Travel is always part of the job description of the RPI men’s hockey team. Aside from the normal league docket of trips to the North Country, Central New York, and New England, the team has also ventured to Nebraska, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Minnesota for tournaments and non-league games in the past few seasons. None of those trips, however, carried the magnitude of last weekend’s trip to Anchorage, Alaska.
The team ventured roughly 4,500 miles northwest for the Nye Frontier Classic, an annual tournament hosted by the University of Alaska-Anchorage. For most people on the team, this was the first visit to the great white north—and it was memorable for many reasons. From the unusual setting of a city surrounded by towering mountains to the pristine natural areas just outside of downtown Anchorage, or the overall congeniality of the average Alaskan, the area proved to be a great place for the team. “It’s a pretty cool town,” said sophomore forward Andrew Lord, “The people are real friendly.”
“I’m from Toronto, and now I go to school in Troy, and they aren’t really cities like this where you have mountains all around,” said junior Oren Eizenman.
For others on the team, making the long journey is old hat. Junior Jake Luthi is from Palmer, a town about 40 miles north of Anchorage. He played ice hockey for four years at Colony High School. “We’d always play all the Anchorage teams, and some of our games would be at Ben Boeke,” he said. Ben Boeke Arena, on the UAA campus, was where RPI practiced on Thursday, before the tournament started. “During the practice at Ben Boeke … when coach was saying something, it felt like it should have been my coach from when I was younger.”
Assistant Coach Frank Bretti and Athletic Director Ken Ralph also have ties to the area. Bretti spent three seasons as an assistant with the UAA Seawolves, and Ralph, a member of UAA’s class of 1991, was an All-American swimmer for the Seawolves and was inducted into the UAA Athletic Hall of Fame on Sunday. “It was pure coincidence,” said Ralph, regarding the timing of the induction and the tournament. “I was actually hoping they would be at different times, so I could make two trips out here.”
During the team’s free time, the scenery of the area awed newcomers and returners alike. Most of the team went to the Portage Glacier and the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center for some sightseeing.
Portage Glacier is Alaska’s most-visited tourist attraction. Its runoff has created Portage Lake, and while the glacier has been receding in recent years, the face still extends more than 100 feet into the water.
The conservation center is actually a non-profit organization that provides refuge for orphaned, injured, and ill animals, and also educates visitors about Alaska’s wildlife. “They had grizzly bears, black bears, caribou, musk ox, bison … it was fun,” said senior Kevin Croxton.
While the team took in some of the more touristy attractions, Luthi spent time with his family. “My mom took the day off from work. I was able to see [my family], and some buddies came to the house. I got to see the old dog again,” stated Luthi.
Everyone got to indulge in some of the attractions of the area, but everyone’s focus was definitely on hockey. “If there was time, I would want to see everything,” said Lord, “But we’re here on business.”
“I didn’t come here to lose,” said Croxton.
How, though, were the players able to keep focused on hockey with so many other things going on? Between the more than 12 hours of travel time from Troy to Anchorage and the allure of the area, it would have been easy to get distracted. With so much time to kill and so many ways to kill it, the temptation is always there to lose focus and look for other things to do. In spite of all these potential disruptions, nothing crept in to disturb the willpower and determination of the team’s on-ice demeanor. “Everyone gets focused in their own way. Everybody’s been playing hockey long enough to know what gets them ready,” said Eizenman.
The key for most of the team, according to Croxton, is to keep things as simple as possible. “We just relax,” he said. “Some guys like to nap a lot.”
“I’m a pretty big napper,” added Eizenman. “I pretty much just go to my room and sleep. That’s all I do.”
The team knows exactly what it needs to do to get prepared for a game. This isn’t to say, though, that trips like these aren’t fun or entertaining whenever possible. “The trip was good team bonding,” said freshman Reed Kipp. “We played some cards; we played the dollar trick game in Denver.”
The old trick, pulled by the freshmen and a few sophomores, proved that some people can always be fooled. In the trick, a dollar (or some other bill) is placed on the floor with fishing wire (or other thin string) attached to it. When someone comes close and attempts to pick up the dollar, someone pulls the string away from the person to see how far that person follows it. “By the end, we had a bunch of people in the airport watching us do it.”
“We didn’t get to see it,” said Eizenman, as the team was broken into two main groups for the bulk of the trip to Anchorage.
“I heard a lot of people were bitter, though,” said Croxton.
“Some of them were very successful in Chicago … It was definitely a Kodak moment,” added Sports Information Assistant Amie Canfield, who traveled with the underclassmen.
During the travel, the team essentially lost a full day each way. The group with upperclassmen left at around 10 am Eastern time, and arrived at approximately 8:30 pm Alaskan time (which is four hours behind Eastern). The underclassmen left even earlier. “It was a little tough on the freshmen and sophomores,” said Lord. “We had to take the early flight, so we were up at five.”
The trip was long and grueling for everyone, and everybody tried to pass the time differently, be it sleeping, snacking, or studying. When Luthi claimed that, “For the most part, a lot of guys do work,” Eizenman and Croxton were quick to correct him.
“No,” said Eizenman.
“All engineers … the engineers do work,” added Croxton. “Swanny [Ryan Swanson] had to read six books today.” Swanson, a junior, is a chemical engineering major.
Some of the team was even treated to a showing of Bewitched on one of the rides west—“worst movie ever,” said Croxton.
With more than 24 hours of combined travel time, the opportunity to take in Alaska’s natural beauty, the usual slate of practices, and a come-from-behind victory against Michigan Tech, the trip was deemed a success. Although many would love the chance to return to Alaska—“I’d love to spend more time in the city,” noted Kipp—an annual trip to the last frontier probably isn’t in the cards.
Members of the team, though, will always have the memory of having the experience of a lifetime in just a few days.
