Holy Cross

(above) Holy Cross' Arena

The College of the Holy Cross Crusaders
Wells Fargo Denver Cup

Magness Arena, Denver, Colo.

January 2, 2009

The No. 5 Denver (13-5-1, 9-4-1 WCHA) Pioneers host the Holy Cross Crusaders from Atlantic Hockey (5-11-1 overall, 5-8-1 AHA) in their Denver Cup opener on Friday, Jan 2. Puck drop is set for 7:37 p.m. MT on Friday. The game can be seen live on FSN Rocky Mountain which can be found on DirecTV channel 683 and Dish Network channel 414. FSN’s Dan Kelly & Charlie Host call the action with Alanna Rizzo as rinkside reporter. Live Audio: Friday-www.denverpioneers.com.

Note: The Pioneers will play either Boston University of RPI on Saturday in the second game of the Wells Fargo Denver Cup – those two teams are previewed in a separate story.
DU has never played Holy Cross before, and as such, there is no series history.

Crusaders to Watch
Junior Brodie Sheahan (Lethbridge, Alberta) has five goals and nine assists for 14 points this season. He currently leads the team in assists and points, while he is second in goals. His 0.82 points per game are tied for 16th in Atlantic Hockey. Sheahan recorded five assists in the two games against Mercyhurst earlier in the season. He has 23 goals and 37 assists for 60 points in 82 career games played.

Sophomore forward Jordan Cyr (Winnipeg, Manitoba) leads the team in goals with eight, while his 13 points are second and his five assists are tied for third. He was named the Atlantic Hockey Player of the Week for his four-goal performance in the two-game series against Mercyhurst. Cyr is seventh in the league and is tied for 22nd in the country in goals per game with 0.50. Cyr, who transferred from RPI, is in his first season. Junior Rob Forshner (Sundre, Alberta) has been a major contributor so far on offense as he has three goals and seven assists for 10 points. His seven assists this year are second on the team and his 10 points are third. In 82 career games, he has 13 goals and 32 assists for 45 points.

Sophomore goalie Adam Roy (Feeding Hills, Mass.) has 1,151 career saves which are already second on Holy Cross' all-time Division I saves list. Also his 12 career victories are fifth all-time on the Division I list. Roy recorded his first collegiate shutout as he made 17 saves in the 3-0 victory over AIC on Nov. 22. Last year, he set a Holy Cross freshman record for most saves in a single-season with 771 and is ranked second on the school's Division I all-time single-season saves list. This year, he has made 380 saves and has a 4-10-1 record.

About The College of the Holy Cross
Founded in 1843, The College of the Holy Cross has become the oldest Roman Catholic college in New England and one of the oldest in the United States. Committed to an undergraduate liberal arts education for its nearly 2800 students, Holy Cross is a Jesuit institution located in Worcester, Mass, about 45 miles west of Boston.

Opened as a school for boys under the auspices of the Society of Jesus, it was the first Jesuit college in New England. Holy Cross was founded by Benedict Joseph Fenwick, SJ, second Bishop of Boston, after his efforts to found a Catholic college in Boston were thwarted by the city's Protestant civic leaders. Fenwick decided to leave the Boston school and instead opened the College of the Holy Cross in central Massachusetts where he felt the Jesuits could operate with greater autonomy. The site of the college, Mount Saint James, was originally occupied by a Roman Catholic boarding school, run by the Rev. James Fitton, with his lay collaborator, Joseph Brigden, since 1832.

The school opened in October of 1843 with the Rev.Thomas F. Mulledy, S.J., former president of Georgetown University, as its first president, and on the second day of November, with six students aged 9 to 19, the first classes were held. Within three years, the enrollment had increased to 100 students. The first class graduated in 1849, led by valedictorian James Augustine Healy, the son of a former slave who would go on to become the first African-American bishop in the United States.

The school had some difficult struggles in the early years. Fenwick Hall, the school's main building, was completely destroyed by fire in 1852. Funds were raised to rebuild the College, and in 1853, it opened for the second time.

Additionally, petitions to secure a charter for the college from the state Legislature were denied in 1847 for a variety of causes, including anti-Catholicism on the part of some legislators. Initially, Holy Cross diplomas were signed by the president of Georgetown University. After repeated denials, a charter was finally granted on March 24, 1865, by Governor John A. Andrews. Since that time, the campus has grown to nearly 2800 undergraduates as a highly selective liberal arts college.

Holy Cross had traditionally drawn many of its students from a pool of historical Catholic high schools and private boarding schools, though a slight majority of current undergraduates come from public schools, mostly from the Northeastern US.

In its 2008 edition, U.S. News & World Report ranked Holy Cross 33rd in the U.S. among liberal arts schools. Holy Cross is also the only Catholic college among the top 50 liberal arts schools on the U.S. News list. Additionally, in its 2008 edition of The Best 361 Colleges, the Princeton Review awarded Holy Cross a 98/100 academic rating, the highest of any Catholic college or university.

Holy Cross has 299 faculty members, who teach 2,790 undergraduate students .It offers 28 majors mainly focused on a liberal arts curriculum, each of which leads to the completion of the bachelor of arts (B.A.) degree. Of particular note is the Classics department at Holy Cross, which has ten faculty members, making it the largest classics program of American liberal arts colleges.
Holy Cross has embraced sometimes controversial schools of theological thought, including liberation theology and social justice. As a result, in 1974, Time Magazine referred to Holy Cross as the "cradle of the Catholic Left" because it educated Philip Berrigan and socialist leader Michael Harrington, author of the influential book on poverty, The Other America. Today, Holy Cross, similar to the religious order of the Jesuits as a whole, has been criticized by some parties for being overly liberal and deviating substantially from official Church teaching and papal directives, especially on such issues as abortion, homosexuality, liberation theology, and in its sponsorship of events such as the Vagina Monologues.

Holy Cross' 175 acre campus, a registered arboretum, is situated on the northern slope of a very steep hill named Mount Saint James or more commonly, “The Hill” which offers it a panoramic view of the city of Worcester.

Holy Cross has a few shining moments in American pop culture
• Ernest Hemingway mentions Holy Cross in his novel The Sun Also Rises.
• In the 2001 film Harvard Man, Sarah Michelle Gellar plays a Holy Cross cheerleader named Cindy Bandolini.
• Holy Cross' Fitton Field provided the scenery for the climatic football scene in the Disney movie, The Game Plan. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson plays football for the fictional Boston Rebels in the film.
• Ten Things I Wish I'd Known Before I Went Out Into The Real World, a book by Maria Shriver, published in 2000, evolved from commencement address she had given at Holy Cross in 1998
• In episodes #21 and #26 of The Sopranos, Holy Cross is mentioned as a potential college for Tony's daughter, Meadow.

About the Holy Cross Hockey Program
For most college hockey fans around the country, the very mention of the words “Holy Cross” instantly conveys the greatest upset in the 60 years of the NCAA Division I tournament, when the underdog Crusaders topped mighty Minnesota in the 2006 NCAA West Regional in Grand Forks, N.D. – the high water mark of a Holy Cross varsity hockey program that has been in place since the mid 1960s, and in Division I since the late 1990s.

As sportswriter John Gearan wrote in a 2006 recap, powerhouse Minnesota, ranked No. 3, had reigned five times as NCAA hockey champs, including winning back-to-back titles in 2002 and 2003. Herb Brooks, who coached the USA to its 1980 "Miracle on Ice" victory over the Soviet Union, guided Minnesota to three NCAA crowns in the 1970s.

Holy Cross, ranked No. 19 and representing the upstart Atlantic Hockey Association, had never won a single game in the 58-year history of the NCAA hockey tourney. Minnesota had 14 players on its roster who had been drafted by the National Hockey League. Holy Cross had none. Minnesota-Twin Cities is a supersized university, with an enrollment of 51,000; Holy Cross has about 2,700 undergrads. Minnesota uses all 18 scholarships, Holy Cross, as member of cost-containment league Atlantic Hockey, uses far less than the NCAA maximum of 18.
In plain-speak, Holy Cross didn't have a prayer against Minnesota.

