{"id":26063,"date":"2016-11-04T10:18:00","date_gmt":"2016-11-04T15:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/?p=26063"},"modified":"2016-11-04T10:18:00","modified_gmt":"2016-11-04T15:18:00","slug":"bemidji-pioneer-in-his-blood-bsu-sophomore-tj-roo-finds-his-place-with-family-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/2016\/11\/04\/bemidji-pioneer-in-his-blood-bsu-sophomore-tj-roo-finds-his-place-with-family-team\/","title":{"rendered":"Bemidji Pioneer: In his blood: BSU sophomore TJ Roo finds his place with family team"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Bemidji
Bemidji State sophomore T.J. Roo (7) and Alaska Anchorage’s Mason Mitchell (8) chase after a loose puck during a game held Oct. 29 at the Sanford Center in Bemidji.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

To say that TJ Roo didn’t have much of a choice when it came time to choosing his college would be inaccurate.<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s more that Bemidji State’s sophomore forward always had one place in mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

“It was a no-brainer,” he said. “It was the team I wanted to go to. Ever since my dad went here, I just always kinda had my heart set on coming here to play here.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Roo’s dad Jim played defense for the Beavers from 1981-86, where he was a teammate of current BSU head coach Tom Serratore.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jim wasn’t in attendance Saturday, when TJ scored his first collegiate goal in the third period of BSU’s 4-0 win over Alaska Anchorage — he watched his son play Friday before going to see TJ’s brother Carter’s NAHL game in Aberdeen, S.D.<\/span><\/p>\n

But TJ said the inundation of support he got after Saturday’s game was overwhelming.<\/span><\/p>\n

“He just missed it,” he said. “But he was very proud. My whole family was. I got a whole ton of texts and calls after the game saying congratulations. It was a very good moment for me.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Serratore has seen a lot of Roo over the years, and said seeing him produce for the Beavers has been very satisfying. Roo and Tom’s son Matt (currently a sophomore at Air Force) are the same age and played against one another in high school.<\/span><\/p>\n

“I’ve watched TJ play a lot of hockey over the years, so it was nice to see him have some success Saturday night and get that goal,” Serratore said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The goal capped off a solid weekend for Roo, in which he and linemate Jordan Heller (along with freshman Hampus Sjödahl and sophomore Adam Lovick) generated some solid scoring opportunities and wreaked some havoc on the fourth line.<\/span><\/p>\n

Heller and Lovick had the assists on Roo’s goal. Lovick picked up the puck, then found Heller, who took a shot that deflected off Anchorage goaltender Olivier Mantha’s pads. Roo drove to the net and one-timed the rebound past Mantha for his first career goal.<\/span><\/p>\n

“(Jordan) did a heck of a job not only getting the puck out of the zone, but he chipped the puck by the defenseman, maintained possession, got a great shot on goal,” Serratore said. “TJ drove the net hard. We obviously really emphasize net drives. Just going to the net, TJ found some success by one-timing it. It was nice to see him drive it home.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The goal marked the first points of the season for Roo, Heller and Lovick. Lovick was making his first career appearance for BSU while Roo and Heller have seen most of their playing time on the fourth lines.<\/span><\/p>\n

“We want to try and be an energy line for our team,” Roo said. “If our team isn’t getting going, we want to go out there and have a really good shift to try and spark our team and try and get them going.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Also scoring on Saturday was freshman forward Dylan McCrory, who also scored his first collegiate goal with help from fellow third-liners Jay Dickman and Nate Arentz.<\/span><\/p>\n

Currently no Beaver player has reached the double-digit scoring mark through eight games. However, 17 different players in the BSU lineup have at least one point — which speaks to BSU’s improved scoring depth this season.<\/span><\/p>\n

Serratore said seeing production from those lines — in addition to the Beavers’ normal top point-producers like the Fitzgeralds and Brendan Harms, to name a few — is an encouraging sign.<\/span><\/p>\n

“It’s gravy,” he said. “When you get secondary scoring from those guys, that just lifts your team up…. You’re trying to get those guys playing time and you’re trying to get those guys confidence. Once they have success offensively and they feel good about it, they become that much better of a hockey player and they can bring so many different things to the table.”<\/span><\/p>\n

The Beavers (6-2-0, 6-0-0 WCHA), head to Fairbanks, Alaska, this weekend to take on the Alaska Nanooks (3-5-0, 2-2-0 WCHA) in another league series. Faceoff is set for 10:07 p.m. today and Saturday at the Olympic-sized Carlson Center.<\/span><\/p>\n

“It’s a rough trip, it’s a long ways up there, and they’re very good at home,” Serratore said of the Nanooks. “They compete well, they skate well, they have a very experienced defensive core and they skate well.”<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To say that TJ Roo didn’t have much of a choice when it came time to choosing his college would be inaccurate. It’s more that Bemidji State’s sophomore forward always had one place in mind. “It was a no-brainer,” he said. “It was the team I wanted to go to. Ever since my dad went […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","hentry","category-uncategorized","post_format-post-format-link"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26063"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26063\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26065,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26063\/revisions\/26065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bemidjistate.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}