Mystery Alaska invades Utah State
Some things in life just go hand-in-hand, whether it be peanut butter and jelly or ham and eggs, maybe even Logan and sub-zero temperatures.
With that in mind, certain states and sports also share a common bond, whether it be Texas and high school football or Indiana and high school basketball.
Such is the case when talking about hockey and Alaska, a state which nine members of the Utah State University club hockey team call home.
Newcomers Ryan Boyle, Greg Howard, Dave Moore, Adam Lain, Ben Froehle and Ryan Bancroft combine with veterans Deryk Anderson, Colby Thurston and Ian Tracy to give Alaska more members on the club team than any other state.
When asked why he came to USU to play hockey, Lain said, “I knew they had a good hockey program and I knew it would be good skiing.”
How do players from a place as distant as Alaska find out about the USU hockey program?
One of the biggest ways prospective athletes find out about the program is through recruiting – a method Anderson said is unique to hockey when talking about club programs at Utah State.
“Hockey is probably the most unique club sport in that it’s the one club sport that actively recruits players,” Anderson said.
Last April, the Aggies sent assistant coach and former player Nate Anderson to the Chicago Showcase in an effort to actively recruit players. The Chicago Showcase in a national tournament that features the top high school players in the country.
While at the tournament Anderson was able to land Lain, the Aggies’ starting goalie, and Howard, two players who have played a big part in USU’s success this season.
Matthew Anderson, the older brother of Deryk and Nate and the club’s first head coach, was the person who first made a concerted effort to recruit players, Deryk said.
“[Matthew] was the first person who really went out and started recruiting for the team,” he said.
Another reason USU is able to effectively recruit players from Alaska and other states for that matter, Deryk said, is because of the Western Undergraduate program (WUE).
The WUE program was instituted to help students from states such as Idaho, Montana, Utah, Washington, Oregon and Alaska go to a school from one of these states without paying out-of-state tuition, Deryk said. Instead of paying out-of-state tuition, he said students pay 150 percent in-state tuition under the WUE program.
“The Alaskan kids are easy to recruit because we can get them on the WUE program,” Deryk said. “It’s cheaper for them to come here on the WUE program than it is for them to go to the University of Alaska-Anchorage on instate tuition.”
Not only do players from Alaska benefit from the WUE program, many of them have played with one another at some time in their lives, a big help when it comes to team continuity, Froehle said.
“Somehow or another I know all of the guys [on the team] from Alaska,” Froehle said. “Hockey is so big there, but it’s still a small community and everybody knows each other; the hockey community knows each other.”
Both Howard and Lain said having a sound understanding of the game of hockey is an advantage players from hockey states like Alaska bring to the team.
“We just have the same understanding of how the game is played,” Howard said.
When asked to describe just how big hockey is in the state of Alaska, both Froehle and Deryk talked about the popularity of the sport among elementary school-aged children. Every high school and most elementary schools in Alaska have their own ice rinks, Deryk said.
“To give you an example [of the popularity of hockey], Anchorage has about 250,000 people in it, and there’s eight rinks that are in full-time use all of the time,” Froehle said. “Everybody plays hockey or has at one time.”
While hockey doesn’t have the same impact in Utah, Lain said he was pleasantly surprised by the amount of support the community shows toward the sport and the team.
“I didn’t even know it would be such a big thing in the community,” he said. “There are some kids that always shake your hand before the game and its cool that kids are looking up to you even though its not the most elite hockey.”
Because the Aggies receive a great deal of support from the community, Deryk said members of the team are ambassadors of the sport – something he hopes the team is reflecting in a positive manner.
“What these little kids see on the ice is what they think hockey is, and so how we represent ourselves on and off the ice is how they think a hockey player is supposed to act,” he said.