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St. Cloud State University
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Women’s hockey team deserves fans as well
By Ben Birnell
Published:
Monday, November 25, 2002
Last Thursday many Husky hockey fans around campus found University Chronicle Sports Editor Andy Rennecke’s column on the call to all SCSU sports fans to “make the switch” from hockey to basketball, hidden deep within its pages.
The reaction of many, as I understand, was not a favorable one. To be totally honest, I agreed with the column. But at the same time, I also disagreed with many things he had to say.
I’ve always been a basketball fan. Who can deny the excitement of the slam dunk off of a missed shot, or those final three seconds of the game when your team is down by two and has one desperation chance to tie? I definitely can’t.
Basketball is definitely a fun and exciting sport to watch, I’ll give him that, but hockey also ranks up there, which is why I also disagreed with his comments. Rennecke missed one important fact. The fan base for the hockey program is one-sided. And that side tips heavily toward the men’s program.
The one program that has been pushed further off of Husky sports fans radars than the basketball program is women’s hockey. I question if half the campus even knows that a women’s hockey program even exists. For the past few weeks I’ve sat at my perch, high above ice-level, at the NHC and I see what more or less resembles a ghost town. What is the average attendance for a women’s hockey game you ask? In the thousands? Don’t make me laugh. The average attendance is around 150. Most of those fans are either from the visiting team or parents of the players. The NHC can hold a little more than 6,000 people.
Something’s wrong here Husky sports fans, the women hockey players deserve just as much support from you as the men do. I, for one, love to watch the SCSU women play. Sure, they have their occasional bad night, but if I remember correctly, the men do, too. The program is still very much in its infancy, only in its fifth season. So what if the team is 3-8 so far this season? It’s still fun to see junior captain Kobi Kawamoto take one of the fastest slap shots from the blue line I’ve ever seen. It’s gonna take time for a new team to get the same tradition of excellence as the men do.
The Huskies may have a losing record right now, but in their four previous years, they had two winning seasons. Imagine what would happen if these women had the same support from Husky fans as the men do. The possibilities are endless. Did you know that senior forward Abby “Hangin’ with Ms.” Cooper has a Cal Ripken Jr.-like streak going with 115 consecutive games played? That’s a tough thing to do in a game like hockey.
But, you probably didn’t know that. As I sit in class, I watch people read the Chronicle and watch people skip over anything that has to do with women’s hockey.
Imagine what could happen if this team actually got some support from the student body. The possibilities are endless. I think the greatness of this team gets overlooked and overshadowed because the men’s hockey team has reached the pinnacle of what hockey means in Minnesota. I think Rennecke’s right when he says it’s time to make a switch, but it’s not from the NHC to Halenbeck, I think Husky fans need to stay put. I think the switch needs to be made to women’s hockey. I just believe this much-underappreciated team (probably more so than the basketball teams) needs more fans then just their parents, a few Dogg Pound members (maybe all of them?) and a few floormates in attendance. I think what the team needs is 6,000 screaming SCSU fans chanting “Let’s Go Huskies!”
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