"I couldn't believe it. Here I was, in front of a sellout crowd (11,000+) of cheering North Dakota fans [known for their hatred of rival Minnesota], on national TV (ESPN-U) playing goalie against the one team I've always dreamed of playing,'' remarked Holy Cross’ Tony Quesada, whose mother, Strandy, and her family are Minnesota natives.

What unfolded was "surreal," the one-word summary provided by Holy Cross forward Tyler McGregor.

"Once we got in that arena, we absorbed the atmosphere," said McGregor. "Right off, we heard no heckling, just cheering. On paper we were no match. Minnesota recruits the elite of the elite. But we had a genuine belief that we belonged."

The momentum built. A scoreless first period demonstrated the Crusaders were no pushovers, definitely more seasoned than the HC team that lost 3-0 to North Dakota in the 2004 NCAA first round… Holy Cross scored first, and managed to keep step with the Gophers, forcing a 3-3 tie game in the third period. The Sioux fans, sensing they may be witnessing perhaps the greatest upset in college hockey history, were going bonkers. Twice in period three, Holly Cross shut down Minnesota's power play, ranked No. 1 in the country. Indeed, the Crusaders shut out the Gophers for more than 13 minutes during Minnesota's seven power-play opportunities as Quesada chalked up 15 of his 37 saves during those sieges.

Sudden-death overtime arrived, and 11,000 screaming fans energized the Crusaders. Just 53 seconds into overtime, McGregor would send shock waves through the world of hockey. In a nanosecond, the Man from Ajax (Ontario) would be dubbed a SportsCenter hero.

Spotting Blair Bartlett roaring up the middle, McGregor tried centering a sly pass to Bartlett. That maneuver drew Gopher goalie Kellen Briggs towards the center of the net. The puck caromed off the left skate of Minnesota's defenseman P.J. Atherton and skittered back toward McGregor. From a near impossible angle, rocketed a right-handed wrister through the narrow opening between the right post and Briggs. Lightning had struck. McGregor found himself buried by teammates. "Pierre was on top of me, and if we weren't wearing cages, we would have been kissing," commented McGregor. "I was just trying not to get killed.''

On the other end, Quesada raised his stick in victory while staring at the mayhem in disbelief. "Tyler shot, and it seemed to take forever for the goal light to blink on," he said. "I think I blacked out until I hit the lockers."

Back on the Holy Cross campus, bedlam broke out at the Crossroads pub, jammed with students watching the stunner on ESPN-U. At Worcester's downtown DCU Center, where Boston College was battling Boston University, the message board flashed: Holy Cross 4, Minnesota 3. Terrier and Eagle fans roared with delight. Sports fans everywhere had to blink, disbelieving the cable TV crawl lines that delivered the shocking news.

While Holy Cross bowed out of the NCAA tournament the next day against the host UND Sioux, the upset triggered a wave of respect for not only Holy Cross, but for the Atlantic Hockey conference.

Holy Cross had informal and club hockey on campus for many years, but the first varsity team laced up the skates in 1966 under Coach Bill Kane, who would guide the Crusaders for the next 10 years. Playing mostly against ECAC Division II-III schools from New England, Holy Cross had some success in the first three seasons, with records of 16-8, 16-8 and 16-6, and sweeping the post-season WCHL tournament (as far as HC could go in those days) in each of the first three years. In 1975, Holy Cross moved the newly-built 1,500 seat Hart Recreation Center on campus, and it has been home to Crusader hockey ever since. Kane finished out his 10-year HC career with a .550 winning percentage in 1976, but with no further post season play. In fact, Holy Cross, despite a number of strong teams with good records, would go the next 30 years without any league hardware at all.

Mike Addessa, who would later coach RPI to the 1985 NCAA Championship, took the reigns of the Holy Cross program in 1976, and in his three seasons in Worcester, racked up a .610 winning percentage (still the highest in Holy Cross history) and took the Crusaders to a pair of ECAC DII-DIII playoff appearances in 1978 and 1979, falling to Salem (Mass.) State and Merrimack, respectively. Addessa moved on to RPI in 1979, and Holy Cross hired Peter Van Buskirk to be the next head coach.

