DePaul College Prep has started a hockey team. This group of Rams had their first game Friday night at the Blackhawks Ice Rink across from the United Center. These new Rams defeated the Cloudbusters, a club team from Oklahoma, 7-4, on Friday, May 29, 2026.
To start at least, the DePaul Prep hockey team will be in the Chicago Catholic Hockey League, a conference with other Catholic school hockey programs, such as Fenwick, St. Viator, and Carmel.
“It’s a good league for us to join out of the gate here. I am excited for the guys, but we will start at the junior varsity level in the first season,” said David Heflin, the first ever head coach of DePaul Prep hockey.
“I think excitement is probably the best word for sure but pressure is definitely part of the equation,” Heflin continued.
“DePaul Prep has a very prestigious athletic program. When we come in as a hockey program, we are just looking to build on top of that. We are not trying to reinvent the wheel in terms of what the DePaul culture is and how they have been so successful. We are just trying to take what they currently have and make it our own with the hockey team moving forward.”
They must know that they have a lot to live up to as a DePaul Prep athletic team because they did not start slow. The Rams beat the Cloudbusters 7-4 in a high scoring affair.
It might be more correct to write that a DePaul Prep hockey team started. Technically, the team is separate from the school and is more like a club than a varsity sport. I understand that is the way hockey works for the most part. That won’t matter much. The players on the team are, or soon will be, students at the school.
DePaul Prep junior Colin Burke, an Old Irving Park neighborhood resident and graduate of St. Edward School, became the first hockey player to ever score a goal for DePaul Prep with 8:52 remaining in the first period. He was pretty excited after the game with a giant smile on his face.
“It feels pretty good. Brand new program. Great school. I am excited,” Burke said.
“We are all very excited. DePaul has tons of sports, tons of great sports, we a glad to be included. It’s just going to be a lot of fun.”
Burke did not seem to be phased by expectations of being a DePaul Prep sport given the school’s remarkable athletic successes since being established.
“I don’t think we will be able to live up to [championship] expectations in the very beginning but overall that’s how you build a good team. You gotta start at some point. I am sure the basketball team wasn’t great when they first started but they built it over time and that’s what we are going to do,” Burke said.
And so we are off, hockey at DePaul Prep. Hockey will we be a fall sport with a short two month spring season too. The games will be at the Chicago Park District’s McFetridge Sports Center, 3841 North California, just north of DePaul’s Fr. Gordon Campus, the old Gordon Tech facility.
More to come on this for sure. I have a lot of learning to do on how to photograph hockey. It is challenging as one might be able to tell from the terrible photos below. God willing I will learn quickly, especially if I can get some help from the super talented Sun-Times photographer Kirsten Stickney, an expert hockey photographer in addition to all the other sports.
