The Clemson club ice hockey team earned its tenth win of the season on Friday, Nov. 17, against Georgia Tech by a score of 6-2. With their 10th win, the Tigers broke the club record for most wins in a single semester.

Clemson ended last season with a 9-10-0 record in 19 regular season games. This season, the Tigers have a 10-4 record at the end of the first semester and still have eight regular season games remaining.

After suffering two losses in their last two games, the Tigers came out ready to return to the “W” column.

Clemson forward Santiago Diaz netted his first goal of the season at the 7:13 mark, assisted by Will Van Sicklin and Charles DuBose. With 3:04 left in the period, Diaz struck again for a 2-0 lead entering the second period.

“(The first two) felt good,” Diaz said. “I wanted that third one, but the first two went in quick, so it was a good feeling to start the game.”

Georgia Tech got on the board barely two minutes into the second, but the one-goal difference didn’t last, as Herb Kopf scored his 11th of the season, assisted by Cade Heinold and Ronan Bryant, for a 3-1 lead. In just one semester, Kopf has more than double the goals he scored in the entire 2022-2023 season (5).

Three minutes later, Clemson’s 3-1 lead became a 5-1 lead, as Van Sicklin and captain Thomas Samuelsen scored a minute and a half apart before the halfway mark in the period.

The rest of the second period remained uneventful, but it took just 54 seconds into the third for Heinold to net a goal of his own, pushing Clemson’s lead to 6-1. The Yellow Jackets scored again with four minutes left to play, but the difference was too significant to overcome, and they fell short by four goals.

“We came out strong,” Diaz said. “It was a fun one, (we) beat them by four. That’s what we came here to do.”

Clemson will return to the rink on Jan. 13 for its first game of the spring semester against Vanderbilt at home.