Successful season, loyal following are goals for KU hockey team

LAWRENCE — We’ve all heard the story about the young man who grew up in Kansas, shooting hoops in his back yard, dreaming that some day he would hit a game-winning shot in Allen Fieldhouse.

Now, take that tale, freeze it and you’ve got the story of Brent Pitts, a senior from Olathe and goalie on the University of Kansas hockey team.

That’s right, hockey team. Thousands of people around the world have cheered for the Jayhawks on the hardwood, gridiron and diamond. But there are also devoted fans who gather at Pepsi Ice Midwest to watch a group of young men who, forgive the cliché, are truly playing for the love of the game.

Hockey is a club sport at KU. That means it’s not an official sport supported by the athletics department. Players don’t get scholarships, and they practice and travel on their own time.

“You get a little bit of help from the university, but basically you’re run by the members of the team and the coaches, whoever they may find,” said Eric Wyer of Hutchinson, who in fall 2008 was team president and received a bachelor’s degree in accounting. “We’re basically like a student organization that competes in an athletic environment.”

The team of about 20 players organizes its own practices, travels on its own and plays club teams from other universities throughout the Midwest. The Jayhawks are members of Division II of the American Collegiate Hockey Association. This year, for the first time, the team plays in the Mid-American Collegiate Hockey Association, known as the MACHA, a conference within the association. The conference includes schools in Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, Illinois and Missouri. Naturally, Missouri is the arch rival. That game always draws the largest crowds.

Not all schools have club hockey teams. The presence of the club has influenced the decision of many young men looking at schools. Pitts didn’t choose KU specifically because of the hockey club, but it didn’t hurt.

“I played a year of junior hockey in St. Louis and made it back here to Kansas, and fortunately enough, KU had a club hockey team, and I was able to continue playing,” Pitts said. “It was a perk, being so close and being in state. I was at the decision of KU or K-State, and KU had a hockey team, so that helped my final decision.”

Wyer said they always encourage potential players to consider which school is the best academic fit, but to remember the club is there if they’re not ready to hang up their skates yet.

Pitts played all the sports he could as a kid. He started taking skating lessons at age 6 and moved on to hockey shortly thereafter. He laced up the skates for many years as a member of club teams and traveling teams and for a year as a junior player in St. Louis before joining KU’s team.

The team draws a good deal of its players from hockey-crazed states such as Minnesota but has regularly drawn players from St. Louis and Texas, both hotbeds of talent, as well as homegrown Kansas kids. The club’s coach, Tom Prendergast, often will travel to amateur hockey tournaments to recruit players. Players also recruit on KU’s campus by posting fliers and through their Web site, www.kuhockey.com.

The club’s season starts in September and ends in February and includes a schedule of about 30 games. This year started out well: KU swept the University of Nebraska’s club team and improved the all-time series record to 12-0 in favor of the Jayhawks. The team was among the top six clubs in the conference and qualified to play in the MACHA tournament Feb. 20-22. The team will play Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville at 1 p.m. Feb. 20. If all goes well, KU could play in the national tournament at the end of the season.

Although it may not be high profile or make the TV highlight reels, the opportunity to stay on the ice is reward enough for the club members.

“We have to pay to play,” Wyer said. “Everybody on this team, they just want to keep playing hockey as long as they can. This is the last level of competitive hockey a lot of us will get to play.”

Like any passion, once a person has a taste of it, they don’t want to give it up. For hockey players, the skates, sticks, pads and pucks are unlike any other experience they’ve known.

“It’s a pretty unique feeling having someone shoot a puck at you from anywhere between 80 and 100 miles per hour,” Pitts said. “It’s kind of a rush, actually.”

By Mike Krings