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Published March 19, 2010, 03:14 PM

Rink and Run blog: Mercyhurst No. 1 as Frozen Four opens

By: Kevin Pates, Duluth News Tribune


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The NCAA Frozen Four women's tournament opens Friday with two semifinal games -- No. 1 Mercyhurst of Erie, Pa., vs. Cornell of Ithaca, N.Y., at 5 p.m. and No. 2 Minnesota Duluth vs. No. 3 Minnesota at 8 p.m. at Ridder Arena in Minneapolis.

     In 10 years of an NCAA-sponsored Division I tournament, WCHA teams have won 10 championships. Rachel Blount of the Minneapolis Star Tribune takes a look in Friday's editions at Mercyhurst and its attempt to break the WCHA stranglehold. UMD split games at Mercyhurst early in the season:

By RACHEL BLOUNT, Star Tribune

Last update: March 19, 2010 - 8:15 AM

If officials at Mercyhurst College had chosen a more reserved personality to start a women's hockey program in 1999, the Lakers might not be among the four teams converging on Ridder Arena on Friday for the NCAA Frozen Four.

Instead, they got Michael Sisti.

Now, Mercyhurst has what everyone wants: a program that has won eight conference titles in a row, made six consecutive appearances in the NCAA tournament and enters the national semifinals as the No. 1 team in the country.

Sisti built this unlikely powerhouse by tuning out those who told him it was impossible and tapping into his background as a blue-collar striver with big goals. By surrounding himself with players who share that mindset, Sisti has guided his program to an average of 26 victories a year through its first 11 seasons.

Mercyhurst will play Cornell in the first semifinal. The Gophers and Minnesota Duluth will play the second semifinal, and the winners will face off for the national championship Sunday.

"Everyone on the outside was telling me everything we couldn't do or would never do here,' said Sisti, who was the associate head coach of Mercyhurst's men's team when he was asked to start up the women's program. "People would say, 'Don't go after that recruit; you'll never get her. Don't play that team; they'll beat you.'

"I knew if we could bring in the right type of people, who had the work ethic and pride, and if we could get them to buy into our vision, we could do great things. And we did. We wanted to be successful, and we were willing to work really hard to be successful. That's just the way we do things.'

Sisti said his young team, which leads the nation with 4.76 goals per game, has been developing throughout the season and is just now hitting its peak. Three Lakers forwards are among the country's top four scorers, including juniors Vicki Bendus and Jesse Scanzano, who are tied atop the NCAA charts with 65 points each. Bendus is a finalist for the Patty Kazmaier Award, which goes to the top player in Division I women's hockey.

A native of nearby Buffalo, Sisti moved to Erie, Pa., in 1993 to become an assistant for the men's team. Six years later, his first women's team rode a collective sense of pride, determination and ambition to a 23-6 record. It set a standard for the kind of personalities Sisti sought, and as he added more skilled recruits, he continued to build his teams around players who fit the Mercyhurst ideal.

The Lakers lost in the first round of the NCAA tournament for four consecutive seasons -- with three of those losses in overtime -- before breaking through last year. They beat St. Lawrence in the quarterfinals and the Gophers in the semifinals before losing to Wisconsin in the championship game.

"Something that is always preached to us is the great tradition this program has,' Bendus said. "Last year, we were able to add to that by making it to the Frozen Four, which was really exciting. But we learned you can't be happy just with making it there. We were really motivated to get back.'

Sisti said his program's success has made it the No. 1 sport on the Mercyhurst campus. It is well-supported by both the school's administration and the fans; a local TV station airs a weekly show about the team, and five or six games a year are broadcast on local cable.

Though the Lakers have only one senior, Sisti's young players didn't allow their inexperience to get in the way of winning. A chance at a national title might not have seemed likely last fall, but Mercyhurst has made its name by eclipsing expectations.

"Our team is finally playing its best hockey,' Sisti said. "We've done some amazing things just to get to this point. Now let's see what happens.'

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