University Communications staff writer Tom Weaver followed the Catamount hockey team in their final days of preparation leading up to the NCAA semifinals. The following is an account of the team's journey to the Frozen Four in Washington, D.C., from Sunday's open practice in Vermont to the big game on Thursday night.

See more photos of the Catamounts at the Frozen Four on the UVM Athletics Flickr site.

Thursday, April 9

Pre-game
It's not hard to figure out who a tall man with a Swedish accent looking for the Vermont ticket will call at the Frozen Four might be. OK, we'll give it to you. It's Viktor Stalberg's father, likely winner of the Catamount fan who traveled the farthest to see tonight's semifinal match-up with BU. The Stalbergs are joined by many other families of the athletes — Dean Strong's grandfather, Dutch, who regularly makes the long trip from Ontario to Vermont games; Sarah Lenes, a staff member in UVM's alumni office who juggles duty at a lively pre-game reception with cheering on her brother, senior Peter Lenes; and a good percentage of the population of Lake County, Minnesota, who have made the trip south to support Corey Carlson in his final game in a Vermont jersey.

Beyond family, many fans have put in the miles to get here. A random sampling of the green-and-gold clad outside of the Verizon Center or at the UVM event in an Irish pub a block away lists off home states of Georgia, Wisconsin, Florida, Alaska, and of course, Vermont. There are many alumni in the fan base, and a fair number of alumni of the hockey program, such as Chuck Ross, a longtime member of Sen. Patrick Leahy's staff, and Ian Boyce, chair of UVM's Board of Trustees.

There's a particular buzz among the alumni who traveled just a few blocks to get to the game. Krissy Pisanelli and Erin O'Brien are among the alums active in Vermont's D.C. regional group who say that having the Catamounts in town at the Frozen Four has energized the locals. The gold t-shirts passed out to fans at the reception read "Go, Cats, Go!" on front and "District of Catamounts" across the back.

Game
When Vermont drops behind 2-0 after the first period, the U-V-M cheers remain steady from the green-and-gold clad fans who dominate one corner of the arena. Several rows filled with young alumni are bringing it with a vengeance, outfitted in green hockey helmets and wigs, vintage Vermont jerseys, face paint. When Vermont nets three goals in a six-minute span in the second period to take the lead, it's game on, and the heart of the UVM fan section goes wild.

When the game ends, the Catamounts are on the short end of what has been a hard-fought, stirring battle. Final: BU 5, Vermont 4. But the fans aren't finished. The U-V-M! chant starts up seconds after the horn sounds. After lining up to shake hands with the BU players, the Catamounts skate slowly over to the Vermont section and raise their sticks.

Post-game
In the press conference, Coach Sneddon, Justin Milo, Drew MacKenzie, and Dean Strong take question from some of the hundreds of local, national, and sports media covering the Frozen Four.

Ted Ryan, longtime Burlington Free Press sportswriter, asks senior Dean Strong, who has never missed a game in his entire UVM career, how it feels to have played his final game as a Catamount.

Strong: "First and foremost, it hurts really badly right now. But for the positive, I'm very proud of being part of this hockey club. And I can't think of a better way to have spent four years right now than with this coaching staff and the group of guys this year and the last three years."

Sneddon's thoughts on this year's team: "I thanked them before the game, I thanked them after the game, because they're just great people. I had a lot of fun just kind of living through them this tournament, really the whole season. They're just such great gentlemen. We had no attitudes to deal with, no off-ice issues. I always say you've got a great team when they're low-maintenance. Everybody accepted their role, embraced their role, cheered each other on. Nobody was really at the forefront of our team. Even though we had a guy like Viktor Stalberg as a Hobey Baker finalist, he's as modest as they come. So I guess the memories I'll have are of what a great family we were able to create this year."

