By Shannon Russell ’98

The stairwells in Miami’s Goggin Ice Center buzz with activity on a Friday night in late February.

Hundreds of students have staked out places in line to get into the hockey team’s regular season finale against Ohio State. Anxiety and excitement fill the corridors as fans paint each other’s faces, play cards and board games, munch on pizza, and speculate about the RedHawks’ chances.

Students toward the front arrived nearly 10 hours ago. Any wait for these hockey fans is worthwhile.

“This is the coolest sports atmosphere I’ve ever been part of,” says sophomore Tylan Matthiesen. “With all the students around, just cheering and screaming … we have that here every game. It’s contagious. It’s so much fun.”

It’s also the hottest ticket in Oxford. In nine years, coach Enrico Blasi has built a hockey powerhouse, capped most recently by the program’s winningest campaign in school history.

Ranked No. 1 nationally for 10 weeks during the season, the RedHawks were the Central Collegiate Hockey Association Championship runners-up and the Northeast Regional’s top seed in the 61st annual NCAA Division I Ice Hockey Championship. Although they knocked Air Force out of the NCAA Tournament with a 3-2 overtime victory in the first round, they suffered a heartbreaking 4-3 overtime loss in the regional final to eventual national champion Boston College.

Through it all, the fans cheered them on.

“We don’t miss games. We’re pretty intense,” says senior Kelsey Telfer. “For me, I’ve gotten to know a lot of the players the past few years, and supporting them is important. This is a sport that Miami is really good at, so there’s always a fan base about it.”

Make that a booming fan base. Steve Cady Arena accommodates 3,642 people; at hockey games, about 1,100 are students. Another 1,200 seats are claimed by Miami’s 440 season ticket holders, says director of ticket operations Alex Weikel.

Season tickets sold out before the season started with more than 150 people on the waiting list.

Oxford residents Darrell and Connie Short dream of having their own season tickets someday. They took their grandson, Andrew, to skate at the old Goggin Ice Arena about three years ago, chanced upon a hockey game, and were instantly smitten.

“I never thought I’d be a hockey fan. But when I came here, the atmosphere was just so phenomenal,” Darrell Short says.

They, like many others, find it interesting that Oxford has cultivated a hockey hotbed in southwest Ohio where football, basketball, and baseball dominate.

So how did it become so huge at Miami?

Dennis Matejka ’80, at the OSU game with his wife, Sharon, as part of a 50th birthday present, says in the past 15 years hockey has grown all over the Midwest.

Connie Short says Blasi himself is one of the reasons the team is well-supported. Besides proving his mettle as a successful coach, Blasi, now 36, graduated from Miami in 1994. He was the youngest head coach in Division I college hockey when he took over the program in 1999 at age 27.

“Blasi brings attitude here,” Short says. “He played here, and the townspeople remember him. That draws them in.”

Miami athletic director Brad Bates agrees that Blasi and his staff are important forces behind the success, pointing out that their leadership is evident in the team’s recent university community service award and collective 3.0+ GPA.

Blasi himself says he isn’t exactly sure why hockey is so huge in Oxford, but he suspects it’s a combination of factors that starts with the team, known as “the Brotherhood” because of its “team-as-family culture.”

Senior Ryan Jones, the team’s points leader, attributes the growing fan base to Miami’s close-knit community. The Ontario native says that unity among students and teammates was a big reason he chose Oxford. Miami’s reputation — academically and athletically — clinched his decision.

“I never really took any flak from anyone when I said I was coming here. They basically asked, ‘Where?’ ” he says. “I said they would know soon enough, and I think many people from my area have gotten to know Miami University.”

An interesting twist to Miami’s hockey fan base is this: Many of its supporters had not followed hockey prior to their RedHawk experiences. Take sophomore Kelli Cripps. She never once wanted to attend a National Hockey League game despite living near the Columbus Blue Jackets for eight years.

Her introduction to Miami’s team sparked a voracious hockey appetite. The once-indifferent fan found herself waiting in line for six hours for tickets. By February, she was among the students who pitched 41 tents some 30 hours before then-No. 1 Miami hosted No. 2 Michigan.

Cripps moved into the seventh tent about 4 p.m. the day before the game. She didn’t hesitate to dump everything else on her planner to wait it out with friends.

“We wanted to get glass for the Michigan game. It was the biggest game of the year. Had to be in the front row.”

Blasi delivered pizza to the tent city. Players distributed hot chocolate.

Fan appreciation spanned the entire season in one form or another, and that was meaningful for those who, like Cripps, scrapped their schedules for games. Many say Miami’s success on the ice justifies the lengths they take to be in the stands.

Matthiesen says it’s also just fun to be part of a dominating program.

The $34.8 million, two-year-old arena is a draw in itself. Although it’s bigger than the old Goggin, which seated 2,200 fans, it remains intimate. Fifth-year senior Jeremy Mounce says the sport outgrew its old venue but retained that important sense of closeness in the transition.

Mounce was among the painted fans at the OSU game. Wearing a cowboy hat, jeans, RedHawk stickers, and red-and-white tempera “shirt,” he turned around to reveal Jones’ name and number painted on his back.

Of the 20 in his group, six boasted RedHawk tributes in body paint.

The atmosphere that brisk night in February was a microcosm of what normally happens on game night. As the band arrived in red and white hockey jerseys and began setting up, one student — sitting above a sign that read “Ricoville” — waved handmade signs that read “Ugly Goalie” and “Sieve” with an arrow pointing to the opponents’ goalie.

Miami’s players received a thunderous greeting when they took the ice. Hours later, the RedHawks left the ice with a 4-3 victory.

It was an experience Matthiesen wouldn’t have given up for the world.

“I made sure I was done with classes by noon on Fridays for the second semester,” Matthiesen says. “There’s no way I was going to miss this.”

Shannon Russell ’98 is a frequent contributor to Miamian.

Fans wait in line for hours for front-row seats.

Miami hockey fans spend most of the season on their feet cheering.

Back to the Miamian Magazine Summer 2008 Web page