Van Buskirk’s first team went 21-9 and beat Salem State for Holy Cross’ first ECAC playoff win in 1980, but despite ECAC playoff appearances in 1981, 82, 83, 85 and 87, the Crusaders won just one more playoff game in that era, beating Bowdoin in 1983. The highlight of Van Buskirk’s career was probably the January 7, 1985 game when Catholic athletic powerhouse Notre Dame paid a rare visit to Worcester to play a then lower division Holy Cross program. The Crusaders stunned the Irish in a wild 9-6 victory, marking Holy Cross’ first win over a major Division I school.

In the late 1980s, Bill Bellerose became coach and managed just one winning season in 1991-92 (13-12) in his four years at the helm, giving way to current coach (and former Crusader player) Paul Pearl in 1994, who in his 14 seasons, has guided the Crusaders from a middle of the road D-II-DIII program to a Division I program that has tasted a bit of NCAA success, as well as winning the program’s first conference championships.

In fact, Pearl’s first true Division I Crusader team went 22-9-4 in 1999, and won the newly-formed MAAC tournament over Sacred Heart, Connecticut and Canisius, but Holy Cross was not eligible for NCAA tournament consideration, as that was the first year for the conference at the D-I level.

In the summer of 2003, while the MAAC was going though governance changes that would see the end of the conference’s D-I hockey existence and the emergence of its successor conference (Atlantic Hockey), Pearl decided to leave Holy Cross for a position at Milton (Mass.) Academy, but five days after announcing his departure, he returned to Holy Cross, saying he had a change of heart. He recommitted himself as coach of Holy Cross, and his players responded with a commitment of their own, going 22-10-4 and winning the first regular season conference title in school history, winning the first-ever Atlantic Hockey tournament, and winning the school’s first-ever NCAA tourney bid to the West Regional in Colorado Springs. Many Denver Pioneer fans saw that first Holy Cross NCAA Game live in Colorado Springs, (when HC lost 3-0 to top-ranked North Dakota), while awaiting the Pioneers’ NCAA game against Miami.

Of course Holy Cross would go on to NCAA fame again in 2006, when the team went 27-10-2 and won both the Atlantic Hockey regular season and playoff championships, en-route to the memorable upset of Minnesota, as described earlier.

Probably the best known Former Holy Cross hockey player is Patrick Rissmiller, now with the New York Rangers organization, who played 180 NHL games with the San Jose Sharks from 2004-2008. Rissmiller is the only HC player to appear in an NHL game.

Holy Cross Traditions
Holy Cross's athletic teams for both men and women are known as the Crusaders. It is reported that the name "Crusader" was first associated with Holy Cross in 1884 at an alumni banquet in Boston, where an engraved Crusader mounted on an armored horse appeared at the head of the menu

The name was rediscovered by Stanley Woodward, a sports reporter for the Boston Herald, when he used the term "Crusader" to describe the Holy Cross baseball team in a story written in 1925. The name appealed to the Holy Cross student body, which held a vote later in that year to decide whether this cognomen or one of the other two currently in use - "Chiefs" and "Sagamores"- would be adopted. On October 6, 1925, The Tomahawk, an earlier name of the student newspaper, reported that the results of the ballot were: Crusaders 143, Chiefs 17, Sagamores 7.

The school color is purple. There are two theories of how Holy Cross chose purple as its official color. One suggests it was derived from the royal purple used by Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (born about 275 A.D., died in 337 AD) as displayed on his labarum (military standard) and on those of later Christian emperors of Rome.

The other version is attributed to Walter J. Connors, an 1887 HC graduate, and was printed in the October 1940 issue of the Holy Cross Alumnus. According to the account, there was a disagreement during the 1870s between Holy Cross students from Massachusetts and Connecticut concerning the schools' baseball uniform colors. Those from Massachusetts purportedly favored the crimson of Harvard, while those from Connecticut favored the deep blue of Yale. Legend has it that a fellow student with a sense of diplomacy resolved the dispute in the chemistry lab, where he mixed copper sulphate (blue) with iron oxide (red) to produce the color of deep purple.

