Mike Beck and Kevin Schreiber, both 16. were at Cabin John Ice Rink in Rockville Md. on Saturday night, commenting on a hockey game amid the echoes of shouting players and the occasional glass-rattling check.

They, and about 150 others, were on hand at the cramped arena to see Georgetown club ice hockey face off against the Virginia Cavaliers. But there was more on their minds than the game’s outcome: The Bishop Ireton High School juniors were scouting the Hoyas, considering their prospects of playing hockey after graduating from high school.

“It’s pretty good,” Schreiber said of the team’s play. “I’m surprised. I didn’t even know Georgetown had a team.”

A few years ago, the same could have been said for much of the university. But after reaching the league finals two seasons ago and winning it all in 2005, Georgetown hockey is slowly and surely making a name for itself.

Third-year Head Coach John Kokidko, a network engineer for University Information Services, remembers when there were “five people in the stands at times” at the start of his tenure. Now, with Hoya Blue sponsoring $7 bus rides to the arena, attendance is well into the triple digits.

“The atmosphere with the fans is enormous, and it gives us a big edge,” says sophomore forward Conor Hickton. Also in attendance at Saturday’s game was Peter Hadjigeorgiou (MSB ’08), who went to watch his roommate, sophomore defender Eric Estey, contribute to a 4-2 victory over the undefeated Cavaliers.

“I feel like hockey’s a really underrepresented sport at Georgetown,” Hadjigeorgiou said, “but we have a great team.”

Yet the fans in attendance are hardly limited to friends of the players. Kokidko envisions the team’s games as “a school event that kids can share and that can be part of their campus experience and what their college experience is about.”

Moreover, even outside of campus, he says Beck and Schreiber aren’t alone.

“I get calls all the time from all over the country,” he says. “We even get calls from people who are fans of hockey and want to know if they can get paraphernalia for the Georgetown hockey team.”

The Hoyas’ recent success must have something to do with it. Promoted to Division II of the American Collegiate Hockey Association in 2003, they’ve been perennial contenders in their Atlantic Coast Collegiate Hockey League, which they share with Duke, George Mason, North Carolina, Virginia and Virginia Tech.

Impressively, they’ve done it with the operating budget of just another Georgetown club team, practicing hard every Tuesday night and watching every nickel and dime along the way.

They’ve also developed a rivalry with Duke, their 2003 opponent in the ACCHL finals and perhaps the ultimate paradigm of a well-supported club hockey team.

“They roll in with their track suits and their bus, all their bags. They have everything paid for, their staffs,” recalls Kokidko. “And here we are, we roll in, we’ve got me and a bunch of guys. It’s really quite a contrast.”

The game was a disheartening loss. The Hoyas had the game-winning goal, says their coach, but it bounced in and out of the net so rapidly that the referees didn’t catch it.

“Everybody in the arena saw it except for the officials,” Kokidko says.

Now, one season removed from its 7-5 championship win over Virginia, Georgetown is on a roll. The team’s win on Saturday – highlighted by a 3-0 second period – is its fourth consecutive. The Hoyas now stand third in the ACCHL with a 5-3 conference record.

“The team has been playing extremely well in the past few games,” Estey says. “We’ve come together superbly, and we defeated some really good teams that take the games very seriously.”

Georgetown has never been one of those teams. The players care about the results, for sure – Saturday’s game, while containing no all-out fights, was highly physical and came close on a few occasions – but they have less riding on the outcome than most other schools on the East Coast.

“It’s not as do-or-die as some of these other teams are,” Kokidko says. “Some of them travel to California for mid-semester break. . We’re just a program that’s in its infancy. Their budgets are probably four or five times what we have.”

The team is trying to change that: Coach and players alike count financial legitimacy among their most important goals as a team, and the increasing contributions they receive from alumni are invaluable.

They’re also teeming with excitement over the prospects of a new rink. Planned for completion in September is a metro-accessible arena in Ballston that will serve as a Washington Capitals training facility and the Hoyas’ new home. It’s being built by the Capitals and Arlington County with the Ballston Common Mall, says the coach, who looks forward to the corporate support that will likely follow.

For now, though, Hoya club hockey is enjoying its modest glory, the league-wide respect it garners for “classy” play, and the growing number of fans who show up on game nights ready for a good time. For Hickton and Kokidko, it’s a joy they never anticipated.

“When I first arrived and I found out there was a hockey team, I had to ask a lot of questions that a lot of people didn’t know the answers to,” Hickton, now the team’s president, says.

“I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into,” Kokidko says, “but it’s turned into something I’ve really enjoyed. . It makes me feel there’s something I can do to add to the life of the community.”

“I didn’t even know Georgetown had this kind of a well-kept secret,” he adds.

The line is a familiar one. But today, from Bishop Ireton High School to Duke and the University of Virginia, the secret is most definitely out.