From our Sept/Oct '13 issue: With the opening of Pegula Ice Arena this fall, big-time college hockey has finally arrived at Penn State. All it took was a few decades of lobbying, planning, and hoping—not to mention a spare $100 million or so—to make the dream a reality.
Joe Battista came to Penn State as a freshman in 1978, a hockey-loving kid from Pittsburgh at a time when Pittsburgh did not give its children many reasons to love hockey. “I came,” he says, “because I heard they were gonna build a new ice arena.” Battista ’83 Bus punctuates the statement with a deadpan stare, delivered from behind his desk in a small temporary office on the quiet second floor of the East Area Locker Room building. It’s mid-May, five months until the new Pegula Ice Arena hosts its first game, and Penn State’s associate athletic director for ice arena and hockey development says he’s “running the gamut of emotions—frustration, euphoria—because there’s just so much left to do.” He stands within reach of a dream he has chased for 35 years, and one that, until a few years ago, he wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to grasp.
The dream isn’t only Battista’s, of course. There are a few generations of students, fans, and alumni who have helped sustain hockey at Penn State through decades as a vagabond club sport. Battista can rattle off their names—former players, administrators, kids who sold programs at the old Greenberg Ice Pavilion—and he can’t go more than a few minutes without mentioning Kim and Terry Pegula ’73 EMS, whose largesse turned that wish into brick-and-mortar reality. But there is no one on campus more identified with the sport than Battista, the former player and coach turned fundraiser who has dedicated most of his professional life to establishing a home for ice hockey in Happy Valley.
Now, as opening night approaches with all the pace and inevitability of a Sidney Crosby slap shot, Battista finds himself occupied with the details: securing additional donors, nudging potential buyers to scoop up the remaining few hundred season tickets. There are still big-picture concerns, of course, but the biggest thing—that huge, gleaming structure on the west side of University Drive—is all but complete. The calendar shows just 18 months from groundbreaking to the dropping of the first puck, an eye blink in the 35 years since Battista came to State College as a shaggy-haired defenseman looking for a fresh sheet of ice. You have to go back even further to appreciate just how long he and others have been building the foundation.
To be clear, there was ice hockey at Penn State before 1978.
The Nittany Lions suited up in 1940 for the first of five varsity seasons, a run that included a two-year hiatus and concluded in 1947. Prior to re-emerging as a Division I squad last winter, Penn State owned an all-time varsity record of 13-13-1. And then it was gone, leaving the commonwealth’s flagship university without a team—not unlike the state itself.
That changed in 1967, when the Philadelphia Flyers and Pittsburgh Penguins joined the National Hockey League as part of a six-team expansion that doubled the size of the league. The new franchises had mixed success—the Flyers lifted the Stanley Cup in their seventh and eighth seasons, while the Penguins won a total of three playoff series in their first two decades—but their addition established Pennsylvania as a place where hockey could exist, if not yet thrive.
Four years later, Penn State had a team of its own. Undergrads Roy Scott ’74 Eng and Dave McCrabb ’72 Sci helped secure 5,000 signatures needed to gain club sports status; chemistry professor and part-time college hockey ref Larry Hendry was the first coach of the newly formed Penn State Hockey Club, which, according to The Daily Collegian, boasted 130 members when it debuted in 1971. Jim Hodgson ’74 MS, ’77 PhD H&HD and Dick Merkel ’67 MS, ’70 PhD EMS captained the first squad, which played with equipment borrowed from the fledgling Penguins and from Joe Paterno’s football program; they went 13-6.
The Icers, as they were soon dubbed, played in a rink built on the site that eventually became the Lasch Football Building. Battista arrived in 1978, visions of a new arena swirling in his head, only to learn the rink was being repurposed for an indoor football practice space. “For two years, we practiced on a temporary outdoor rink that had a gorgeous view of Mount Nittany, right where the [football] practice field is now,” he remembers. “We drove down to the Cumberland Skatium in Mechanicsburg for our games.”
The Icers opened play in January 1981 at the new Greenberg Ice Pavilion. There was talk of a 4,500-seat arena that would house a soon-to-be varsity squad, but cost concerns and the sport’s still somewhat limited appeal meant the team continued at club status, and Greenberg’s official capacity was just 1,300. Their ambitions constrained, the Icers contented themselves with dominating on the ice. Playing in far-flung leagues like the Mid-Atlantic Collegiate Hockey Association, the International Collegiate Hockey League, and the American Collegiate Hockey Association, Penn State became a national power, winning its first ACHA national championship in 1984. The Icers went on to claim seven national titles, six of them under Battista, who took over as coach in 1987, and whose teams went 512-120-27 in 19 seasons. (The Lady Icers, whose roster included undergraduates, grad students, and faculty members, played their first game in 1997.)
