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February 23, 2010 E-MAIL PRINT

Pucks in the Middle of a Hoops Paradise

by Brian Jerzak/CHN Correspondent

Connecticut junior forward Jason Krispel, a native of California.

The first thing that comes to mind for most college sports fans when they hear "Connecticut Huskies" is basketball. Over the past 20-plus years, both the men’s and women’s basketball teams have been at or near the top of the Division I world. And over the last 10 years, the football team has been moving into the national picture.

But in the middle of all the Final Four and bowl game hoopla normally associated with Storrs, Connecticut, is a hockey team that battles every day to get wins on the ice and to raise its profile on its own campus.

Head coach Bruce Marshall has seen the entire evolution of the Huskies hockey program. Coming out of high school he was a defenseman who didn’t have hockey skills that blew away scouts. But he landed at UConn in the mid-'80s with a chance to get an education and continue his hockey career.

At the time, the team played on an outdoor rink, was such a concept wasn't particularly charming. As a senior, the hard-working defenseman captained a team that made the Division III playoffs.

“I was just looking for a school where I could fit in academically and athletically,” Marshall said. “It was important to me to have an opportunity to play. It was an outdoor rink, but to me it didn’t matter I just wanted to continue to play hockey it didn’t matter if it was indoor or outdoor.”

Outside of a couple of years coaching a prep school in Connecticut, he has spent his entire adult life in the Huskies program. The school made a big push to improve athletics across the board in the '90s and included in that was funding to build a new indoor rink. In 1998 they became a Division I program.

This season the team has struggled, and since the MAAC then Atlantic Hockey has received an NCAA automatic bid, UConn has never made the hockey tournament. But over the years, Marshall’s program has consistently fielded a team that competed for championships prior to the move to D-I, and most years since has been just a series or two from breaking into the top tier of Atlantic Hockey.

He has seen the rise of his own program as well as the rise of the UConn basketball machine and recent rise of the football program. Being overshadowed by both sports has been both a blessing ...

“When you can go out and call a recruit on the phone and he just saw Connecticut beat Syracuse in basketball, or UConn in a football game beating Notre Dame, that does nothing but build school spirit. Our players love having those high profile programs here. It brings attention to them.

“New buildings have gone up. It is a really impressive campus for a student athlete. When recruits see the weight rooms and the training rooms the campus sells itself.”

And a curse ...

“The students are going to go where the hot thing is. They are going to follow the ESPN cameras. There is no doubt about that.”

The area has a good base of hardcore hockey fans that the program tries to build on.

“The local community is big for us," Marshall said. "We have youth hockey groups that skate on our rink. We have things like ‘Skate with the Huskies’ for kids. That kind of stuff really helps us.”

The Huskies' hockey marketing team has worked hard to get the casual fan, especially the casual student fan, into the building.

“Students like anything that is free, so we start with that. Whether it is ‘Friday night is free’ or free pizza for the first 100 students or a chance to win a new IPhone. We will target certain areas like let’s see if this dorm can bring more kids than this dorm – things like that.”

Having a winning team year in and year out is the best way to build a rabid fan base. To accomplish that, Marshall has to scour the U.S. looking for nuggets of unsung young kids, those who were overlooked by other programs for one reason or another. The UConn roster includes players from Florida, Oklahoma, California, Alaska, Missouri and Arizona. Only one is from Connecticut.

Meanwhile, UConn teams play a similar style to how their coach played back on the outdoor rink.

“We want to be tough to play against. That doesn’t mean we are hitting everything in sight. It is more like having good gaps, playing well in the defensive zone, putting pucks in good spots and the willingness to block shots," Marshall said. "Yeah, let’s get creative below the tops of the circles and let your individual talent in, but let’s be very disciplined from our goal red all the way down to the tops of the circles in the other end and not give away opportunities. We look for opportunities not look to take chances.”

UConn hockey might not make many waves nationally. Even in good years, they are usually going to be overshadowed by all the powerful East Coast hockey programs. In those same good years they will be overshadowed on their own campus. But Marshall and his staff have brought the program a long way in its own right in 20 years.

“We were winning consistently at the D-III level and then all of a sudden we are Division I," Marshall said. "Now we’ve finally got a rink. I am looking in my office right now and I am looking at a picture of us lining up against Michigan. In the outdoor rink when I started we would be lucky to get a kid from Michigan much less be playing Michigan.”
 

E-MAIL PRINT