The Gators excel on the court, on the field and also on the ice.
The club men’s ice hockey team won the Thrasher Cup in Savannah last weekend, beating the University of Georgia Bulldogs on Friday and the Florida State University Seminoles on Saturday.
Team members managed their success with only two hours of practice each week.
With no ice rink in Gainesville, the Gators travel to Jacksonville every Wednesday for ice time.
Frederic Bourret, a 20-year-old UF mechanical engineering junior and the team’s goaltender, said the team’s slow start could be due to its lack of a facility.
“It takes so much time to go to Jacksonville that even when we do have practice on Wednesday it is rare we have a full team at practice,” Bourret wrote in an email.
“Our players have great individual talent, but it took a lot of time to bond together as a team and work well,” he said.
The 22-person team, led by head coach Mike Marcinkiewicz, captain Ryan Geffin and president Jackson Widell, can afford to travel with a yearly budget from RecSports and donations from fans.
Marcinkiewicz said he believes a local rink would help attract recruits and fans.
He said that if UF is considering building a new football facility, there must be a way to make plans for a rink.
“I have players emailing me from Michigan and Minnesota asking to see a facility,” Marcinkiewicz said.
Most home games are played at the RDV Sportsplex Ice Den in Orlando, where there are only a few hundred fans.
Tournaments such as the Thrasher Cup give the team the opportunity to play in front of a larger audience of thousands, Bourret said.
As the team continues to play, Bourret said he is looking foward to the future of Gator hockey.
He hopes it will involve a new facility near the university.
“I would hope to see it grow and become better, maybe eventually become an actual sport and not just a club,” he said, “and hopefully get a rink close to Gainesville to play at.”
[A version of this story ran on page 1 on 1/23/2015 under the headline “Club hockey wins Thrasher Cup despite lack of ice rink"]
The UF club men’s ice hockey team poses for a picture after winning the Savannah Tire Hockey Classic tournament.
