Freshman Friday is a Q-and-A feature with new members of the men's hockey team. This is the fourth of nine installments this year, featuring forward Ben Berard.

Q: Let's start with your hometown, out on Vancouver Island. What can you tell me about Duncan, British Colombia?
A: It's not a big town. It's on an island, but it's a pretty big island. It's not secluded or anything like that. It's nice. I don't know much else, it's where I'm from. It's close to a big city, Victoria, so that's kind of nice.

Q: You came up through your hometown Cowichan Valley Capitals, before heading off to Shawnigan. What an you tell me about that?
A: Yeah, it's a really good academic school about 30 minutes from my hometown. And they started a hockey program. I came just the second year they had it, so it was kind of still getting started up. It's grown now, it's bigger there; better team then it used to be when I was there. But I thought it was a good spot, similar to here, a really good spot for academics and hockey.

Q: Has academics always sort of been preached to you as something that's important?
A: Yeah, that was always something I focused on and I knew that it was something I had to do well in to get to this level. You can't just be a good hockey player. By college, you need to do well in school, too. I just kind of worked on that.

Q: Was the NCAA always your path, or did you look toward Major Junior or anything like that?
A: I pretty much always wanted to go the college route. Thought about the WHL for a little bit, but for the most part college was what I wanted to do. The education part of it, and I just like that you get to play some junior and then you get four more years of college instead of being 20 years old and you're kind of done — play professionally or get a real job. I like building up my education, and it will give me a few extra years to develop as a hockey player. I can benefit from that.

Q: What's the plan with that education? Are you focused on one thing, one direction? Or are you just feeling it all out?
A: I'm in the hotel school, but I honestly have no idea what I want to do after I'm done playing hockey, so I've got some time to figure that out.

Q: What do your parents do?
A: They own a coffee shop in Duncan. They opened it up before I was born, so that's what they've been doing my whole life.

Q: So you can act as the barista for the team at any point?
A: I do, I'm a trained barista, I do that during the summer.

Q: Was hockey always a huge thing in your family, or was that just your niche?
A: My sister's a big field hockey player, so it's a little different. But she's really good and plays for a university in Canada close to where I'm from.

Q: Did your parents play at all? Is that how you got into it?
A: My dad plays a little bit, but nothing crazy. He's just in a men's league now.

Q: What kind of players do you model yourself after? Who do you look up to?
A: Being from Vancouver Island, Jamie Benn is a guy I've looked up to. He's from Victoria, so he's kind of a role model and I like the way he plays the game. I'm not necessarily as strong as he is and as big as he is, so I can't bring that part as much. Vladmir Tarasenko, too. I like the way he plays the game — a lot of skill, but he also brings some grit and works down low. And then David Pastarnak, I really like watching him play, the skill he brings. I wouldn't say I compare myself to him, but I definitely like to take some pieces from him.

Q: The book on you is goal-scorer. I think somewhere I found that you had 120 goals in a bantam season somewhere, so it seems to fit the bill. Has that always kind of been your game, an offense first kind of guy?
A: Yeah, I've always been an offensive forward. That's kind of been my game my whole life. Not a lot has changed there.

Q: You sse the direction this program is going in with better skating and more skill. Is that something that you were a little surprised by when you got here, or did you have a feeling where this program was?
A: Just by looking at the team's roster the past few years, there's a lot of high-end skilled forwards and some good offensive defensemen as well. So I don't know how accurate it is about how defensive the team is. We play good defense, but we've got a lot of skill, too.

Q: Tell me about the pipeline that's apparently built from from Powell River, British Columbia to Ithaca. Your first year with that team in the BCHL, you were teammates with four guys in our junior class (Kyle Betts, Matt Cairns, Cam Donaldson and Tristan Mullin). How much was them coming here a presence in your process of trying to figure out where you where going?
A: They definitely helped in me coming here, I'm sure, as much as I wasn't consciously thinking about it all the time. It's always nice to go somewhere where you know some guys, and they definitely were on me about it and bugging me about coming here. It's definitely a bonus to get to play with those guys again. It was a lot of fun in Powell River. It's good to be with them again.

Q: Is there any movement whatsoever to try to get an all-Powell River power-play unit out there? We've got four forwards and one 'D', so it could happen…
A: I don't think I'm in a spot to be choosing power-play units at this point. So it's a no, I guess.

Q: You committed here a couple of years ago. Did you get a chance to visit before making that choice?
A: I committed a couple of days after I came to visit. I saw a game, they played Niagara, it was a pretty exciting come-from-behind victory in the third period. That was cool, to see the atmosphere at Lynah, it's a pretty awesome rink and cool fans.

Q: Tell me about your last year at Powell River. I understand you had a pretty serious injury. What happened?
A: Just over 10 games into the season, I was trying to go wide on a defenseman and he got me with a hip check and I just went into the boards really awkwardly and I broke my back. So I was out for just over four months.

Q: Broke your back is a very general way of putting it ...
A: Yeah, it was a vertebrae that was broken in two places in my lower back. At the time, I didn't realize it was that serious. I was in a lot of pain, had to get helped off the ice like that, but it wasn't until a few days after that I realized that it was a lot more serious than I thought it was.

Q: That's really scary. When you did learn what actually was wrong, were you worried that your hockey career was over, or did they tell you that you would recover?
A: No, they hadn't said anything. But, obviously, I wasn't paralyzed, so I wasn't as worried about that. I may have been a bit naive thinking it, but I was just thinking about how long it would take and not wanting to miss the entire season. But, no, it didn't really set in how serious it could have been until a few days later and just how lucky I really was.

Q: And its during a year where you are working to transition into coming here. Is that another wrinkle that made it harder for you?
A: It was pretty frustrating, because I was really excited about the year. I was expecting it to be a lot of fun and have a good final year in Powell River before coming here. So yeah, that was definitely really frustrating at the time to sit out for that long and take a step back.

Q: What did you learn from that process? I can't imagine that there aren't lessons that you learned sitting out for such a long time?
A: I guess I learned how boring life is without playing hockey. I mean, lying in bed for a few months isn't easy. And also just how lucky I was to be back now, be back to 100 percent and playing hockey just like I was before.

Q: Was that all you could do? Just literally had to lay around?
A: Yeah, I had a brace on for about two months. So that was pretty much it — hanging out in bed, watching Netflix and playing video games.

Q: What do you think of Cornell so far?
A: I love it so far. School's been really fun. The classes have been good. It's a lot to get used to, but it's manageable. Just being here with the team on campus, it's been a ton of fun. 

Q: All joking aside, you are on a PP unit, and you did have a very nice play to set up a goal at Michigan State. Were you expecting to step into this role right away, or were you surprised about getting some of those coveted spots so early on?
A: I really didn't put too much thought into it coming in. Whatever happens happens. It's not my decision. I'm just going to play my game and see how it goes. But it's definitely nice to be there right now.
 

Freshman Friday

•  Oct. 18: Sam Malinski
•  Oct. 25: Matt Stienburg
•  Nov. 1: Travis Mitchell
•  Nov. 15: Ben Berard