Another Postseason Hockey Run has Alumni Feeling the Pride
03/23/2016
By Ed Brennen
Ken McKee played forward for the university’s first national championship hockey team in 1979. Standing on the concourse of Boston’s TD Garden four decades later during intermission of the River Hawks’ Hockey East championship game against Northeastern, McKee marveled at what he was seeing.
“It’s come a long way from Skate 3,” he said with a chuckle, referring to the Tyngsboro ice rink that his Division 2 Chiefs called home. “It was fun back then, but it’s become so much bigger now with Hockey East and playing against these big-time schools.”
Of course, by virtue of its fourth NCAA Division I tournament berth in the past five years, UMass Lowell can now be considered one of those “big-time schools.” And the program’s ascension under fifth-year head coach Norm Bazin has given both students and alumni plenty to cheer about from October to April.
“It’s a blast. What Coach Bazin has been able to do with the program is fantastic,” says Rich Foley, a 1979 engineering grad who remembers cheering on McKee and the Chiefs during their title run.
Foley, now Chief Operating Officer for Accutronics in Chelmsford, says the River Hawks’ quality of play and the atmosphere that’s been created at the Tsongas Center have him hooked.
“It really is fun to get together at the games with my friends,” he says. “My wife and I have been coming for years.”
So have Michael Panagopoulos and his wife, Carolyn, who have owned season tickets for the past five seasons.
“To see them advancing as far as they have during past five years, it’s been fantastic,” says Panagopoulos, a 1982 management grad who was spoiled during his time at the university: He saw the Chiefs win three national titles in a magical four-year span.
Now Director of Program Management at Accutronics, Panagopoulos traveled to Pittsburgh with his wife in 2013 to watch the River Hawks play in the Frozen Four. They are hoping to make another trip to the Frozen Four this year, this time to Tampa, Fla.
“The way the whole school has grown and developed, the team seems to represent that,” he says. “It’s great to see.”
McKee, who graduated in 1980 with an English degree, now works as a supply chain specialist at lighting manufacturer Osram Sylvania in Wilmington. He and his wife, Annemarie, a 1981 management grad, live in Norfolk and don’t get to attend as many River Hawk games as they’d like.
So getting together with old friends at the TD Garden, where the River Hawks advanced to the Hockey East championship game for the fourth straight season (a 3-2 loss to the Huskies), was an opportunity not to be missed.
“It’s great for us because it’s a chance to rally around the team and rehash old memories and all that good stuff,” says McKee, who watched the River Hawks’ epic 2-1, triple-overtime semifinal win over Providence with former teammates Brian Doyle and Chuck Hayes.
“We’re best of friends, and we met the first day we went to school: Labor Day, 1976,” McKee says. “It’s kind of an amazing thing 40 years later. Coming to Lowell changed my whole life.”