Freshman Friday is a Q-and-A feature with new members of the men's hockey team. This is the third of nine installments this year, featuring defenseman Travis Mitchell.

Q: What do you think of Cornell so far?
A:  Yeah, I like it a lot. Getting back into the whole school thing – since I took a year off – that's been a little bit challenging. All the guys on the team are really nice and they've really welcomed me, so I like my time here so far.

Q:  I know it's not quite NCAA level yet, but you've seen some decent opponents in the exhibitions. What did you think of this level?
A: Yeah, it's definitely a higher level than the USHL. But the USHL was really good for me, building me up to this point. I'm sure this weekend will be a bigger test for us. But our team has looked good so far, so I'm excited for the year.

Q: So tell me about the USHL. You spent three years there, because you got in pretty young, right?
A: Yeah, I came in as a junior in high school. So I was 16 when I first got in and turned 17 in November.

Q: Because you were so young and you were taken toward the end of their draft, were you expecting to make that team right off the bat? Or did you have some other plan that year in case you didn't make it?
A: It's a story I tell a lot of people. It's funny that I was a late-twenty-something round pick and wasn't supposed to make the team. I went to the (summer) camp and they were like, 'You're not going to be on the team' and all this. So I was just going to play U-18 for HoneyBaked (Hockey Club) for one more year, and they said I would have a better chance of making it the following year.

So then I get a call asking if I wanted to come the training camp, because I was only two and a half hours away and they needed a couple of extra D to fill in spots for intra-squad scrimmages. I went there with one bag thinking I'd be there for a week, and then it went week-by-week where I was having my parents coming up on the weekends when we would play, and they would bring me one more week of clothes. It just kept going and going. Then, finally, after like three weeks, they were like, 'We think you can play in this league. Do you want to stay here?' I took the opportunity to go, and it was a great time.

Q: That's wild. Seems like a gratifying way to break into the league. So how did you end up heading to Omaha the next year?
A: So for that first year in Muskegon, they said I was young. So I didn't play a whole lot, but it was a good fit for my first year. But my second year, I went in expecting a little bit more. I didn't get what I wanted. I just felt like for me, it was best to kind of get a new setting and a new area to further my development. So I ended up asking for a trade and got traded to Omaha. It was probably the best thing for me.

Q: What was so different in Omaha for you?
A: I just felt a little bit more wanted there. Especially after being a later-round pick, it's like (Muskegon) didn't think I had as much value as Omaha. They (Omaha) believed in me. I went there and was playing on the first D pair right away with Nick Perbix, who was a draft pick of the Tampa Bay Lightning. There, I was given more of an opportunity and freedom to try some things out. In Muskegon, if I made a bad play or did something (wrong), I wouldn't play the rest of the game. There, (in Omaha), if I did something wrong there was a little bit more leeway. I could develop better there.

Q: You committed to Cornell before the trade, right?
A: Yeah, it was after my first year in the USHL. It was actually in the summer after my junior year of high school.

Q: By today's standards, that's pretty early to commit to an Ivy League school. And now you have two more years of seasoning ahead of you. What is that process like after you know where you're going? Do you think it was any different than if you didn't know where you'd end up?
A: For me, it took a lot of the stress away. I didn't have to always know or think going into a game who is going to be here, who is watching me and if I don't play well, is a school going to take me off the table or something. So once I decided I was coming here, I knew that the coaches believed in me. A lot of stress went away knowing that.

Q: That said, you had to really like this place to commit that early with so much of your junior hockey career ahead of you. Why did you?
A: It's actually funny. Once my USHL season was done and I finished junior year of high school in Muskegon, I set up a couple of visits with other schools. There were three in particular I was going to visit in the same week. Monday, I was going to come to Cornell; Tuesday, I was going to Clarkson; Thursday, I was going to go tour Michigan State for the second time. So I came here on an unofficial visit. But I sat down and knew this is where I wanted to go. So (the coaches said), 'If you'd like to commit, we would like to have you.' I said, 'Yeah, this is where I want to go, this is where I feel comfortable, and this is where I want to be for my four years in college.' I ended up having to call the other two schools and tell them that I wasn't going to come on the visit, because I found the place that I wanted to be.

