EL SEGUNDO “”mdash; Aside from the late hours, it seems all too
familiar. The cutting. The crisp passing. Of course, the body
checking. And the one-timers.
Everything seems to be just like it is supposed to be, as the
poise, grace and hand-eye coordination of the gameplay keep the
audience’s eye bopping back and forth like a Mexican jumping
bean.
But then you step outside on a warm October night, and you
regain feeling in the palms of your hand and your cherry red nose
slowly calms itself. The dramatic rise in temperature brings you
back. It’s Southern California, not Toronto, or Boston or
even Detroit.
As the UCLA club hockey team prepares for the opening of its
season at Cal on Friday night, it becomes all too clear that they
look somewhat out of place in Los Angeles.
However, after winning the Pac-8 last year and breaking a string
of losing seasons, the hockey team is trying to build on its
success and find a fanbase that is suitable for a typical Bruin
team.
Trying to garner support and make a program has not been the
easiest of tasks, and the team knows that they fight some
perceptions.
“Hockey down here seems to be as strange as putting a
sandbox in Boston and playing volleyball in it,” senior
forward Eric Allen said.
Even though there are two professional hockey teams within 60
miles of Westwood, Allen knows that certain hockey fans turn their
nose up at the SoCal version.
“There is this idea that West Coast hockey is weak,”
Allen said. “There actually are lot of great players who come
from Southern California but go to school in the northeast, so
people don’t think hockey is played down here.
“It creates a stigma for West Coast hockey.”
Shedding themselves of this stigma, UCLA has experienced a
reversal of fortunes last year when they not only won their
conference but also beat USC in the annual Crosstown Cup. It was
the second time they took home the cup in 12 seasons. They now look
to 2005 as a truly great opportunity to elevate the program.
“We are really enthusiastic about this upcoming
year,” coach Michael Kelly said. “Nobody can wait until
we play Cal just because there is so much hope. We want to get out
on the ice.”
With the new season upon them, the Bruins feel an even greater
need to reach out to the UCLA community and really get more of the
campus behind the team. Kelly points right to the 2004 Crosstown
Cup when discussing the growth of his team’s popularity.
“We had hundreds of people at the rink. USC’s band
was here,” Kelly said. “It finally felt like the
perfect atmosphere we always envisioned. That game proved
it’s possible.”
The team’s fate might very well be tied to the popularity
of West Coast hockey in the broadest of pictures.
“We are part of a community that really wants to promote
the sport out west, because the more kids we can get coming out to
watch the games is really beneficial for everyone,” Kelly
said. “Realistically, if the sport as a whole grows that
would make it easier for us to have bigger support.”
The prospects of teaching grade-school kids the game is time
consuming, and is based on truly believing they will fall in love
with the speed of the game.
“It’s a total grassroots operation because we really
have to get to kids from the ground up because they are already
playing little league and watching football,” Kelly said.
“We need to show them that hockey is here in Southern
California and it’s good.”
Hockey doesn’t come as cheap as other popular sports in
Southern California, where the sun shines year round and baseball,
football and basketball can be played year round without much
cost.
“Pond hockey in the north makes it cheaper when it
snows,” Allen said. “That’s really where the
tradition has been built because it’s cold and there’s
nothing else to do.”
Out west, though, it barely rains, let alone create a snowy
environment. As a result, the only place to play is in a rink,
where the price for time is high.
“The hockey community needs to give parents a reason to
spend all that money on rink time and equipment,” Allen
said.
It’s difficult to think about the welfare of hockey
without pointing to the embarrassing NHL lockout of 2004 that
stripped fans of the entire season as players and upper management
fought over contracts. The void left fans bitter and skeptical
about the 2005 season which officially started last night. The
absence of professional hockey, however, might have helped the
overall popularity of the college game.
“People wanting hockey needed to fill that void,”
senior defenseman Pete Mikhail said. “We kind of served that
role last year.”
The team tries to sell itself on its working-class
characteristics as none of the players are on scholarship and they
have to practice from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. because that’s the
cheapest time available. No matter how much they reach out, the
Bruins know the support from the campus will ultimately be decided
by their record.
“Winning is really the only surefire way to get people
excited about us,” Mikhail said. “Everybody loves a
winner and we feel like we’ve built one.”