Battista coached his final season in 2005–06, and he remembers it now less for what happened on the ice than the process that began off it. He recalls all the possible paths to varsity status and a new arena, all of them false starts or dead ends; it almost always came down to funding. “We always believed we could get it done,” he says, “but it was around 2005 that I started to realize, this probably ain’t gonna happen.”
And that’s when he got the call.
Heidi Smith Battista was one of those kids who used to sell programs at Icers games. She didn’t know Battista well when they were undergrads, but they reconnected when he moved back to State College from Pittsburgh, where he was director of amateur hockey for the Penguins. They were married in 1989.
A practicing hydrogeologist and mother of three, Heidi ’81 EMS, ’83 MS IDF was putting dinner on the table one night in the fall of 2005 when the home phone rang. “When Terry Pegula called,” she says, “it was one more guy calling the house to ask, ‘When are we going Division I?’” It’s unlikely any of the previous callers introduced themselves and immediately invited her husband to dinner. Fifteen minutes later, Joe met Terry at a local steakhouse. Pegula was a devoted hockey fan and USA Hockey certified youth coach whose son had attended Battista’s summer camps. He was also the self-made founder of East Resources Inc., an oil and gas exploration and production firm that, thanks largely to its development of Marcellus Shale land, Pegula would sell to Royal Dutch Shell five years later for $4.7 billion.
“So we sit down,” Battista remembers, “and he cuts right to the chase: ‘What’s it’s gonna take?’” Battista offered a speculative number: $50 million. Pegula’s response: “I think I can help with that.”
When Battista left the Icers the following spring to head up the Nittany Lion Club, he was already cultivating what has since become a close personal and professional relationship with the Pegulas. He credits Cliff Benson ’71 Bus, a friend from his Pittsburgh hockey days, with playing a vital role in brokering the Pegulas’ gift, which eventually totaled $102 million. Their initial gift of $88 million, announced in September 2010, remains the single largest donation in Penn State history. The Pegulas’ financial support covers the cost of the arena that bears their name as well as endowing 18 scholarships for the men’s team. (In early 2011, Pegula bought the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres and brought in Benson as part of his new front office.)
Without that money, there is no arena, and no Division I hockey. But what Terry Pegula acknowledged in 2010, and what Battista emphasizes now, is that without the foundation—of the Icers’ success, and of booming involvement at the statewide youth level—there would be no money. Add in the growing popularity of college hockey as both a spectator sport and an NHL pipeline, and it’s hard to imagine better conditions or timing for Penn State’s leap to varsity status.
Demographic data from USA Hockey, the sport’s amateur governing body, shows more than 31,000 registered hockey players in Pennsylvania in 2012–13, a jump of more than 5,000 players from 10 years earlier. It continues a trend of steady growth for hockey in the commonwealth at a time when participation in both hotbeds like Michigan and relative dead zones like Arkansas has remained stagnant or dropped. Pennsylvania’s relatively slow population growth makes the increase all the more noteworthy.
“When I was with the Penguins, back in 1982 to ’85, there were eight rinks in Western Pennsylvania,” Battista says. “Now there are 54.”
“This is a great hockey state,” says Guy Gadowsky, an Edmonton, Alberta, native who coached collegiately at Alaska and Princeton before being hired in 2011 to lead the Nittany Lion men. “Before I arrived on campus, I wasn’t aware of the interest here—you see so many kids wearing jerseys. You see it developmentally, too. Before, if you saw a college hockey player in the NHL, almost guaranteed they came out of Minnesota, Michigan, or Massachusetts. Now you have players from all sorts of non-traditional hockey areas, and Pennsylvania is doing fantastic.”
That seems to have been what Pegula had in mind when he talked about discovering the next Sidney Crosby—the Penguins’ high-scoring star—in “these Pennsylvania hills.” The idea is that Penn State hockey can serve as a two-way conduit for the sport: encouraging greater youth development in the state and region by giving kids a name-brand university to aspire to, and in turn creating a pipeline of talent for whom Penn State is the obvious college choice—and NHL launching pad. Says Bill Downey ’04 Lib, the Nittany Lions’ director of operations, “The guys we bring in are going to have their sights set on winning championships while they’re in school, but also on not having their playing days end when they leave Penn State.”
Just as in football and basketball, the top collegiate hockey programs expect to recruit future pros, and the Lions have already joined the club: In June, incoming freshmen Eamon McAdam (from Perkasie, Pa.) and Mike Williamson (Leduc, Alberta) were both chosen in the NHL’s early entry draft. (By rule, the players retain their college eligibility while the teams retain their draft rights, so both are expected to suit up for the Lions this winter.) Penn State will need more recruits of that caliber to compete against the sport’s best.
Downey lacked such lofty ambitions when he came to State College; he says he was another Western Pennsylvania kid for whom “playing Division I was a long shot, but Penn State was the goal. Everybody at my high school would’ve died for the chance to go to Penn State.” He went on to earn ACHA All-America honors for the Icers, starring for Battista on three straight national title teams, before stints as a minor-league player, scout, and coach. He was director of hockey operations at Harvard before returning two years ago to take the same position at his alma mater.