Wednesday, April 8

The NCAA runs Frozen Four practices on a tight schedule. Each team is allotted one hour, marked by a blast of the horn at either end, and counted down on the scoreboard clock with all the precision of a game. Coach Sneddon's team is ready to go early, of course, and they line up in the box waiting to skate. A bunch of local kids hang over the railing, begging for pucks, broken sticks, even jerseys, apparently figuring it can't hurt to ask. Corey Carlson, Peter Lenes, and Josh Franklin joke with them, try to convert them to Vermont fans.

The horn blows and the Cats work through a crisp hour of practice as about 100 fans, friends, and family look on. It will be loud in here tomorrow, but today the only sounds are the scrape of skates, players' shouts, the coach's whistle, and the slap of the puck off a stick, a glove, or the boards. Coming off the ice, a number of the players toss a puck or hand over a stick, likely ensuring another young Catamount fan in the seats at the semifinal.

Thirty-five minutes after each practice, the NCAA gives the press a 30-minute shot to talk with the head coach and several of the student athletes. Sneddon, Rob Madore, Viktor Stalberg, and Dean Strong take the stage.

One hockey journalist asks Sneddon about Vermont memories of the '96 semifinal when a malfunction in the Cincinnati arena resulted in melting ice, slowing Vermont's speed-based team, and a controversial hand pass that led to Colorado College's winning goal. The reporter wants to know if a Vermont win would mean vindication for the players of that era.

Sneddon: "Yeah, they want it bad. They want it bad for us, not for them. We talked about what's now the infamous Dan Lawson goal. (UVM's game-winner versus Air Force.) Instant replay was put in play in the tournament largely due to that missed hand pass in 1996. It's kind of ironic or full circle that we end up advancing to the Frozen Four because of the instant replay on Lawson's shot. But, yeah, I think those guys have some tough memories about that. It sure would help ease those tough memories for us to move forward."

The players and coaches field more questions informally in the hallway outside the locker room before heading for the bus back to the hotel.

Coach Sneddon speaks often of his team as a blue-collar crew, not seeking the limelight but just geared to working hard. As if to illustrate, senior captain Dean Strong is the last to walk down the hall for the bus to the hotel, waiting to help student manager John Gobeil move a table with the skate sharpener and other gear into the locker room. It seems an unlikely duty for a star player the day before the biggest game of his college career. "He does everything for me, so I've got to help him a little bit," Strong says.

Tuesday, April 7, 7 p.m.

First stop in DC is the Verizon Center, where the players unload their gear and get set up in the locker room. A facility manager, more accustomed to the ways of pro teams, smiles and comments to assistant coach John Micheletto, "I love this when the guys put up their own gear and everything."

"We're pretty low maintenance," Micheletto says.

Gear stowed, the players take a quick tour of the NHL Washington Capitals home locker room. It's quite a bit grander than the somewhat spartan visitor's space UVM occupies. By virtue of being the tournament's high seed, Boston University gets rights to the larger room and their red-and-white uniforms are hanging in the stalls as the Catamounts walk in. The players are impressed with the multi-room facility, training rooms, lounges. Many of them offer today's universal salute of respect and admiration — they hold out their cell phones and snap pictures.

As Viktor Stalberg leaves the Capitals' locker room and walks past Kevin Sneddon, the coach gives him a slap on the back that seems to say, "This is it."

The team follows the maze of tunnels out into the dim hush of the empty arena. The ice gleams, marked for Thursdays games with the Frozen Four insignia and team names along the boards: Boston University, Bemidji State, Miami-Ohio, Vermont. The players look up at the gargantuan scoreboard and screen, the canyon of blue seats. One shakes his head and says, "Eighteen thousand, man..."

As they head back into the tunnel for the bus and the ride to the hotel, one of the players says, "We should try to do this every year, guys."

Tuesday April 7, 6 p.m.

The Vermont hockey program, I'm quickly learning, runs on time, maybe even a little ahead of it. Our bus is scheduled to meet the team at 6:14 at Baltimore Airport. Prive got us to the AirTran gate a good 90 minutes before that. The coaching staff and team, all dressed in suits, arrive ten minutes early, load up quickly, and follow a two-car police escort to the city. As the bus cruises through red lights behind the squad cars, a player from the back says, "Catamounts do what they want."

