23-04-2025
Evansville Thunderbolts gear up for President's Cup Finals
EVANSVILLE, Ind. (WEHT) — The Evansville Thunderbolts are preparing to make history in the President's Cup Finals.
Their path to the final round was rather unconventional and they're still two wins away from a championship.
Typically, when a teams finish the season 500, they are probably not the favorite to win the President's Cup Final, let alone make the game. However, the Thunderbolts did just that after taking down Peoria and Huntsville in the first two rounds.
Their challenge grows stronger as they take on Knoxville. But as the mountain grows taller, Evansville keeps climbing and never looking back on the past.
'I think we're a completely different team than we were during the regular season,' says goaltender Cole Cerci. 'We just found a way to pick it up another another gear. And, we're excited to, you know, get some revenge on these guys. And I think if anything, it just feels us even more to come out hot.'
'Playoffs is a wholly different season,' says head coach Jeff Bes. 'Everybody starts at zero. We believed in each other. We went through some, ups and downs like I expressed earlier, throughout the course of the season. You know, now we're about 18 games left in the season. We all talked about what we wanted to do. Yeah, we wanted to make plans, but we wanted to go to President's Cup final.'
'We all just, bear down and looked around the room and realized we had something special,' says center captain Matthew Hobbs. 'Like I said, chemistry and just belief in the locker room is really, propelled us, into some success here.'
The team has never been to the President's Cup Finals in their history. Evansville is just two wins away from the title. Game one begins on Wednesday, April 22 in Knoxville and game two will make it's way back to the Ford Center.
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