Miami students can help the RedHawks hockey become frozen again

In the 2000s, it was a rarity if Coach Cady Arena wasn’t packed when the Miami University RedHawks played. Over 3,000 people filled the stands on average for nearly each season from 2007-2013.

Hand-in-hand with high attendance, Miami saw significant success in that time and had a winning season every year.

This passion for Miami hockey existed throughout the late 2000s. Between 2005-09, the RedHawks compiled a .689 win percentage while playing in the Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA). They peaked in 2009 with their appearance in the NCAA finals against the Boston University Terriers.

Justin Mercier played left wing for Miami during this era. He played 157 games under head coach Enrico Blasi, totalling 104 points and helping the team reach its first ever Frozen Four in 2009. The tension and excitement for a hockey game in Oxford then is something that current fans and players dream about.

“Somebody would get in line on Wednesday, and they would literally pitch a tent,” Mercier said. “The line would go towards the health building, and then it would wrap around the side of Goggin. I remember one day [Rico] bought donuts and made us deliver donuts to everybody that was waiting in line.”

The RedHawks moved to the National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC) in 2013. Ever since, they have struggled to stay afloat, going through three head coaches and just one winning season: 2014-15, when Miami went 25-14-1 and won its last conference championship.

The RedHawks have gone 0-7 in the NCHC tournament in the last five seasons.

Attendance at home hockey games reflects the program’s poor performance. Since 2014, average attendance has dropped each year, dipping to 2,439 during the 2018-19 season. After COVID-19, there was a rise in the 2023-24 season to 2,238 after the previous year’s 1951 average. However, that number represents just 69.9% of the capacity at Coach Cady Arena (3,200).

Photo by Graphic by Cody Morris | The Miami Student

This year provides an opportunity to reinvigorate Miami students and bring them back to Goggin. For graduate student defenseman Hampus Rydqvist, seeing a packed arena in his last year will be a huge help for the new-era RedHawks.

“We’d be more amped up if the stadium was packed,” Rydqvist said. “I will certainly be grateful for the attendance. It helps a lot.”

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Poor attendance has been an issue with several Miami sports teams. Before he graduated last spring, Adam Smith co-founded the Brick Wall movement, a project trying to get students more involved with athletics on campus. Last year, they worked with an outside consulting agency to develop a plan of action.

A key moment that defined the goal of Brick Wall was a hockey game Smith attended in 2021 against Bowling Green. This was the first game fans could attend after COVID, and the line stretched across the entire concourse of Goggin, with 3,209 in total filling the stands.

Smith remembers the crowd that night as a jubilant one, and he wishes current Miami students express that same enthusiasm with the university’s athletics.

“The atmosphere was fantastic,” Smith said. “Every single person stood for the entire time. It was rocking in there in terms of the volume level, with cheering the whole time, and everybody was just so into it. There was that electricity to the game while it was going on. It was like, ‘This is what Division I sports should feel like.’”

One thing that may hinder students’ willingness to spend their nights at Goggin is Miami’s social life. For many, spending the weekend Uptown is preferable to watching the RedHawks lose another conference game.

As part of Brick Wall, Smith interviewed students about their reasons for not wanting to go to athletic events.

“The answer you consistently get is, ‘Oh, I don’t want to because I have a party to go to, it’s not fun or something like that,’” Smith said. “That’s the part that can be fixed independent of what actually happens on the ice. I think you can always have fun and have a good time.”

Students shouldn’t have to choose a party or a hockey game. The game should be the party. Not only is it a fun event for students to attend, but it also drastically changes the mindset and energy of the team.

Rydqvist sat in the stands with an injury at the 2021 Bowling Green matchup. He expressed that half-empty stands and a packed arena are like night and day for the RedHawks.

“I had a broken finger, so I was in the stands with the students, but all the seats were taken,” Rydqvist said. “It was a huge turnout. It was really cool for me to see.”

Rydqvist has only seen a packed arena a few times in his four years with Miami, but Mercier saw it nearly every weekend. For him, the feelings a crowd can give the RedHawks push them to go the extra mile and satisfy the fans.

“Words can’t do it justice,” Mercier said. “How cool of a feeling it was coming out of the tunnel to a packed Goggin. It was just the best feeling ever.”

Fans need to support the team, and for the past decade, that support has dwindled. It may seem like a one-way relationship between winning games and higher attendance, but showing up to games can be just as important to rebuilding Miami hockey as anything else.

morri440@miamioh.edu