Tuesday, April 7, 7:50 a.m.

Lisa Champagne, UVM's director of athletic communications, told me that the bus loaded with the team's gear will leave the Gutterson lot at 8 a.m. sharp. It's a good thing I arrive a bit early to hitch a ride to DC. The bus is fully loaded at 7:50 with Champagne, a handful of student interns, and the team's gear bags. Norm Prive, the hockey team's bus driver for more than fifteen years, fires up the black Lamoille Transit motorcoach, "Vermont Catamounts" stenciled on the body, and we're on our way to Washington.

Monday, April 6

For the Vermont seniors, this will be their final practice in Gutterson. A half-hour before the team takes the ice, a coach tapes a printout to the glass: "Practice Plan, April 6, 3:45-5:15 p.m. Today's Objective: Game preparation for BU."

In a small locker-room underneath the bleachers, Coach Sneddon and student-athletes Dean Strong, Peter Lenes, and Viktor Stalberg take questions from the local media.

Coach Sneddon on fan support:

"It was a great practice at Cairns, to be able to share that with fans, there had to be three hundred people in the building. It was the first sign that we're doing something really special here.

"Between the text messaging and calls, my phone is getting ready to explode, just well wishes from fans, alums, guys that played for me or Gilly or Jimmy Cross. The best thing about this experience — we really are sharing this with an enormous number of people that care about the University of Vermont."

Coach Sneddon on the 1989 national championship he was part of as a student-athlete on the Harvard hockey team:
"I certainly don't talk too much about that with the team. I don't want to date myself... twenty years is a long time. I think the one thing that I will share with our guys at the right time is just to enjoy the moment. I always felt that our coaching staff at Harvard did a great job of letting us enjoy the Frozen Four — wasn't called the Frozen Four back then. I do remember every single play of that game as if it was yesterday, and you're only able to do that if you're in the moment, if you're soaking it all up, and that's what I want our guys to do."

Coach Sneddon on his team's character:
"I think their resilience stands out, their ability to be relentless. Nothing knocks these guys down. Look at the double overtime situation. We don't know if that goal is going to count or not, we think something weird happened. But our players were smiling — relaxed intensity. Mentally, they're the toughest team that I've ever been involved with.

Peter Lenes on how the '09 Frozen Four team would match up in a game with the '96 St. Louis, Perrin, Thomas squad:
"You know, I looked up to a lot of those guys; there were a lot of great players on that team. We'd give them a run for their money, but I have no clue how it would go. I think it would be a good game, but who knows. I've been in contact with some of those guys on that team; they're just as excited as we are."

Sunday, April 5

A week from today, the Catamounts might be basking in the glory of a national championship. Today, they practice at South Burlington's Cairns Arena, where the ice sheet matches the NHL dimensions of the playing surface at DC's Verizon Center.

The team is in practice jerseys — black, gray, yellow... hunter's orange — skating through drills and circling up around Coach Kevin Sneddon on the ice. Off the ice is where the game jerseys are today — no shortage of hockey-crazed kids running around in green-and-gold replicas, "Lenes" and "Strong" printed across their backs.

It's an open practice and several hundred fans, many families among them, have come out to spend a Sunday afternoon with the Cats. A father stands behind the glass holding his pre-school-age son. His wife is next to him with their five-month-old infant; she tells me it's her baby's first practice. The team is running through a crowd-pleaser drill, the players skating toward the net and freshman goalie Rob Madore, firing shots at close range. Though it's a great show from up close, the boy in his father's arms is restless. He starts up a refrain about wanting to see the Zamboni. "Watch the shooting," his dad says. "Watch the shooting."

Practice over, the team gathers around the coaches at center ice, then raise their sticks in salute to the fans.