A year ago, Dominick Dawes was in the process of acclimating nearly 40 hockey players from as far away as Sweden to a new college, preparing them for NCAA Division III hockey and trying to figure out which of them would represent Stevenson University as its first NCAA Division III hockey team.
It was hectic, chaotic and stressful, but such was life for a Division III hockey head coach who was starting a program from scratch. Other coaches in similar situations would have set modest goals for their teams, but that's not Dawes' style.
A veteran head coach who previously led Neumann University in Pennsylvania to seven straight postseason appearances and the 2009 Division III national championship, Dawes, 36, wanted his team to make the playoffs and earn the highest GPA of any varsity team on campus.
