again for another scrimmage, this time joined by Stella and a few other players, and Pompi hopes a new tradition was born among his Colonials. The Boys of Winter, he calls them.