Freshman hockey player Matt Carle took a break from playing for the Pioneers and laced up his skates for Team USA at the World Junior Championships this past December in Helsinki, Finland.

“I knew that I did well in the tryout and had a pretty good feeling that I made it. When they finally called me I was just really relieved”, said Carle.

After the call, which came in the middle of the Pioneers’ season, it was time for Carle and the rest of team USA head to head to Finland.

Once there, the team got right into practices led by coach Mike Eaves, who played eight seasons in the NHL with Minnesota and Calgary, and is now the head coach of the Wisconsin Badgers. Carle also had to deal with the scale of the tournament and the large amount of press that the team received.

“Most of the reporters were from Canada and Europe, because the tournament is so much bigger there, but we got asked a lot of questions,” said Carle.

The team quickly moved through the majority of the tournament until the final four began featuring teams from Canada, Finland, Czech Republic and the United States.

“All the games were full, even the ones that Finland wasn’t playing in. It was a great environment to play in,” said Carle. After crushing the Czech Republic 7-1 in the semi-finals, the team watched as Canada won their match against Finland to set up a USA and Canada final game.

After falling behind to Canada, the team went into the third period knowing that they would have to come back by scoring two goals against the defensively powerful Canadian team lead by NHL goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury. The team eventually tied the score up with a good amount of time left and then looked to keep it tied and more importantly, try and score another goal and grab the gold medal.

Finally, Coach Eaves sent out the line of Patrick Eaves, Drew Stafford and Patrick O’Sullivan. A few seconds later the team had a 4-3 lead as the center from Sterling Heights, Michigan, Patrick O’Sullivan netted one past Fleury. “It was such a shocking, quick comeback. It happened so fast that we didn’t have time to realize what we had done until after the game,” said Carle.

It was then that Team USA was presented with the gold medal from the tournament, the first one that the U.S. has won since the start of the tournament 28 years ago. The team was featured in many sporting periodicals and also graced the cover of The Hockey News.

Carle also had the support from his teammates.

“They were all rooting for me, even though there are few Canadians on our team. They still wanted to see me do well,” said Carle. Coach George Gwozdecky even threw in some of his support.

In the end Carle said he and his teammates will remember that game and the whole tournament for the rest of their lives.

He will be around them a lot, due to the fact that nine of the 20 players will play against him in WCHA match-ups this year, including last weekend’s trip to North Dakota to play against Brady Murray who had two goals in the tournament.