This past weekend, the ACHA held an All-Star Challenge in West Chester, PA for its Division 3 teams: Frontier States, Delaware Valley, MACHA, Blue Ridge, South All-Stars, Independents, College Hockey East, MCHC (split into red and blue), and of course, the Empire Conference.  The Empire team was made up of players from Fairfield, Southern Connecticut, Farmingdale, Maritime, and Quinnipiac.  Fairfield was represented by Kyle Marano, Brendan Joyce, Scott Kohlhepp, Matthew Peacock, Vin Rella, Ralph DiSpigna, and Empire team captain Brendan O'Malley.

Empire's first game was played Friday morning against Frontier States, and ended in an 8-4 win in their favor.  Their second game against the Southern All-Stars, however, ended in a 4-2 loss to end the first day.  Heading into Saturday, the Empire Conference was ready to face-off against the red Michigan Collegiate Hockey Conference team, and Blue Ridge.  The boys brought home an 8-1 loss to MCHC, but a 5-3 win over Blue Ridge later that night.  This left the boys with a 2-2 record for the weekend to head into the final game Sunday.  Splitting the division into groups of 5, group 1's #1 seed would face off against group 2's #1 seed, group 1's #2 vs. group 2's #2, and so on.  Empire earned the second seed in their group and would be playing the Mid Atlantic Collegiate Hockey Association for a fight for third place.

With goaltender Ralph DiSpigna, and defenseman/captain Brendan O'Malley seeing their final minutes as Stags, the team hit the ice hard and was excited to see their efforts pay off in a 5-4 win over MACHA.  This would give the Empire Conference third place as a team in the tournament, only trailing behind both MCHC teams.  Thus, Empire left Pennsylvania this weekend as the second best conference in ACHA's Division 3.  

The Stags 2015-2016 hockey season proved to be unbelievable.  7 players were named All-Stars in the conference, and 2 players (Scott Kohlhepp '18 and Brendan O'Malley '15) were even named to the 3rd team All-American in the Atlantic Division.  The team as a whole had their first national win in history, and left Michigan with a 1-1-1 record, showing that the underdogs are never something to be messed with.  The boys overall were even ranked #7 in the country, just driving the point home even further.  So what's next?  Graduating 7 seniors, the team will look to current juniors Matthew Peacock, Vin Rella, Cormac Kennedy, JP O'Malley, Fred Neftin, and Pete Alevras to lead the way to even more success.

Stay on the lookout for the 2015-2016 season's pictures, and updates regarding next season on this website, and on the team's twitter account.  Great season, boys, and go stags!