Can you name the last Raider team to win a national championship? It wasn’t men’s basketball, which won in 1983. It was Wright State hockey, which captured the 2006 ACHA Division III national title.
The 2006 Raider hockey team ended their miraculous season with a 4-3 win over Northwood University. Players like Michael Blackwell, who scored the game-winning goal, will never forget that victory.
“The game was amazingly close throughout,” Blackwell said. “The first period was the best period of hockey we had ever experienced as a team. Unfortunately, the second period was the worst period we had ever played. The game came down to a 3-3 tie when, with three minutes left, we scored the game-winning goal to win the game 4-3.”
That goal came off a slap shot from Jayson Cash, which ricocheted off the Northwood goalie and landed on Blackwell’s stick, who put it through the back of the net.
“All I had to do was hit it,” Blackwell said. “I was too close to miss. The biggest memory I have from scoring was the look on Josh Boggs’ face when it happened. He came flying at me with this, ‘That just happened?’ expression on his face.”
Josh Boggs, or “Boggsy” as Blackwell calls him, also had his own memory of the game.
“The thing I remember most about the game was scoring against the goalie in the second period and putting it top shelf,” Boggs said.
Both Blackwell and Boggs credit a complete team attitude to their 2006 success. A team Boggs calls “the best team I have ever been a part of.”
“What I remember most about the year is the camaraderie we had as a team,” Boggs said. “There were no little groups of friends. When we went out, we went out as a team. We did everything together; there were no individual efforts. We were a team.”
“We were a family,” Blackwell said. “We weren’t the best hockey players in the world, by any means. But we got along extremely well, we hung out off the ice, we shared classes together and we were always making each other laugh.”
At the final buzzer of most national championship games, it’s not uncommon to see teams scream for joy and go crazy. But when the buzzer sounded, the Raiders immediately congratulated their goaltender, Tony Tabisz.
“When the clock hit 0:00, it was more of a relieved, subdued feeling,” Blackwell said. “Our helmets were taken off and set down, not tossed in the air. We all went straight to goaltender Tony Tabisz and gave him a huge hug and pat on the back. We wouldn’t have been anywhere without our goalie.”
The national championship rings each member of the 2006 team wears keep those images fresh in their mind on a daily basis.
“I wear it every day,” Blackwell said. “It’s something I’m extremely proud of. It is so big that it has actually deformed my pinky finger next to my ring finger. I have a huge sun tan line from where it’s constantly sitting.”
“It’s big and shiny, and it proves that we were the best team ACHA D-III had that year,” Boggs said.
