The Daily Aztec

Issue date: 4/9/08 Section: Sports

Media Credit: Erik Ljung / Staff Photographer Sophomore defenseman Lane Smith has quickly found that the sport of hockey means a lot more in North Dakota.

Do your chores. Clean your room. Shovel the snow off the driveway. Then you can go play hockey.
Where Lane Smith is from, the surroundings are quite different. In Grand Forks, ND, the weather is cold and the roads are icy. Before you go outside, you put on gloves and a warm jacket. And most importantly, you don't forget a hockey stick.
"It was very important," Smith said. "My dad played high school hockey and then club hockey in Colorado. My brother played. I played all my years growing up too. It's kind of what we did there."
The sophomore club hockey defenseman at San Diego State just returned to North Dakota and found that little has changed. The heavy nuisance of a shovel is still being put to good use and snow remains imbued in the local cottonwood trees.
Although Smith listened and did his chores, he could not simply go play whenever he wanted. All the local rinks were outside, and getting them ready for skating is always a more daunting task than shoveling any driveway. Unfortunately for Smith, he didn't know anyone with a zamboni.
"We were always shoveling the rink off too," Smith said. "Nobody liked to do it. Shoveling the rink is a lot of work, pushing the snow to the boards and then lifting the snow over. It was actually a lot of snow."
Smith talks fondly of the weather in San Diego where he never gets cold. Now he is close to the ocean and in the ideal place to pursue his dream of becoming a marine biologist. Still, there is plenty to miss nearly 2000 miles away from home.
The passion for hockey that is prevalent in Smith and many others in North Dakota is largely invisible in San Diego. The cultures are simply different.
"It's weird just telling people that I go to State and I play hockey," Smith said. "They are like, 'Really? There's hockey?'
"Half the kids at school don't even know we have a hockey team."
Despite three professional hockey franchises in the state, Smith recognizes that many schools in California don't even generate enough interest for a club hockey team. Locally, the sport has become more of an underground phenomenon.
"You go to the sports bars and all of the basketball games are playing and none of the hockey games are ever on," Smith said. "In North Dakota, it's always hockey."

Continued...

Page 1 of 2 next >

Article Tools