CALLER-TIMES INTERACTIVE: NEWS
Sun 15-Mar-1998
Hockey the Texas Way
Game shakes up fans' ideas of down-home fun
By BRENT SCHROTENBOER
Caller-Times
AUSTIN -- It had been raining outside the rodeo barn for several hours before the game started that night, and most of the fans arriving late found themselves kicking mud off their cowboy boots and sneakers.
Their cars were lined up in a grass lot near the northeastern edge of Travis County, some of them even getting in lines that had grown 70 yards deep while the drivers waited to find a parking spot inside the growing muck.
Having driven through the rural countryside some 15 miles removed from downtown Austin, this crowd of thousands had come seeking one of the hottest new entertainment spectacles to hit the region since the annual county livestock show.
The big attraction: the Austin Ice Bats of the Western Professional Hockey League, a curious mix of Texas-style surroundings and traditional Northern sporting culture.
``I don't know much about hockey,'' said Mike Rutledge, a 31-year-old Austin resident clad in cowboys boots, jeans and a belt with a large western-style buckle. ``I come here for the fights like a lot of other people here. I never saw hockey before, but now I come on the weekends usually. There's really nothing else to do (for sports fans) in Austin except the events at the University of Texas.''
Serving as a model franchise for the Corpus Christi IceRays team scheduled to debut at Memorial Coliseum this October, the Ice Bats have led the way with an average attendance of 6,193 per game through February.
Their secret: attracting a diverse -- and loyal -- mix of fans ranging from cowboys and rodeo types to college students and Canadian transplants.
Call it Hockey the Texas Way. Many of the league's 12 teams share their space with the rodeo trade throughout the season, and some of them -- like Austin and El Paso -- play inside rodeo barns that underwent extensive makeovers before they installed ice for the first time.
The Ice Bats, for example, spent almost $1 million converting their rodeo barn into a state-of-the-art facility for professional hockey.
In addition to installing an ice rink over a dirt floor designed for livestock shows, the Ice Bats also had to make sure the building didn't get fogged up after they boarded shut its open-air rafters.
By the time the conversion was complete, however, the Travis County Exposition Center had reinvented itself as a mecca for Texas hockey fans old and new.
Blending sportsmanship and competition with showmanship and family entertainment, Ice Bats management has pieced together several fan-friendly sideshows complementing the game itself. Among the more popular attractions: an above-rink ``cyber-lighting'' system blasts lasers into the darkened arena during pregame introductions. An upstairs ``Belfry Club'' attracts club members with beer and music after the games, and the concession stand offers an all-Texas selection of meat and barbecue.
Mixing Texas traditions with a sport more accustomed to a crowd of Canadians and Midwesterners, Austin offers its hockey fans beer, hamburgers, hot dogs and chopped beef on a bun.
``There's a handful of people who come and follow the whole game,'' said Debra Thomas, a supervisor of crowd ushers for a building that diplomatically hangs a rare blend of American, Canadian and Texas flags side by side behind one of the goals. ``But I think more of them come for the atmosphere. People are still learning it, and a lot of companies promote it, getting people over here for the first time ever.''
Many of these first-time fans are attracted by the sport's novelty, though others simply bring their families in hopes of finding an alternative to movies or television. In much the same way that the rodeo attracts families with its mix of danger, entertainment and competition, the WPHL likes to categorize its product as more of a show than just a hockey game.
Several front-office executives from the IceRays have been making regular trips to Austin, sometimes bringing a pad of paper and a pen in order to take notes about the way things are run at the Bat Cave.
Between periods, for instance, the Village People's ``YMCA'' blares from the speakers, Zambonis sweep the ice and hordes of fans get to try their hands at a series of games and gimmicks on the ice floor. The lucky ones get to shoot for prizes from mid-ice, trying to score a goal with a slapshot toward the net. After that, a truck makes its way around the rink shooting T-shirts into the crowd from a cannon.
On the more extreme side, the WPHL's New Mexico Scorpions took its between-period shows as far as ``shooting'' fans across the ice on a sled, pushing them out of a large slingshot so powerful that many of them ended up crashing into the boards on the other end.
``We're looking at it as putting on a show,'' said Jay Johnson, assistant general manager for the IceRays. ``With two (intermission) periods per game, that means we're going to be looking to put on 80 shows for our fans throughout the season.''
Several fans also bring their ice skates along to the games for a post-game skate around the ice. Not accustomed to the nuances of an ice floor, many of these fans learn the ropes with rented skates, testing them out with hundreds of other skaters once the players retreat to the locker rooms.
Adding occasionally violent theater to the rest of this pomp and circumstance, the games -- and fights -- provide a fast-paced thrill that has made the WPHL a relatively successful draw, averaging 3,852 fans per game in 12 Southwestern cities. The league was also featured in a Feb. 16 issue of Sports Illustrated, and Little Rock, Ark., is scheduled to join Corpus Christi as the WPHL's 13th and 14th franchises this October.
The league features mostly lower-rung professional players without much of chance of making it to the National Hockey League, but most are still ``trying to prove themselves'' with an occasional on-ice fistfight, Johnson said.
Unlike the NHL, the WPHL doesn't employ the two-line pass rule prohibiting players from passing the puck down the other end of the playing floor - giving the new league more of an offensive, fast-breaking style often conducive to fist-flying roustabouts.
As it happened, the biggest cheers during the Ice Bats' 5-2 loss to Lake Charles that night came when a hulking 6-foot-3 Ice Bat named Bruce Shoebottom slugged it out with an opponent with 11:49 left in the third period.
``They love the fights like they do everywhere,'' said Roger Main, an Austin season-ticket holder and lifelong hockey fan from New England. ``Hockey is the same everywhere, and there are a lot of knowledgeable hockey fans who come. Some of the others have started off with questions, and a lot of them still haven't learned to flip the game program (to read an explanation of rules). But they seem to love everything about it, and they've really tried to make it into a family atmosphere for everybody.''
*Graphic Box: IceRays Update
PLAYER PROGRESS: The IceRays will have a roster of 20 players, five of whom are required by the league to be rookies. The team is expected to announce its first player signings sometime this month. Head coach Taylor Hall had recently been scouting for players in the Boston area.
REALIGNMENT POSSIBLE: The 12-team WPHL will expand to 14 teams next season with the addition of Corpus Christi and Little Rock, Ark. The league is currently broken into Eastern and Western Divisions, but the IceRays will probably join a new Central Division sometime soon. Other teams in that division will probably include Austin and Waco, with San Antonio being mentioned as a possible expansion city in the next few years.
ATTENDANCE REPORT: The WPHL currently has eight teams in Texas, three in Louisiana and one in New Mexico. The biggest draw is Austin with an average of 6,193 fans per game through 35 contests. The league average is 3,890.
* Graphic Box: IceRays Update
TICKET SALES: The Corpus Christi IceRays will begin playing in the Western Professional Hockey League this October. They have already sold about 1,100 season tickets, and Memorial Coliseum is expected to seat about 3,200 fans for hockey. For ticket information, call 814-PUCK. <