Holy Cross Fight Song
In 1905, President Theodore Roosevelt arrived to speak at Holy Cross’ first commencement held at Fitton Field (site of the current football stadium).An HC priest described the scene in his book: “As he came into sight students gave him a college cheer: Hoiah, hoiah, Choo Choo, Rah-Rah, Choo-Choo Rah-Rah, Hoiah Roosevelt Rah.’’ In time, such cheers were turned into lyrics and music. J. Leo Gorman, a teacher and 1904 Holy Cross graduate, penned “Chu! Chu!” with B.J. Shandley composing the music in the late 1920s. “Ring out with your Hoiah and a Chu! Chu! Rah! Rah!’’ is how the song begins, according to the lyrics appearing on the back of a 1979 album, Songs of Holy Cross. It also makes plain that Chu! Chu! is not spelled Choo-Choo.
It is suspected that the references to “Hoia” may well be a reference to Georgetown University’s
“Hoya” nickname, as Georgetown conferred early Holy Cross degrees in before Holy Cross was chartered in Massachusetts.

Chu, Chu, Rah, Rah!
Ring out then your Hoiah with
A Chu, Chu, Rah, Rah,
A Chu, Chu, Rah, Rah!
A Chu, Chu, Rah, Rah!
Give another Hoiah and a Chu, Chu, Rah, Rah!
A Chu, Chu, Rah, Rah, for Holy Cross!
March on as knights of old
(With hearts as) loyal and true and bold,
And wage the bitter fight with all your might,
Fight hard for Holy Cross!
You'll know when battle's done,
(It was for) her that the fight was won,
Oh, may it never die, that battle cry,
On, on for Holy Cross!

Famous Holy Cross alumni
Arts and literature
• Philip Berrigan 1950, author and activist
• Billy Collins 1963, former Poet Laureate of the United States
• Michael Harrington 1947, socialist historian and author of The Other America, which is believed to have inspired Lyndon Johnson's Great Society social programs.
• Edward P. Jones 1972, 2004 Pulitzer Prize winner in fiction for writing The Known World
• Paul LeClerc 1963, President of the New York Public Library
• Joe McGinniss 1964, bestselling author of The Selling of the President, Fatal Vision, and other books
• Barry Reed 1949, Boston trial lawyer and author of The Verdict, which was made into the Oscar-nominated 1982 film starring Paul Newman
Business
• James E. Burke 1947, former CEO of Johnson & Johnson; named one of the ten greatest CEOs of all time by Fortune Magazine
• Charles H. Eppinger 1970, CEO of International Financial Data Services
• Frederick H. Eppinger 1981, President and CEO, The Hanover Insurance Group, Inc.
• Richard B. Fisher 1947, Chairman of Federated Securities Corp. and Vice Chairman of Federated Investors, Inc.
• Pedro Heilbron 1979, CEO of Copa Airlines
• Mark Holowesko 1982, noted investor and CEO of Templeton Capital Advisors
• John J. Issa 1960, Founder and Chairman of SuperClubs Resorts
• James W. Keyes 1977, Chairman and CEO of Blockbuster, Inc.
• Edward J. Ludwig 1973, Chairman, President, and CEO of Becton Dickinson
• William J. McDonough 1956, former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and current Vice Chairman of Merrill Lynch
• Arthur J. Mirante II 1965, President of Global Client Development and former CEO, Cushman & Wakefield
• James David Power III 1953, founder of J.D. Power and Associates
Entertainment
• Leigh Anne Brodsky 1980, President of Nickelodeon and Viacom Consumer Products
• Dave Holmes 1994, MTV host
• Peter Jankowski 1986, Executive Producer, Law & Order
• Kevin O'Connor 1990, host of PBS's This Old House
• Bartlett Sher 1981, director of Tony Award winning Broadway musicals South Pacific and Light in the Piazza
Law, politics, and public service
• Tim Bishop 1972, United States Congressman
• Joseph A. Califano 1952, Jr., former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare and current Chairman and President of the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse
• Bob Casey Sr. 1953, Governor of Pennsylvania from 1987-1995
• Bob Casey, Jr. 1982, his son, Pennsylvania treasurer and U.S. Senator
• Edward D. DiPrete 1955, Governor of Rhode Island from 1985-1991
• John Durkin 1959, U.S. Senator for New Hampshire from 1975 to 1980
• Joseph Daniel Early 1955, represented the third district of Massachusetts in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1975 to 1993.
• Jon Favreau 2003, chief speechwriter for Barack Obama
• Michael R. McNulty 1969, United States Congressman
• John William Middendorf II 1945, former U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands
• James P. Moran 1967, United States Congressman
• Clarence Thomas 1971, United States Supreme Court Justice
• Harry K. Thomas, Jr. 1978, Director General of the Foreign Service, of the U.S. Department of State and former U.S. Ambassador to Bangladesh
• David I. Walsh 1893 First Irish Catholic Governor and U.S. Senator for Massachusetts
• Peter F. Welch 1969, the United States Representative for the U.S. state of Vermont's at-large congressional seat.
• Edward Bennett Williams 1941, famed trial attorney who also owned the Baltimore Orioles and the Washington Redskins
• James Assion Wright 1923, lawyer from Pennsylvania who served in the U.S. Congress from 1941 to 1945.
Media and communication
• Dave Anderson 1951, New York Times sports columnist, 1981 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for commentary
• Chris Matthews 1967, host of MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews and NBC's The Chris Matthews Show
• Dan Shaughnessy 1975, sports columnist for the Boston Globe
• Bill Simmons 1992, ESPN sports columnist
Science, technology, and medicine
• Joseph P. Kerwin, M.D. 1953, astronaut who spent 28 days in space for the Skylab 2 mission
• Joseph E. Murray, M.D. 1940, Nobel Prize in Medicine for the first successful kidney transplant
• James A. Shannon 1925, first Director of the National Institutes of Health
Sports
• Bob Cousy 1950, Basketball Hall of Fame member and former Boston Celtics player and coach
• Joseph "Jumping Joe" Dugan 1920, late Major League Baseball player
• Gill Fenerty 1986, award winning all-star running back with the CFL Toronto Argonauts and later with the NFL New Orleans Saints
• Paul Harney 1952, professional golfer and golf course owner; in 1995, enshrined into the PGA Golf Professional Hall of Fame.
• Tom Heinsohn 1956, Basketball Hall of Fame member and former Boston Celtics player and coach
• Jon Morris 1964, All American center; named to the second team, All-Time All-AFL for his years playing for the Boston Patriots.
• Bill Osmanski 1939, Chicago Bears fullback, member of the NFL 1940s All-Decade Team, the College Football Hall of Fame, and a licensed dentist
• James F. "Jimmy" Quinn 1928, winner of gold medal in 4x100m relay at the 1928 Summer Olympics.
• Patrick Rissmiller 2002, center for the New York Rangers of the National Hockey League
• Louis Sockalexis, 1897, the first Native American player in major league baseball
Other
• Timothy Leary, the LSD-pioneering Harvard Professor, who attended Holy Cross before transferring to West Point

