ASU hockey is alive and well according to coach John Wold and the 2001 Ice Devil season will be better than ever.
“I think that you’d be surprised at how good the talent is,” Wold said Monday night as his team began open tryouts for the 2001 season. “Everybody wants to play.”
Wold is optimistic that success is just around the corner for a team that has struggled the past few years. ASU has a talented crop of underclassmen that Wold says could contribute to the team immediately.
“We’ve got 20 or so good players coming back and we’ve got four or five new kids who are top notch players and are definitely going to step in for us and play,” said Wold.
Sophomore Adam Schoenfeld and newcomer Craig Reid figure into a lineup that already includes last year’s three captains, Jeff Tarala, Craig Law and Ian Smith.
All of which is good for second-year coach Wold, who found out last season just how hard it is to juggle building a quality hockey team while still tending to the fundraising responsibilities ever present in the world of club hockey.
“Hockey-wise, we were real inconsistent and that’s because we had a really young team,” said Wold, who has been active in the Phoenix youth hockey scene for a number of years. “But it was all of the other things that I really wasn’t prepared for (last year). We’re self-funding, and our budget is extremely high because of the travel, so we didn’t have any money. We didn’t have a schedule and then we kind of had to put the whole thing together in August. (This year) we’re organized.”
To help offset the high costs of club hockey, the Ice Devils are organizing an Alumni game and golf tournament scheduled to kickoff Friday, Sept. 28.
The club, which is a member of the American Collegiate Hockey Association, is holding open tryouts all this week at Oceanside Ice Arena in Tempe. Wold says that, so far, the turnout has been impressive, with 75-80 hopefuls showing up to try and make the cut.
“We’re one of the few club programs that have a junior varsity team, so we’re going to carry about 40 players,” Wold said. “But we’ll probably roster about 25 with the varsity and then 15 on the JV team.
“So far (tryouts) look great,” Wold said.
Even though the Ice Devils charge their players to play, the fee does not begin to cover the expenses that the team incurs during the course of a season. Therefore, Wold is intent on spreading the word about the Ice Devils to hockey fans across the Valley and is hoping to raise some additional funding in the near future.
Wold said that you needn’t look any further than Tucson and UA to demonstrate how viable a product club hockey can become in Phoenix.
“We go down there and play in front of 6,000 people,” Wold said. “It’s amazing. It’s growing by leaps and bounds. Everybody wants to play.”
Wold is hoping that ASU students will turn out for the Ice Devils’ home games, which are also played at Oceanside.
“We’re going to play close to campus and we’re going to start posting schedules all over the place,” Wold said. “We need to get people out.”
Reach Al Stevens at al.stevens@asu.edu.