Downey and Josh Brandwene ’91 H&HD, head coach of the women’s varsity squad and, like Downey, an Icers Hall of Famer, represent another conduit: the living link between Penn State hockey’s past and present. Says Downey, “We want to be respectful of where we came from.” Adds Gadowsky, “The success of the club teams, the alumni, and the care of the program is a big part of why this opportunity is here.”
On this, Battista acknowledges his bias. He knows what his teams accomplished, winning at a staggering rate and playing in front of raucous, standing-room-only crowds. “I take umbrage when people say, ‘Hockey’s starting from scratch,’” he says. “Obviously none of this happens without the Pegulas. But those of us who are here know this wouldn’t be happening had it not been for the popularity of the Icers.”
Still, he can laugh about it, mindful of hockey’s place just outside the American sporting mainstream, a position reflected by college hockey’s growing but still limited reach. “We had a cult following,” Battista says with a grin. “Now we’ve evolved into a niche.”
The building is what makes it all seem possible. With 6,000 seats, Pegula Ice Arena will have the smallest capacity of the six home arenas in the newly formed Big Ten Hockey Conference, and that’s by design. The size will make the self-sufficiency of the arena and the men’s program—stated goals when the Pegulas announced their initial gift—easier to attain, and the main rink is engineered so that 6,000 fans will have no trouble making themselves heard. Battista remembers Pegula saying, “I want this place to sound like a little kid inside a tin can with a hammer.’”
It’ll be a busy place, too, with events scheduled on one or both of the arena’s two ice sheets as many as 360 days a year: men’s and women’s varsity games and practices, of course, but also local rec leagues and statewide youth tournaments—giving kids from Erie, Wilkes-Barre, and everywhere in between the chance to dream about playing big-time hockey in the middle of their home state. Plus NHL exhibitions, figure skating competitions and ice shows, concerts, commencement ceremonies, and all sorts of other events that may or may not require a floor of frozen water; if it operates as envisioned by its namesake, Pegula Arena will be a roaring engine for the local economy, a recruiting magnet for Penn State hockey, and a regional hub to speed the development of the sport.
It is at once hard to imagine, and the seemingly logical outcome: Happy Valley as a place where college hockey thrives, Penn State as a school synonymous with the highest level of the sport. It will take a few years to compete for NCAA championships, let alone Big Ten titles against Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, which boast 23 national titles among them. But the Lions have already had a taste.
Playing as a Division I independent last season, the men went 13-14-0; they defeated Vermont in front of nearly 20,000 at Philly’s Wells Fargo Center, beat Ohio State on neutral ice, and split a pair of matches at Michigan State before closing the season with two games in Madison, Wis. The Badgers, winners of six NCAA titles and in the Frozen Four as recently as 2010, came in ranked 16th nationally and won the first meeting, 5-0. The Lions were headed for a similar outcome in game two, which they trailed 2-0 early in the third period. But Penn State scored twice in regulation and again in overtime, with senior forward Taylor Holstrom netting the winner in his final appearance.
Afterward, a reporter reminded Gadowsky of his preseason statement that Penn State couldn’t hope for such a result so soon. “I didn’t think it was possible back then,” Gadowsky said. “No one knew if we’d get a Division I win. But if you saw how hard the guys worked, it makes you believe anything’s possible. We’ve come a long, long way. We still have a ways to go.”
In this, it’s useful to remember that time and distance are relative concepts, and that, whatever progress Penn State hockey might yet make on the ice, it’s hard to imagine a leap more monumental than the one that has brought them to where they are right now.
The buzz surrounding Penn State hockey has centered on the men, whose rise to Division I enabled the creation of a powerful Big Ten hockey league. The Pegulas’ gift also elevated the women’s program—it’s the numbers that differ.
Of the roughly 500,000 registered hockey players in the U.S., according to USA Hockey, about 67,000 are women. Of those, about 8,000 are high school age, meaning the recruiting pool for the women’s game is a shallow one. That pool is deepest in the upper Midwest, and the college game reflects it: The 13 national titles won since the NCAA began hosting a women’s championship have been split by Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Minnesota-Duluth.
That regional dominance is reflected in the Lions’ 2013–14 roster, which features as many players from Minnesota or Michigan (five each) as it does from Pennsylvania. Penn State also boasts players from Colorado, California, and Canada, a testament to how far and wide coach Josh Brandwene ’91 H&HD will look to fill out his roster.
Without a Big Ten women’s league, Penn State will compete in the College Hockey America conference. Mercyhurst University of Erie is the CHA’s dominant program, reaching the NCAA Frozen Four three times since 2008. In the short term, it’ll take out-of-state talent for Penn State to become the top team in Pennsylvania.
