Women's Hockey | 10/2/2017 6:26:00 PM

PITTSBURGH -- The Robert Morris women's hockey team has been voted No. 9 in the latest USCHO.com Division I Women's Poll, announced Monday. The Colonials, even before the first official puck of the 2017-18 season has dropped, have improved upon their No. 10 spot in the initial poll Sept. 18, their first preseason national ranking in program history.

They finished the 2016-17 campaign at No. 8 in both the USCHO.com and USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine polls, their first end-of-season ranking ever. It was a season that saw them clinch the first NCAA Tournament berth in team history, as well as their first regular-season College Hockey America title—which preceded their second CHA Tournament crown since joining the conference in 2005-06.

Prior to the '17-'18 preseason, the closest Robert Morris had come to cracking the preseason top ten was its receipt of nine votes in the 2014-15 USA Today/USA Hockey Magazine Preseason Poll. It got two votes in the USCHO.com Preseason Poll for that season and one vote in the website's 2011-12 preseason rankings.

Robert Morris has now been nationally ranked in every USCHO weekly poll since Dec. 12, 2016. The streak of 13 consecutive top-ten appearances, sparked by a 6-5 win at Penn State Dec. 4, 2016, took the Colonials as high as seventh Jan. 13-28, 2017. This is its longest such run since cracking each of the final 15 USCHO top-tens of the 2013-14 season.

Paul Colontino, honored this past season as the CHA Coach of the Year, guided the program to its first-ever spot in the national polls during that '13-'14 term. He will be back behind the RMU bench for a seventh season to lead a squad that returns its top seven scorers from last year's run to the national quarterfinals, having signed a four-year extension Aug. 24.

Robert Morris defeated Ryerson, a member of Canada's Ontario University Sports conference, 4-1 in its lone preseason game Sept. 23 at the RMU Island Sports Center, behind two goals from one of those returnees, Brittany Howard. The redshirt senior forward, Buffalo Beauts (NWHL) draftee and reigning CHA Player of the Year led Robert Morris with 50 points (20 goals, 30 assists) in 2016-17, and, with 132 career points (54 G, 78 A), needs just three more to become RMU's all-time points leader.

The Colonials open their '17-'18 regular slate with ten road games in a row, beginning with a two-game series at Mankato Saturday at 2:00 p.m. EDT and Sunday at noon. Robert Morris returns to Colonials Arena for a pair of CHA contests against RIT Nov. 10-11.

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