Playing hockey for a good

On Saturday Jan. 18, the MBA Bullets of the Concordia Intramural Hockey League hosted a tournament with the Tuck school of business MBA team from Dartmouth College. The goal of the tourney was to raise money for FANIA, an organization working out of Honduras that helps feed and educate students in Honduran schools. Last year’s edition of this tournament was a great success, raising $1,800 for the Easter Seals Society.
This year was no different, as almost $2,000 was collected from the crowd at Concordia’s Ed Meagher Arena. Unfortuanetly, the Concordia men weren’t that lucky as Tuck came out on top with an 8-4 win over the MBA Bullets.

“Even though our team lost, I am proud of the way that they played and we
have been doing some serious conditioning, so that we will perform better at
Tuck in two weeks,” Bullets captain Ronny Velicogna said. Fortunately, our
women’s intramural team redeemed the situation with a 10-0 trouncing over
Tuck. One of the most impressive things about the tournament was that it
brought out more people than a Stingers’ hockey game.

In all fairness, many of those that helped pack the house were from the visiting team which
brought along about 200 supporters. “We at Tuck always look forward to the
mid-January trip up to Montreal to play Concordia,” said Tuck captain
Patrick Ryan.

“As far as the game goes, it was certainly good to win. But, it’s more important to just get out on the ice and play some competitive hockey,” Ryan continued.
The tournament has been in existence since 1988, when its founder, Andrew Dey, wanted to get the Amos Tuck business school invited to the annual Tuck Hockey Tournament in Hanover, New Hampshire.

The tournament included some of the world’s best business schools, including the
John Molson school of business, Tuck, Harvard, MIT, Wharton, Chicago,
Kellogg, Ivey, Cornell and Babson. At its peak, there were eight business
schools coming to play at Concordia.

“That number has slowly decreased over the years, as the student mix of our MBA program changed from local to foreign students from warmer countries,” Velicogna explained. “A few years ago, it was down to one game against Tuck. However, three years ago, we decided to make it a charity event, and asked our players and the Tuck
players and fans for donations.”

Although Concordia is proud at hosting such a successful and meaningful tournament, Dartmouth is just as deserving of credit for making the trip and maintaining their dedication to hockey.

“Tuck is kind of a hockey-crazy school; more than 60 per cent of the
student body plays in a league at some skill level,” Ryan said. “More
importantly, Hanover is a small town, and students look forward to the
opportunity to visit a big city for the weekend.”

The MBA Bullets will get the opportunity to do it all over again when they visit Tuck for their tournament from Feb. 7-9.

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