October 19th and 20th, 2007; San Jose, CA- At the end of last season the UC Davis Roller Hockey family was upset. The Division One team was incredulous at being ranked eleventh in the nation and yet, due to a selection process glitch, left out of the twenty-plus team field of the national tournament. Meanwhile. the B team had just completed year two of its rebuilding process. It marked the second straight year with one win or less. The performances by both teams left a lot to be desired and, frankly, nobody likes to go home for the summer feeling like they didn't leave everything on the rink. To say that every member of the UCDRH family was eagerly anticipating the start of the 2007-2008 season would be an understatement.

For the Division One team, they encountered adversity before they even stepped on the rink. Ryan Luzum, the Aggies' perennial All-Star and career goals and points leader, graduated and matriculated to Southern California. Pat Casey, a left handed net-shaking goal scorer, took his game and his leadership abilities with him as he graduated and accepted a job with AmGen in Thousand Oaks. Rounding out the graduations, Tony Kou, a solid defensemen, graduted as well. As if that was not enough for the suddenly short-handed Aggies' to overcome both Senior Defenseman Chris Mertens and Mike Gedestad were taking part in quarters outside of Davis (Washington D.C. and Padua, Italy, respectively). This left the D1 team with four returning players from last year, one of them a defenseman.

The Aggies' braintrust decided that, in the short term, it would be best to only play with six players. Joining the Aggies were law student Tim Hughes, who played some college hockey at UCSD, and Senior engineering major Adam Napolitan, a marathon runner and part-man part-monster who was pulling full-time double duty with the B team.

Meanwhile, the B team had undergone massive rebuilding with its team structure, roster, and, perhaps more importantly, its culture in an attempt to regain the pride that once filled the Aggies' locker room. After hiring recent graduate Peter Shenkin as the full-time coach, the Ags started preparing for this season by practicing last spring. Turnout for the practices was generally over fifteen people. The Ags worked on building solid fundamentals during these practices and laid a foundation for increased skill. It has been well known that the players on the Ags B team had typically been up against a heavy competitive disadvantage against other schools where the players on their B team have been playing competitive hockey for more than five years. For many Ags, this is their first time playing competitive hockey. Certainly, when there are situations like that there is a resultant skill and experience gap. Further, this gap obviously had something to do with the Ags losing records over the past two years.

All was not lost in B-team-land, though, because despite their youth and inexperience the Ags had shown a lot of promise towards the end of last season. Adding to last years squad of youngsters, Freshman Solomon Koo, Sophomore Kevin Ahlers, Junior Noah Michel, and Seniors Adam Napolitan and Jesse Ebel were looking to find their game and improve on last years performance. In addition, Coach Shenkin announced to his team that no longer would the entire 18 member squad travel to or play in tournaments. Citing the logistical nightmare, league roster restrictions, and a diminished return by running so many lines, the team is only traveling with twelve players, only eight of whom will see consistent playing time. This, obviously has upset some Aggies.