Q: That's really cool. What was it about here that just clicked with you?
A: Just the whole atmosphere and everything about it. When I did come on my official visit, I got to see a game. The crowd is unbelievable. It's crazy how it is. It's also a prestigious school – one of the best in the country. So you really can't pass up the opportunity. Then the team's unreal. So the whole mix of that is anything anyone could ask for.

Q: You won a gold medal in the 2018 World Junior A Challenge. What was that whole experience like for you?
A: That was actually one of the coolest experiences I've had playing hockey. Being able to represent your country was something that a lot of people don't get to say, and then being able to win on top of that was something that I will never forget – especially because it was with a group of guys who literally came together two weeks before the tournament started. I don't even know how many guys it was from the USHL, and we all came together and tried to win this gold medal. It's crazy how close we got over those two weeks. A lot of us still talk today. I became good friends with two guys who are actually on Providence now that I still talk to almost every day. It's kind of crazy how we ended up winning. It was a great experience.

Q: I think I read that at one point you were thinking of going pre-law, but aren't you in the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management?
A: Yeah. So, growing up, my grandfather was a lawyer. I spent a lot of time with him. He went to Michigan, and he was big into Michigan. He had season tickets for Michigan football, so I spent almost every Saturday with him either going to a Michigan football game or watching a Michigan football game. We would have conversations in the car or in between quarters or at halftime, and he would always tell me about how he enjoyed being a lawyer, and I thought it was something I wanted to do. But as I went on, when I decided which school I wanted to go into, I didn't really want to limit myself into just saying pre-law. I wanted to have a more general thing, so I thought that business would be a better thing to go into for me.

Q: You're dad played professional hockey for quite a bit, and you were born when he was still playing. You list your hometown as in Michigan, but where were you actually born?
A: I was born in Dayton, Ohio.

Q: Do you remember any of those early days when he was still playing pro?
A: I remember a little bit when he was on the Toledo Storm. I was born in Dayton, and then we moved to Saint John, New Brunswick when I was 1. Then we moved to Toledo, and that's when my brother was born. My dad played for the Storm, and I kind of remember little vivid glimpses of going to the game with my mom and sitting with all the wives and the girlfriends. And when my dad was in one of the NHL (video) games I would always be the Dallas Stars, because I knew he was on that team. He would always ask me, 'Will you end up putting me in?' And I would tell him, 'No, you take too many penalties.'

Q: Were you ever torn about being a Stars fan or a Red Wings fan, or did that sort itself out quickly?
A: No, I've always been a Detroit fan. My grandfather was also big into hockey, and he had season tickets to the Red Wings games. I would go to a lot of those games with him and just being a kid from Michigan, growing up there with so many stars there like Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg, Nick Lidstrom, Thomas Holmstrom – you had all those guys, and they won the Cup. It was kind of hard to be from Michigan, be a hockey player in Michigan, and not be a Detroit fan growing up. There really wasn't any comparison. It was cool to say that my dad played a couple of games with the Dallas Stars, but I was always a Red Wings fan.

Q: It seemed like you were on the NCAA boat pretty early, yet your dad played juniors. Did you ever consider that route, or were you set on the college route pretty early?
A: I did talk to a couple of OHL teams before the draft, and they had asked if they took me whether I would consider going. I always said no and that I was going to go play NCAA. A big influence was my dad. He went to the OHL and he said it was great for him, but he said that if you can play hockey and get an education at the same time, you are doing what you love and getting extra. You can go to the OHL and you're just playing hockey and you're not getting that schooling. You play in the NCAA, which is just as high of a level and could be higher with the trend that it's going right now. For me, I never really considered the OHL. It was always there for me as an option, but I always thought I would end up playing in the NCAA, especially being an American.

Q: You mentioned Nick Lidstrom. Is that who you kind of model yourself after?
A: Yeah, I would love to be as good as that guy is. He's a great player, and then of course, being from Detroit, you always look up to him and want to be like him. I try to put as much of his game into mine. He's just one of the all-time greats so you want to be like him and want to be as good as he is. A lot of hard work has to go into that.

Freshman Friday

•  Oct. 18: Sam Malinski
•  Oct. 25: Matt Stienburg
•  Nov. 1: Travis Mitchell