Fifty years. That is how long the members of Rensselaer’s 1954 national championship hockey team had to wait to receive their championships rings, and they were worth the long wait.
There was no doubt it was an emotional night and weekend for the members of Rensselaer’s first NCAA championship squad. After being wined and dined by school officials and hounded by the press leading up to the pre-game ceremonies at the 27th annual Big Red Freakout, the 1954 team members all finally received their long due NCAA national championship rings.
The rings were presented by President Shirley Ann Jackson and Athletic Director Ken Ralph prior to Saturday’s Freakout game against arch-rival Clarkson.
With their new symbols of accomplishment the championship season can finally be considered complete for the 1954 team; a group that no one gave a chance, except themselves.
They were said to be outmanned and outsized, but what they lacked in size they made up for with speed and determination. They had confidence, and under the leadership of coaching legend Ned Harkness, the leadership to get them there.
“The Clarksons, the St. Lawrences—all those teams had three and four lines and four good defensemen,” he said. “We didn’t worry about them, we figured we’d make them worry about us, and that’s what they did.”
With an excellent and extremely tough net-minder—remember they did not wear helmets in those days—in Bobby Fox the Engineers had all the elements of a championship contender.
When asked what Harkness would have done without his sturdy goalie he quickly responded: “We’d have had a timeout and turned the nets over, I think. Actually, one time when we played Loyola from Montreal he got hit with a screaming puck off a defenseman and it split him up. They didn’t wear masks then. I think he got 36 stitches in the face. He got back in. He was a tough kid. Bobby Fox was a great goalie.”
The 1954 title team was always considered a miracle by spectators and by their opponents but not by the players themselves.
“In our own minds I don’t think it was that great of an upset,” all-time leading scorer Frank Chiarelli said.
However, RPI’s 1954 championship run was indeed a shock to the rest of the hockey world as a little known team from upstate New York took on college hockey’s elite, but perhaps this will not be the last surprise a Engineer team will complete. Maybe fifty years after the 1954 team completed their “miracle,” it may be time for another such phenomenon. Perhaps it is the 2004 squad’s chance to repeat the miracle and stun the college hockey nation yet again.
