A Player’s Experience of the Outdoors

On February 13, the Sacred Heart Pioneers took to the frozen outdoor ice for the first time in their program’s history against the Connecticut Huskies.

The game was played UCONN’s football stadium, Rentschler Field in East Hartford, and was only one of the many games that will take place at the venue throughout the week-long Whalers Hockey Fest.

The points were important for both teams; the Pioneers looking to move out of last place in their conference standings, and the Huskies fighting for a playoff spot.  After a hard fought game, the Huskies came out on top 3-1 in front of an attendance close to 2,000 people.

Fortunately for the readers of OIH, Chip Mladenoff – a senior forward with Sacred Heart – was gracious enough to document the process of a college hockey player preparing for an outdoor game, and the excitement that’s involved.

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Saturday, February 12 2011 – The Lead-up

4:15pm- Load the bus after practice with all of our equipment

5:00pm- Bus leaves from our home rink – the Milford Ice Pavilion - for UCONN’s Rentschler Field to drop our gear off

7:00pm- Enjoy a meal with the boys at Outback Steakhouse.  It was kind of a mess because they were not ready to handle a group of 30 people, but the steak was good.

9:00pm- Arrive at the hotel  and get situated into our rooms.  Broke out the laptops and found the free wireless from the lobby to get some homework done.  Had to get work done tonight because Sunday there won’t be any time to do it, at least not until 7pm or so.

Sunday, February 13 2011 – Game day

8:45 am – Wake up call

9:00am – Breakfast

We were all joking around in line waiting for omelets to be made.  [Tye] Lewis says that he has never seen [Eric] DeLong this excited before.  Lewis also starts chirping me about playing in the EJHL and how we never fight, so I chirp back with how he doesn’t fight no matter what league he is in.

9:30am – Team meeting

We went over things we need to do better, and the things we did right and need to do more of from the last game we played.  Our coach spoke to a few other coaches whose teams have played in outdoor games and he passed on one major piece of advice; “never pass up a shot in these games and get used to the boards early.

10:30am- Bus Departure.  What a game this should be!

11:00am- Arrive at rink and transfer our gear from the UCONN football locker room, to our locker room for the day.  Pre-game activities begin.

I set up all my gear as we do at home, change into sweats, grab my sticks and head out to the stands.  After taping all my sticks, toe to heal, I do some visualization.  Today is a little harder, as the rink is pretty far away from where we are sitting, but it makes the experience better.  I return to the locker room to start warming up and just hang out with the guys.

12:30pm – Warm-ups begin

As we walk out for warm-ups, it begins to snow, and the excitement of the day starts to hit everyone.  I feel like a kid going out to play on a big back yard.

1-3:00 pm – The game was a good game, although we did not come out on top.  The attendance says we had about 1,911 fans, which for our league is a good turnout. It was a great experience and I had a lot of fun, but as all things that are fun, it went by too fast.

3:30pm- The parents had a tailgate set up and grilled us some steaks and coach let us hang out with them for a while.

7pm – Return to our home rink to drop our gear off

8pm – Finish the homework due at 8am tomorrow morning and start the rest of the homework for the week.

1am – Finally getting to sleep, with lab at 8am.  Just another day in the life of a college hockey player.