"Just to see the reaction of a crowd, it kind of gets quiet, it's like, 'How did that happen?' " Saint Louis University ice hockey coach John Bosch said.

As ice hockey players from Hawai'i, the Suyderhouds, 2001 graduates of Maryknoll from Honolulu, are used to it.

"You get different reactions depending on where you are," Matt, a goalie, said. "(In St. Louis), people are saying, 'What are you doing in St. Louis? I didn't even know you have hockey.

"You go home, and people are always saying, 'Way to go.'"

They got their start in the third grade playing "boot hockey," just playing on foot on the gravel basketball courts at Kamiloiki Park. Later, they joined a local roller hockey league, then moved on to ice hockey at the Ice Palace in Halawa as teenagers.

"It was from age 8 from kids who were driving themselves to the game," Johan, a forward, said of the Ice Palace's league.

They made the transition from roller to ice hockey because "there's no real opportunities in college for roller hockey," Matt said.

They began looking into schools that featured both ice hockey and aviation, the major they will both graduate in this spring. They chose Saint Louis because "it's really high-ranked as far as straight aviation is concerned," Matt said.

When they first arrived, they had to convince their teammates that being from Hawai'i didn't mean they were clueless about the sport.

"We took a lot of jabbing for being from Hawai'i, they dogged us a lot," Johan said. "Some of it wasn't that cool, but a lot of it was playful jesting. We earned our spots on our team and eventually earned our way up to this level."

Johan said the adjustment took a while, especially because Hawai'i doesn't feature an organized competitive league.

"We never had the big game experience that everyone else at the university had," Johan said. "It was an adjustment, the intensity, the competition, the speed of the game was phenomenal."

They are the first set of twins to play under Bosch.

"They've kind of distinguished themselves over the years," Bosch said. "At the rink, it's easy, because one's a forward and the other is a goalie.

"They've got a different way they carry themselves and present themselves. They have the same likes and dislikes."

Saint Louis is an American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) school. For the first three years, Matt and Johan played on the Division II team, and moved up to Division I this season, which Johan compared to the NCAA Division III level (The NCAA features the elite Division I level, but no Division II).

Johan has played in 28 of 29 games this season, scoring four goals with four assists. Matt has played in 22 games, and has a 90.7 save percentage with 225 saves.

"They didn't expect anything from us," Johan said of his teammates' impressions when the Suyderhouds first arrived in St. Louis. "We just had to get on the ice, but when he had our chances, we proved ourselves, and worked as hard as we could and made the most of our opportunities."

They play their last regular-season game Saturday night, then transition to their other sport: lacrosse.

"We had some friends who played it and asked if we wanted to," Johan said. "The stick work's a lot like hockey, it's kind of a combination of hockey and water polo on grass, it fit pretty well for us."

They started playing lacrosse last year, when the school's club team, or "virtual varsity," as Johan put it, needed bodies.

"I guess I always had a propensity towards having hard objects hurled at my head at high speeds," said Matt, who was also a baseball catcher and soccer goalkeeper as a youth athlete.

That propensity has allowed them to fulfill two of their dreams: to play ice hockey in college and become pilots.

"Their effort is always there," Bosch said. "They have a real passion in the game, and you can tell that will probably flow into what they are doing with the Navy."

In October, they have orders to report to Officer Candidate School in Pensacola, Fla., for two years of flight training, and then they will be deployed. For now, they take advantage of the benefits of being ice hockey players from Hawai'i.

"We get the best of both worlds," Johan said. "We get to go home and surf, and come here and play hockey at a high level."

Note: The Suyderhouds are not the only athletes from Hawai'i playing ice hockey on Mainland college teams. Linda Desruisseaux (Punahou '01 of Manoa) is a junior forward at Northeastern University, where she has played in 23 games this season.