By Christina Bivona, News Correspondent
While flocks of students took part in St. Patrick’s Day festivities Sunday, Northeastern broomball team Goon Squad earned schoolwide bragging rights as they took down defending champions Broomsday, 3-1 in the intramural Broomball Championship Tournament.
The playoffs began March 16, with 31 teams competing against one another to make it to the championship.
Broomball is one of 15 spring intramural sports offered by Campus Recreation and the 31 teams prove it reigns as one of the most popular. Teams consist of between five and 18 players with no previous experience necessary.
Despite the more domestic, less fearsome title, broomball has many similarities to the rules of hockey.
A typical game starts out with five players from each team – at least two must be women – on the ice to face off for three 12-minute periods. There is no checking or high-sticking allowed, and players who don’t have a handle on the rules face penalties.
Players are allowed to wear any type of athletic clothing with sneakers and are required to wear helmets at all times. Instead of actual brooms, players use wooden sticks with a five-inch plastic triangle at the end of it, while goalies use adapted hockey goalie sticks and baseball gloves to help defend the net.
The semi-final games played simultaneously on either end of the ice. Broomsday, last year’s defending champions, took on Wolf Pack, while Goon Squad and One Man Wolf Pack battled on the other end.
The stage was set for the championship match after Broomsday shut out Wolf Pack 3-0 and Goon Squad finished with a three-goal advantage on One Man Wolf Pack, 5-2.
Although both losing teams were disappointed, many of the players said the tournament in general was “wicked awesome.”
One Man Wolf Pack has been playing together for four years and said this was the farthest they’ve ever made it in the playoffs.
“We played pretty well,” said Chris Scanlon, a player on the One Man Wolf Pack. “We were a little tired towards the end, but we lost against a friend’s team, so I guess it was good losing to them.”
Shawn Freund of the Wolf Pack accredited his team’s success in the semifinals to the grey wolf T-shirts they were all wearing.
“It was 90 percent looks, 10 percent skill,” Freund said. “We had a lot of team unity. We are a pack and we roam as one.”
This was the Wolf Pack’s third semifinal in four seasons. The whole team started together as freshmen and now all but one of them will be graduating in May, Freund said.
Unfortunately for the losing teams, none of the wolves were good enough to play with the big dogs.
In the championship game, Goon Squad and Broomsday took the ice.
After a scoreless first period, the Good Squad stepped up its offence and scored in the second. Broomsday’s goalie kept strong and made five saves. Before the period ended, Goon Squad earned a penalty shot but just missed it and had their second shot blocked.
In the last period, Goon Squad scored with 5:30 left on the clock and celebrated by pounding into the glass wall. Only a short time after, Broomsday scored its first goal against the team but a goal by one of the women of Goon Squad put the game out of reach for the reigning champs, 3-1.
After the game, the disappointed teammates of Broomsday had no comment, except that they played a hard game and they were the previous defending champions.
Adam Izzicupo, one of the Goon Squad’s leading scorers with two goals in the final, attributed his team’s success to their free agents, strong goalie and, most importantly, the team’s tough defense.
This was Goon Squad’s second semester playing as a team and had previously made it to the semifinals last season. Despite their “injury-pledged playoffs,” Izzicupo said they were known to “blow out the score while playing other teams.”
