Gwizdowski ready to lead Lions

Alan “Gwiz” Gwizdowski wears many hats. He’s a talented photographer, graphic designer, student, marathon runner and golfer. But the most important piece of headgear he’ll be donning this Fall is his hockey helmet. Gwizdowski has been handed the captaincy of the Emerson hockey team, and he’s not taking the task lightly.

“No matter how busy I am with school, once we step on the ice it becomes all about hockey,” Gwiz said. “I don’t even think about anything else.”

Quiet by nature, Gwizdowski lets his stick and skates do most of the talking, delivering timely offense in critical games and giving 100% at every practice. He has worn the “A” as Emerson’s assistant captain for the past two seasons, earning his honors through skillful play and a fierce commitment to conditioning.

“He does the right thing, all the time, and that’s the epitome of captain material,” said former captain Matt Porter.

Gwiz met all his predecessor’s criteria for someone he’d want captaining the team:

Nearly insane amount of love for the game?

Check. Gwizdowski’s been on skates since he’s been a tot, and still gets excited when the lagoon in the Public Garden freezes over.

Never wavers in dedication to the club?

Check. He’s had to miss a few games and practices for school activities, but how many of those opportunities did he sacrifice because there was a road game and he was one of the few players on the team who had certification to drive an athletics van?

Extreme confidence, intelligence and aware of the people around him, their needs, abilities and possible shortcomings?

Check. When he’s on the bench, he studies his teammates. If he notices something that could help their game, when they hop back over the boards, he gives them tips for improvement.

Believes in the team and is a positive force without losing his realness?

Check. In the darkest moments of last season, Gwiz was the player that kept believing, continuing to go for goals in games that already looked like lost causes and never losing his head or picking a fight.

“If you’re not on your game [as captain] and don’t believe you can win,” he says, “nobody will believe they can win. Even if you as a single player have an off game you have to keep everyone else riled up.”

The team has come to him for offense and inspiration, but they’ve also come to him for help training. Having run the Boston Marathon three times, Gwizdowski is a prime source for fitness and nutrition information, and he’s more than willing to share what he knows. Known to run 60-70 miles in a week, he shared one of his routes with the team — up and down the inclines of Beacon Hill — that left more than a few of his less fit teammates gasping for air.

But lazy Lions of 2008 beware, captain Gwizdowski plans to reward only those who make the effort:

“If they don’t try, they don’t play,” he says. “We have plenty of kids who want to be out on the ice and if they try harder and are more deserving then they will play.”

2008 Season Preview

"Rise like Lions after slumber, in unvanquishable number," Percy Shelley once wrote in The Mask of Anarchy, a poem addressed to his fellow Englishmen after a massacre which took place at Manchester in 1819. Outgoing Emerson hockey captain Matt Porter might as well have delivered the same invocation to his rag tag squad at the end of their 2007-08 season.

The Lions were certainly asleep for the majority of last season, posting an abysmal overall 3-12-0 (1-8-0 NECHL) record, with two of those wins coming against the Rhode Island School of Design (GO NADS!). There were nights the team simply didn't have the unvanquishable numbers they needed to win, as players were in and out of the lineup, tied up with school projects rather than thugs from Berklee College of Music or Tufts University.

"We weren't really able to establish flow and coherence and identity," Porter admitted. "To be frank, I'm sort of left with a bad taste, because we didn't really win a lot."

But 2008 looks to be an exciting year of transition for the Lions. Leadership duties have been handed down to Alan Gwizdowski '09 and Pete Keeling '10, who are looking for more team commitment. Porter has faith the duo will keep the Lions rising -- both in level of skill and in the attention of the Emerson athletics department.

"Once you establish yourself as an actual club, I think, there's not as much wild growth," Porter said. "But the key is to keep moving forward and reaching new goals. And I'm confident Pete and Gwiz will do that."

Captain Gwizdowski (who served as assistant captain the past two seasons) says he plans to make the team stronger by getting them comfortable with each other and building chemistry.

"People get used to playing with certain other players on their lines," said Gwizdowski, who is known as "Gwiz" to friends and teammates. "When people can't make it to a game because of a film shoot, final project, etc. lines start getting switched and players skate at positions and with players they are not necessarily used to."

Newly minted assistant captain Keeling spent his summer taking care of organizational duties, scheduling practices and games and ordering jerseys. Managing a team is nothing new for Keeling, who helped build and run a team -- the Mendham Ice Bats -- in his home state of New Jersey. His experience in fundraising, team conditioning, logistics, and on-ice direction prepared him for his new role, which his former captain believes he earned through hard work and smart play.

"Pete came to me as a enthusiastic young player whose enthusiasm sometimes got the better of him," Porter said of Keeling. "He's grown into the leadership role a bit, but I feel he has a little way to go."

Keeling was one of the driving forces behind this year's condensed schedule, making ice hockey at Emerson a fall-only sport. The team will play a total of 14 league games in 2008; 7 at home (Simoni Rink, Cambridge) and 7 on the road between September and December. They will also participate in an exhibition game against a team to be announced, and square off against Berklee for the 3rd annual Boylston Cup, which the Lions have lost in their two previous bouts.

The condensed schedule comes to the relief of TV/Film students like Gwizdowski and Keeling, who plan to finish their Emerson studies at the school's Los Angeles campus. Had a condensed schedule been in place last season, the team would not have lost players like hard-hitting Jeff Duray or star goalie Greg Cohen, who left in the Spring semester to take classes in Kasteel Well, Netherlands.

Keeling hopes the team coalesces around his enthusiasm for being on the ice, because they'll be skating at least four times a week this Fall.

"More ice time helps us to progress as players and as a team," Keeling said. "We used to be on the ice once maybe twice a week, and we'd get rusty in our off time. This allows us to really hone in on our skills and tune our games to the fullest potential."

To get the team ready for the heavy workload, Keeling organized a pre-season weekend of work outs and team-building activities, which took place near the end of the summer on the Jersey Shore.

More on that in posts to come.