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How the work of one former Penn State club hockey player helped secure Penn State men's hockey's bid to host the Midwest regional

Billy Downey and his Penn State Icers teammates always wondered.

“What's it going to be like when the program finally moves up to Division I?”

A decade after an illustrious club career in which he won three ACHA national championships and collected All-American honors, Downey ended up getting to play a major role in answering that very question.

On April 20, 2012, there he was, all the way to the right of coach Guy Gadowsky, billionaire Terry Pegula and assistant coaches Matt Lindsay and Keith Fisher, digging a shovel into the ground where Pegula Ice Arena rests today.