BOSTON – The Gridiron Club of Greater Boston has announced that senior Joseph Fiorino (Willow Grove, Pa.) and junior George Thurston (Plymouth, Mass.) of the Southern New Hampshire University ice hockey team are semifinalists for the Joe Concannon Award, which is presented annually to the best American-born college hockey player in New England competing at the Division II-III level. The Gridiron Club will announce the finalists and winner of the award in March, following league playoffs and before the start of Div. III NCAA Frozen Four in Lake Placid, NY.
This is the second time Fiorino has been selected a semifinalist. The SNHU captain also was a semifinalist the last time the award was handed out in 2020. Fiorino has amassed 18 points (4G - 14 A) this season. Thurston enters the weekend as the leading goal scorer in the NE10 with 17. His 28 points rank second in the league. They are two of the 30 semifinalists representing 19 different schools.
Fiorino and Thurston, and SNHU men's hockey start the final weekend of the regular season with a home game tonight at The Ice Den (7:40 p.m.) against Saint Anselm College. The Penmen have already won the regular-season title and will be the top-seed in the upcoming NE10 tournament.
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About the Joe Concannon Award
The Gridiron Club established the Joe Concannon Award in 2001 to honor Joe, a lifelong devotee of college hockey, former member of the Walter Brown Award Selection Committee and, as a journalist, a staunch advocate for the amateur athletes he knew and covered. A native of Litchfield, Connecticut, Joe graduated from Boston University in 1961. He served as sports information director (SID) at Holy Cross before joining the Boston Globe in the late 1960's to cover college sports. Joe declined frequent invitations by his editors to write about Boston's major professional sports teams, preferring to concentrate on the colleges, distance running and golf. He wrote the book Marathoning with Bill Rodgers and established the highly successful Litchfield Road Race in his hometown. Joe was a world traveler and was especially proud of his Irish heritage, frequently sojourning to the Emerald Isle. He passed away in 2000.
