Rinkwise podcast: Quincy College coaches on growth of new program

Quincy College will launch a men's hockey program this fall.

Building a hockey program from scratch is not easy. But Quincy College is giving it a try.

The school is launching a new men’s hockey club program this fall, and head coach Kyle Robertson, assistant coach Matt Gibbons and athletic director Jack Raymer joined host Stephanie Wood on the latest episode of the RinkWise podcast to talk about the team’s growth.

The Granite will play in the New England Independent Hockey Conference of the Collegiate Hockey Federation. Their home games will be played at Quincy Youth Arena.

The junior college is hoping to provide a cost-effective alternative to students who want to continue their hockey careers. “We can get you to where you want to go,” Raymer said of his pitch to prospective students.

“If they come for a year and they’re able to transfer into a higher level, to a school that was a goal of theirs, then we’ve helped them along the way,” Raymer said.

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On recruiting while starting a program from scratch:

Gibbons: “This is brand new. So to sell this to someone, you’ve got to really sell it. Because you can’t really tell them, ‘Well we did this last year, or the last three/four years.’ It’s brand new. When you look at a kid, a parent or a family who’ve invested so much time and money into hockey, it’s tough to just go, ‘Yeah, sure go try this new thing that we don’t know about.’ So that’s been our part to sell the program itself. The kids that have jumped on have done a great job of helping us with that. … We think once we get through this first year that — not that recruiting is ever easy, but it’s going to become a little easier to sell a successful program after we finish this first year.”

On playing in the Collegiate Hockey Federation:

Gibbons: “The league itself is awesome. You have Mass. Maritime and Babson, who both went to the national championship last year. You see some of these big schools — the University of Tampa, University of South Carolina. Those are huge schools playing in our division. We’re not going to be traveling down to South Carolina, but just to see the opportunity of those schools in our league is pretty cool. Quincy College is going to be named with those guys. … You know, the team that won the whole thing (Babson) came out of our league. It’s pretty cool. We’re going to be part of that.”

The podcast can be streamed at hockeyjournal.com/podcast and on major platforms, such as Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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