About Worcester, Mass.
Holy Cross is located in the College Hill section of Worcester, one of the "seven hills" that distinguish the topography and different neighborhoods of the city. Considered a struggling, post-industrial mill town by many, a 2006 estimate put the population at 175,898, making it the estimated second-largest city in New England, after Boston. It is the county seat of Worcester County.

The Pakachoag tribe of the Nipmuc nation of Native Americans were the indigenous settlers of Quinsigamond, now known as Worcester. For the Pakachoag, Worcester's Lake Quinsigamond offered fine hunting and fishing grounds a short distance from their main village near a spring on Pakachoag Hill in what is now Auburn.

Worcester was first settled by the English in 1673, but the modest settlement of six or seven houses was burned to the ground during King Philip's War on December 2, 1675, and the English settlers were either killed or driven off. The town was subsequently resettled and was incorporated in 1684. On September 10 of that year, Daniel Gookin and others petitioned to have the town's name officially changed from "Quinsigamond" to "Worcester”. In 1713 Worcester was re-settled for the third time, permanently, by Jonas Rice, whose farm was located atop Union Hill. Named after the historic city of Worcester, England, Worcester was incorporated as a town in 1722 and chartered as a city in 1848.

As political tensions rose in the months before the American Revolution, Worcester served as a center of revolutionary activity. Because it was an important munitions depot, Worcester was targeted for attack by Loyalist general Thomas Gage. However, officers sent secretly to inspect the munitions depot were discovered by Patriot Timothy Bigelow. General Gage then decided to move on to the second munitions depot, in Lexington. In 1775 determining that Boston was too dangerous, Isaiah Thomas moved his newspaper, the Massachusetts Spy, to Worcester. The Massachusetts Spy was one of the few papers published continuously during the Revolution.
Known for innovation in commerce, industry, education, and social thought, Worcester and the nearby Blackstone Valley claim their historic role as the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution. Ichabod Washburn, an early industrialist, developed a process for extruding steel wire. His company, Washburn & Moen, founded in 1831, was "the company that 'barbed-wire fenced the American West, and held the battle lines during the First World War. In 1840, Loring Coes invented the monkey wrench. In the 1850s, George Crompton and LJ & FB Knowles founded companies that manufactured the textile looms that fueled the Industrial Revolution. Another Worcester innovator, physician Russel Howes, invented the first envelope folding machine in 1856. His machine could produce 25,000 envelopes in ten hours, using three operators.

An innovative form of affordable housing appeared in the 19th century: the three-decker. Hundreds of these houses were built, affording capacious, comfortable apartments for a homeowner and two tenants. Many extended families settled in these houses, developing strong, safe, and stable neighborhoods for the city's factory workers.

In December 1999, the Worcester Cold Storage Fire received national attention. Two homeless people, deemed mentally disabled, accidentally knocked over a lit candle in an abandoned cold storage warehouse, igniting a conflagration. Six firefighters lost their lives in an attempt to rescue the homeless people. Less than two years before the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001, this fire was one of the worst firefighting tragedies of the late 20th-century. President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, and other local and national dignitaries attended services and a memorial program.

In April 2006, the Worcester Common Outlets, a 1,000,000 square foot mall that occupies a large swath of downtown Worcester was planned to be demolished as to make way for the long-planned "City Square". A multi-use collaboration of several downtown buildings for commercial, retail, and residential use.

"Worcester" is correctly pronounced with two syllables, not three However, some varieties of the local dialect pronounce "Worcester" roughly to rhyme with "mister" or occasionally, since the English of some people in Worcester is non-rhotic. Occasionally, the city's name is misspelled and mispronounced as "Worchester".

Successive waves of immigrants have in the past formed coherent ethnic enclaves, some of which continue to contribute to the rich ethnic texture of Worcester today. Swedes settled in Quinsigamond Village and Greendale, Italians settled along Shrewsbury Street, Irish and Polish settled around Kelly Square, Lithuanians settled on Vernon Hill, and Jews built their first synagogue on Grafton Hill. The African-American community has existed since colonial times. Since the late 1800s, Grafton Hill and Vernon Hill have been points of entry for immigrants from all over the world: Irish, Italians, Lithuanians, Poles, Syrians, Lebanese, Puerto Ricans, French Canadians, and more recently, Albanians and Brazilians. Other prominent groups include Russians, Armenians, Greeks, Vietnamese, Liberians, and Congolese.

Today, Worcester has a diversified economy. The largest employer is the University of Massachusetts Medical School. The adjacent biotech park is host to many innovative companies, including Advanced Cell Technology, which focuses on the development of effective methods to generate replacement cells from stem cells, and Abbott Laboratories, a leading pharmaceutical research and manufacturing firm.

The Game
With fifth ranked Denver coming into this tournament at home and as the hottest team in the country, it’s easy to project a Pioneer victory against a 5-11-1 Holy Cross team that is currently tied for fifth in the Atlantic Hockey conference, roughly where it was projected to finish by the league’ coaches in preseason polls.

However, Denver is coming off a 18-day holiday break and is shaking off the shock of losing its best offensive player, Tayler Bozak, to a torn knee meniscus injury that may see him out of the lineup until the post season. How Denver reacts to losing Bozak will be crucial to the team’s second half prospects, and coach Gwozdecky also knows all too well how non-conference losses in tournaments like this can be devastating to playoff hopes and seedings. For the Pioneers, the depth of the team will need to focus and meld closer together to mitigate the loss of Bozak and keep the Pioneers among the upper echelon teams in college hockey.

Prediction: Expect the Pioneers to have enough depth and motivation to beat Holy Cross, 4-1.