The Price of Winning: The Rise and Fall of a National Champion

On a March night in 1987, SUNY Plattsburgh crushed SUNY Oswego 8-3 in front of more than 4,000 rowdy fans, capturing the school's first-ever NCAA national championship - a Division III hockey title in a town more famous for the "Miracle on Ice" thirty miles up the road.

Three years later, all of it was gone.

The Price of Winning is the true story of how a struggling Division III hockey program, under new head coach Steve Hoar, transformed itself into a national powerhouse - and how the same ambition that built a champion also planted the violations that would unravel it. A three-year NCAA investigation ended with a "lack of institutional control" ruling that vacated the title and reshaped the lives of the players, coaches, and administrators who lived it.

Drawing on two decades of original reporting - including extensive interviews with coach Steve Hoar before his death, players, broadcasters, and the sports information director who first noticed something was wrong - journalist John G. Strubel reconstructs the rise and fall in the words of the people who were there. Strubel was a student at SUNY Plattsburgh during the years the story unfolded, a fact he discloses on the page for journalistic transparency.

More than three decades later, the NCAA record book still shows a blank space where Plattsburgh's name should be - and the questions this story raises about ambition, accountability, and who really pays when a program cuts corners feel more relevant than ever in today's era of NIL and college sports reform.

For readers of investigative sports journalism, college athletics history, and true stories about the cost of winning at any level.

Author Bio

John G. Strubel is a freelance sports journalist based in Charleston, South Carolina, whose reporting on baseball, sports media, and the business of athletics has appeared across print and digital outlets. The Price of Winning marks his first full-length work of narrative nonfiction, drawing on a personal connection to SUNY Plattsburgh, where he was a student and assistant sports information director during the years the story took place. He publishes ongoing reporting and behind-the-book content at johnstrubel.substack.com.