From Santa Fe New Mexican
By Will Webber
LOS ALAMOS — In many ways, it’s hockey as it was meant to be.
It’s outdoors, in the elements, the dead of winter begging for a thermos of hot chocolate and bringing back memories of the old days when sweaters and sharpened blades were all anyone needed.
There are some exceptions, of course.
Welcome to the Nuclear Shootout, an annual college tournament drawing top club teams from California, Texas, Arizona and that school just down the road at the University of New Mexico. The five-team, seven-game, three-day event started Friday night and wraps up Sunday morning.
Yes, college hockey. With UNM as the host.
At the same time that the Lobo basketball team was playing in front of 14,500 fans Friday night in a nationally televised affair against Boise State, the Lobo hockey team was swapping slapshots with Arizona State. On Saturday, it was Texas A&M. On Sunday, it’s an 8:30 a.m. date with Santa Clara.
“People are always kind of surprised we even have a hockey team,” said UNM defenseman Andrew Jeffrey. “It’s a thing, though. We work hard at it. I mean, guys are getting together for those practices at [10 p.m.] at two different places.”
Let’s start with the venue for the Shootout, the Los Alamos County Ice Rink. At 7,200 feet it’s hardly a place that’s friendly on the lungs, the legs or the lactic acid that makes everything ache during strenuous activity.
Built nearly a century ago, it’s the only NHL-sized outdoor rink that’s fully refrigerated. It also happens to sit at the bottom of Pueblo Canyon and is just an icing call from pine trees that line both sides of the venue.
On especially cold nights, the glass frosts with a thin layer of ice. Regulars to the facility know all too well that a fleece blanket is just as important as an ice scraper.
Jeffrey is one of four players from Los Alamos on UNM’s roster. A former rugby player and cross-country runner while a Hilltopper, he has hockey in his DNA.
“Both of my parents are from Canada, so … ,” he said.
The team’s coach is Logan Lemirande, a former player in college at Wisconsin-Stevens Point. Like most transplants, he found his way to New Mexico largely through word of mouth. Not long after he hung up the skates after a few years on the lowest rung of the professional hockey ladder, he decided it was time to take up skiing and get reacquainted with the outdoors. He and his wife were married in Taos and, like a moth to a flame, he was drawn to the sport of his youth as soon as he learned UNM had a club hockey team.
“You know, it just seemed like fun,” he said after a recent late-night team practice at the McDermott Athletic Center in Rio Rancho. “I kind of looked into it as a player, then as a coach and it was something I really wanted to do.”
The Lobos aren’t recognized as a team sport by the athletic department and does not receive funding from the university. It’s a club team that falls under the purview of UNM’s recreational services.
The team also isn’t part of the NCAA. Like every other club team, it’s a member of the American Collegiate Hockey Association, playing in the same division as Grand Canyon, Loyola Marymount, Arizona State, Northern Arizona, Cal State Northridge, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara and Cal State Fullerton.
It’s UNM’s first year transitioning into the second tier of the ACHA. So far, so good. The Lobos had already won 13 games coming into the Shootout and had their sights set on a third trip to the ACHA postseason since 2018.
Lemirande said recruiting rules that were recently relaxed to allow Canadian players to venture south into U.S. schools has bolstered the talent pool across college hockey.
The team gets no money for scholarships and raises all its money itself through ticket sales, a preseason golf tournament and charging $1,000 for each player to be part of the team. Traveling to road games can be adventure, while home games are played at Albuquerque’s Outpost Ice Arena and practices are usually 20 miles away at the Mac. They’re also usually late at night after public skate times are done and the venues are closed to the public.
It makes life interesting for the players, each of whom is regular student living the life of a college kid with class schedules that are all over the map.
For Lemirande, it’s all part of the experience, the beauty of being on a club team that has long established a niche following with hockey-loving fans who gladly make the trip to Los Alamos a pilgrimage worth making.
Now all he needs to do is remember to bring the hot chocolate and something to clean the glass.
“It’s outdoor hockey at 7,200 feet in a canyon. Not many people can say they get to do that,” he said.
(Originally published at https://www.santafenewmexican.com/sports/unm-club-hockey-team-battling-in-los-alamos-tournament/article_e756f310-d5ba-11ef-a82e-0f5c8d57fcca.html)
