Geneseo State hockey coach Chris Schultz is certain about one thing – no matter what his Knights do at the NCAA Division III Frozen Four, he’s coaching champions.
“They’ve faced adversity and they’ve dealt with it,” Schultz said as his Knights prepared to face Wisconsin-Stevens Point in the national semifinals on Friday in Lake Placid, New York. “Another hockey team on the other side of the ice is not going to scare them. I think that’s the part of this team that’s so strong – the experience, what they’ve dealt with, and the realization that hockey isn’t everything. Life is way more important.”
Adversity for these Knights came with the deaths in mid-January of 24-year-old senior defenseman Matthew Hutchinson and his friend Kelsey Annese, a 21-year-old senior captain on the Geneseo women’s basketball team. According to police, the two were killed by her distraught ex-boyfriend on a Sunday morning while they slept in Annese’s apartment near the college campus in western New York. He then killed himself, police say.
Residents of the small rural community about 35 miles south of Rochester have rallied around the students.
Both players have been honored in front of adoring fans who jammed home games to honor both players. Annese’s No. 32, the same number her father wore when he played for Geneseo, hung above the scoreboard like a uniform retirement ceremony on Senior Night last month with her parents watching. Geneseo hockey coach Paul Duffy got Hutchinson’s No. 23 stitched on the front of every team jersey, a constant reminder of the affable big guy from North Vancover, British Columbia, who dreamed of becoming a firefighter.