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KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 March 5, 2026 \u2013 The University of Rhode Island men\u2019s club hockey team is heading to the national championship tournament for the first time in more than a decade looking to build off a late-season run that helped it punch its ticket to St. Louis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Following a 26-9-1 finish in 2025\u201326 and a regular season Eastern Collegiate Hockey Association championship, the Rams are seeded 22nd out of 24 teams in this year\u2019s American Collegiate Hockey Association Division I National Championships and begin tournament play Thursday, March 12 at 1:30 p.m. against No. 11 seed Calvin University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Rams\u2019 last trip to the ACHA tournament was in 2014\u201315 when they finished with 30 wins and earned the No. 12 seed before losing to Stony Brook in the opening round. This season also marks the 20-year anniversary of URI\u2019s first and only national championship in 2005\u201306. All URI\u2019s success over the past three and a half decades has come under the guidance of head coach Joe Augustine, the university\u2019s winningest coach at the club or varsity level and a two-time ACHA Men\u2019s Division I Coach of The Year winner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
URI enters this year\u2019s tournament with wins in 12 of its last 13 games with the lone loss coming this past Sunday in the ECHA Tournament semifinals against Drexel University. Senior defenseman Tim Crane said the Rams need to wipe the slate clean and put the loss in the rear-view mirror before heading to St. Louis next week for their matchup against the Knights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The team heads west next Tuesday and is currently fundraising<\/a> to cover travel expenses. All games are available to stream live with a subscription to FloHockey<\/a>, a premier digital streaming platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re still recovering, at least mentally, from losing in the semifinals of our division tournament, but everyone is excited to go to St. Louis,\u201d Crane said. \u201cThe vibe is pretty high in our locker room right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n URI\u2019s 2025\u201326 included a 16-3 record in league play led by All-ECHA selections Cameron Cyr (Exeter, R.I.), Nick Maringola (Cheshire, Conn.), and Zach Gold (Glen Ridge, N.J.). Cyr, a sophomore forward and the team\u2019s leading goal scorer with 25 in 36 games, earned First Team honors while Maringola, a senior goaltender, and Gold, a sophomore defenseman, earned Second Team honors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Cyr combined with senior forward Shane Mulhern (Middletown, R.I.) to score 86 points and each ranked among the top 50 scorers in the nation with 42 and 44 points, respectively. Maringola won 13 games in 22 appearances with two shutouts and a 2.36 goals against average.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Numbers aside, Crane and Augustine point to the team\u2019s chemistry as a major factor in this year\u2019s success. A wave of early-season departures brought the remaining players closer together, and the group responded quickly out of the gate with wins in seven of its first eight games in the fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe have a really tight-knit group,\u201d Crane said. \u201cWe rallied around one another where the only thing that mattered was the guys in the locker room.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe hardest part about a locker room,\u201d Augustine said, \u201cis that we can coach the guys on the ice and we can try to implement systems and so forth, but that chemistry in the room is all on them. Coaches do not control locker rooms. I believe a lot in the chemistry aspect of a team, and there were probably things in there that were affecting our chemistry, but from what we\u2019ve seen and what the players tell me, it’s a lot better now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 2025\u201326 season was also highlighted by URI\u2019s return to the ECHA after spending 18 seasons in the now dissolved Eastern States Collegiate Hockey League following the departure of Delaware, Stony Brook, Syracuse, and Pittsburgh to the newly-formed Atlantic Coast Collegiate Hockey League. The two remaining teams, URI and Drexel, rejoined the ECHA, where URI competed when Augustine took over the head coaching position in 1989.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI know the league because I’ve been in it before, but it was an adjustment for sure,\u201d Augustine said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asked what he knows about next week\u2019s opponent, Calvin, Augustine said, \u201cnot a whole lot.\u201d The Rams abide by the philosophy of playing their brand of hockey regardless of the opponent\u2019s approach. Calvin finished the season ranked 11th in the nation with a 20-8-2 record and enters the ACHA tournament following a loss to league rival Adrian in the Great Lakes Six Hockey Conference championship game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey\u2019re very, very deep,\u201d Augustine said. \u201cWe\u2019ll prepare our players as best we can, but until they get there and experience it for themselves, it\u2019ll be a big adjustment for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI’ve been on both ends of the spectrum. I was there when we went into the [2005\u201306] tournament ranked No. 1 in the country. You never know what will happen, but if you don\u2019t bring your \u2018A\u2019 game, even if you\u2019re the No. 1 team in the country, you\u2019ll have problems. We\u2019re going to have to make adjustments and come up with a way to slow them down. We\u2019re not a team that\u2019s going to run-and-gun with people. We need to play our game and slow things down, and if we can do that and survive the first seven or eight minutes, I think we\u2019ll settle down and play.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n ###<\/p>\n\n\n\n Michael Parente, director of communications and marketing in the URI Division of Student Affairs, wrote this news release.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Fresh off a 26-win season, the Rams head to St. Louis as the No. 22 seed to battle Calvin University on March 12 in the opening round of the American Collegiate Hockey Association Division I National Championships KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 March 5, 2026 \u2013 The University of Rhode Island men\u2019s club hockey team is heading […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5297,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[13,17],"class_list":["post-3689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-news","tag-spring-2026"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/student-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/student-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/student-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/student-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5297"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/student-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3689"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/student-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3695,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/student-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3689\/revisions\/3695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/student-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/student-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.uri.edu\/student-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}