Issue date: 10/15/07 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Emily Hartwig Brass students came out in full force to support assistant professor Phillip Ostrander of the music department in the charity hockey match Saturday afternoon in Hobbs Ice Arena. The women's hockey team played a team made up of faculty and staff, including Chancellor Brian Levin-Stankevich, to raise money for the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library campaign.

Lacing up a pair of ice skates and putting on shoulder pads was never part of Chancellor Brian Levin-Stankevich's job description.

But that's exactly what he and 12 other university faculty and staff members did Saturday when they participated in the first-ever match between the UW-Eau Claire women's hockey team and the "Hockey Profs."

"It's fun to play with some of the faculty and staff and get out and highlight the girls' program," Levin-Stankevich said after the game. "I think this demonstrates the close relationship faculty and students have."

Women's hockey coach Mike Collins said the game was intended to give his team an opportunity to simply have some fun and get some game experience before the start of the 2007-2008 season.

"It was nothing more than just some fun," Collins said after the game. "Everybody had a good time. We didn't approach it with anything more than just to have some fun and get a little skate in."

Saturday's match was primarily the brainchild of geography professor Paul Kaldjian, who said he and other faculty members began discussing the prospect of playing against the hockey team about four or five years ago.

Prior to this year, there was never enough interest among the faculty and staff at the university to allow for such a game, and Kaldjian said this year's team of 13 was still smaller than he would have liked.

"What happened this year is we had enough faculty and staff that play," he said. "We had really only two lines, so we still don't really have enough players."

Continued...

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