School pride was on full display Monday at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, after the men’s hockey team won their 6th national championship in 10 years.

The gold medal game of the Canadian Interuniversity Sport championships featured two Maritime teams, the UNB Varsity Reds versus the StFX X-Men, facing off in front of about 10,000 fans at the Scotiabank Centre in Halifax.

“About 9,800 of them were StFX fans, so it was loud in there, but it was a great environment for the AUS and our program,” says John Richard, UNB athletic director. “It was a pretty tight checking game, not a lot of space out there, I mean both teams knew each other, it’s the 7th time they've played each other and it was 3-3, so it was kind of the rubber match, and when we got those two quick goals in the second period I felt good about it and we kind of locked it down from there.”

The Varsity Reds took the game with a 3-1 victory, making it their 6th national title in a decade.

“We had a crack at a few more, we had some silvers as well including last year,” says Richard. “It’s not the easiest place to play, there’s a lot of pressure to win and the standard is very high.”

Two other Maritime teams took home some hardware; Antigonish’s St. Francis Xavier University earned the silver medal and Halifax’s St. Mary’s University won bronze.

“It just speaks to the strength of our AUS conference,” says Richard. “When we hosted here in this building in 2004, we went 1, 2, 3, with StFX and Dal and ourselves, and yesterday we went 1, 2, 3 with StFX and St. Mary's and ourselves.”

The UNB Fredericton campus was buzzing after the win and the enthusiasm is likely to continue as the university is set to host the CIS Nationals in 2017, as well as 2018.

“You know, you see the energy in that building yesterday, I don’t know how we're going to fit 10,000 fans into our 4,000 seat arena,” says Richard.

A public celebration with the team will happen Wednesday at noon at the Aitken Centre.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Nick Moore