Local hockey players can find competition past high school

MAT-SU — There’s nothing quite like heading out of the ice rink after a game in Cheney, Wash., at 11 p.m. on a Sunday night, driving back four hours to Missoula, Mont., then writing an Anthropology paper before Monday morning’s 8 a.m. deadline.

But when you’re a hockey player in the American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA), this is the norm of most weekends from September to March. The ACHA, or as I call it the working man’s NCAA hockey, is the outlet for thousands of college students whose dreams of continuing their hockey careers didn’t die out along with their dreams of being a really well-paid sports reporter. This is my second year playing for the University of Montana.

After graduating from Palmer High School, I figured my competitive hockey career was over. I thought about possibly playing junior hockey, but decided that continuing with my education outweighed slightly postponing the death of my life as a hockey player. But when I arrived at Montana I was surprised to find out that the school has an ACHA team, which provided me with that dose of competitive hockey I thought I had lost.

The ACHA, now in its 17th year, is now the home league of more than 360 teams. If a school doesn’t have a NCAA hockey team, there’s a good chance it has an ACHA team. Montana is in the ACHA Division II Western Conference, which includes schools such as the University of Washington, USC, Washington State, Colorado State and many others. The caliber of hockey from these schools is very good, and the games are very competitive. Even schools such as Denver, North Dakota and Minnesota — all perennial NCAA Division I powerhouses — have ACHA teams, sometimes used as the B team or practice squad.

There are many reasons why athletes end up playing in the ACHA over other leagues. One of them isn’t merely a case of not being good enough to play in juniors or NCAA. Many players, especially quite a few on my team, have enough skill to play hockey at some of the highest levels, but chose not to.

I can attest to that fact. When I first joined the team I figured there wouldn’t be any good players or else they would be playing NCAA. But after perfecting the twin arts of cooling the water bottles to a certain temperature while simultaneously warming the bench to another, I realized my first assumption was wrong. May it be for what I chose-starting my journalism degree, or other personal factors, many players choose to play in the ACHA over other leagues.

There are some large differences between the ACHA and NCAA hockey, however. Although the ACHA is inter-collegiate, it is still considered to be a club sport. This means players have to pay fees and raise funds in order to fund the team. This year, to play for Montana each player had to put up $700 for the season, which covers ice expenses, hotels, jerseys and the like. On a college budget, which for the most part has me to dining on the several fine flavors of TOP-RAMAN for dinner most nights, this money can be hard to come up with. But for the most part, each player pays it happily knowing that in order for the team to operate money is needed.

The ACHA still has the same standards for student athletes that the NCAA requires. The ACHA, along with the NCAA, have mandated grade point averages for athletes to maintain. While NCAA athletes get special counselors and assigned classes tailored to their schedules, ACHA athletes make due with practices before classes in the mornings, and the before-mentioned scramble to turn everything on time. Just a note: not a single player on my team has had any trouble with grade-related problems.

While my U of M team is sitting at a rather successful 8-2 on the college circuit, we still don’t see much support from the University itself. Our team is just in its third year of existence, and the University only allots us about $2,000 for the whole season, which can maybe buy us about 10 practices or cover about one road trip. More established clubs such as Eastern Washington get around $13,000 from their schools. In order for our team to get more coverage and funding we have to do a lot in order to get noticed. We do all of our own advertising for our games and sell our own merchandise that we created as a team. I’ve done several radio spots on the University’s radio station to promote the games, and it has paid off.

On my campus, which features NCAA-level sports in football, basketball, soccer and others, our little club team still draws more students to games more consistently than any of the other teams except for the football program. We probably get around 300 to 500 students for a regular game, but for rivalry games such as Montana State, we usually get well over 1,000. The fans love our games, and that seems prevalent for most the ACHA teams. While on our trip to Cheney to play Eastern Washington, the coach of the Eagles gave us a call to ask if we needed any reserve tickets for Montana fans before it sold out. I personally thought this guy was crazy if he was expecting to sell out a game in a small farming town in eastern Washington. But when we arrived to the rink, which EWU built brand-new just for the club hockey team, the game was already sold out, with many fans beating us there. We were two hours early.

Playing in the ACHA isn’t easy by any standards. The rigorous schedule, money conflicts, advertising and — most importantly — managing all of this on top of a full school schedule can be draining. But for me, and for most of the players that I know of, it’s more than worth it. And that’s what I think the main difference between ACHA and NCAA hockey.

ACHA players play for the love of the game. While NCAA athletes not only have things catered to them, but also have the prospect of playing in the pros, we do all the side work just so we can have those two or three games a week. Why else would we put up with so many other factors other than we’ve played this game all our lives and don’t want to give it up yet.

After my last hockey game of my high school career I thought I was done forever, and a part of me would be gone with that, but the ACHA has given me and thousands of other college athletes the ability to play the game that we love, not to mention friendships that are formed. Trust me, if you can learn to tolerate someone on a 12-hour car ride through Idaho to get to Boise, you can learn to tolerate anything.

Tyson Alger is a 2007 graduate of Palmer High School and journalism student at the University of Montana. He is spending his holiday break working the sports desk at the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman.