Blue White Illustrated

VARSITY VIEWS A NEW ERA BEGINS The puck drops on PSU's first Division I ice hockey season BY TIM OWEN owen.tim.bwi@gmail.com has a bye this weekend, and save for the Sandusky bombshell last year, bye weekends are typically calm and un- eventful at Penn State. But there's a buzz around town for I this bye weekend. Something's different about it, and it doesn't have a thing to do with perjury charges, prison sen- tences or even football. This is brand new, something fresh that Penn Staters have yet to see. Just as the sun sets behind the hori- zon for the night, a woman steps out from the front door of Greenberg Ice Pavillion to an awaiting line of students. There are at least 200, so unless the Rathskellar temporarily relocated to east campus, this isn't a normal oc- currence for a Friday night in October. That is until now. Tonight they're here for a reason. Tonight Penn State's inaugural NCAA ice hockey season is set to begin. Tickets for the general public sold out around 2 p.m. and there are still a limited number of walk-up tickets for students only. So when the front doors open at 6:30, they file in one-by-one until the Division I debut is sold out. Any remaining students are turned away. The facility's capacity is 1,300. Inside the arena, which feels more like a roller skating rink than a Division I venue, energy is abundant. The smell of hot dogs and popcorn fills the air as fans meander through the lobby. Some stop to peek at poster-sized depictions of the neighboring Pegula Ice Arena, Mark Selders/Penn State Athletic Communications t's a particularly eye-catching sunset that spreads across the University Park sky this Friday evening. Football which isn't scheduled for completion until next September. Others go straight to their seats. Even Jay Paterno is in the house for Penn State's season open- er against American International, and Bill O'Brien stops by, too. Then from the same door the fans walked through enters Guy Gadowsky. Penn State's second-year head coach (he coached the Icers club team last year), Gadowsky is dressed in a lightly striped modern day navy blue zoot suit offset by a pale pink tie, his dark hair slicked back and a smile across his face. He shakes every hand – there are a lot of them – and stops to make small talk with a couple fans before making his way to the locker room. "I really feel alive," he says. "To come in and see the student section and they're going nuts – I love the experience." White and blue pompoms await each student at their seat, and as each seat fills, another pompom is raised toward the ceiling. The student section is ram- bunctious. As the national anthem is sung and reaches its final line, "O'er the land of the free…," the vocalist takes a deep breath before finishing. The pause is long enough for a male fan to scream, "You suck, No. 30!" Then the anthem finishes and cheers erupt. No. 30 is American International's starting goalie, Ben Meisner. He's a senior and he's pretty good, but the unwritten rules of hockey fandom say you're supposed to heckle the away goalie at every possible opportunity, no matter how many times it comes back to haunt you. And this time, it might. Especially since the Yellow Jackets are the first to score. Nathan Silwinski capitalizes on a power play just 4 minutes, 43 seconds into the first period. The Lions are firing pucks, but they can't get one past Meisner. He saves 20 Penn State shots in the first 20 minutes – "Twenty shots a period is fantastic," Gadowsky says. "I love this offense" – but not a single puck reaches the back of the net. The period ends and the teams file toward the locker rooms for the first intermission. The riled-up students chill for a moment, but then the Zambonis pull out onto the ice. On each pass by the student section, the Zamboni driver is greeted with a round of deafening applause (For the Zamboni driver?!). He's polite, though, and tips the brim of his ball cap after each cheer. The Nittany Lions roar back onto the rink, and it takes them less than five minutes to even the score, 1-1. As HISTORY BUFF Fresh- man Casey Bailey scores Penn State's first Division I ice hockey goal.

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