This past Friday, Sept. 13, Sacred Heart University’s Martire Family Arena (MFA) opened its doors to all SHU students for its Club Sports Skate Night. From 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., any student who made a reservation was allowed to bring or rent skates for a free 45 minute slot.
The skate night was organized by Ashley Lane, Director of Club Sports & Intramural. She said many students who don’t play a club sport were asking how they could get on MFA’s ice.
“With the new arena, we were looking for something else to do,” said Lane.
According to Lane, the club sports staff found that public skating is popular and decided it would be a great opportunity to bring to the SHU commmunity.
Although MFA has been running for over a year, this event is the first time that club sports partnered with the arena to invite all of the university’s students to skate for free.
Many students have been asking why it has taken the arena so long to host an event like this. According to Lane, the issue was scheduling.
“The biggest issue is everyone who uses it,” said Lane. “Varsity uses it, club uses it and they also rent it out.”
Planning the event also requires work. The club sports office had to contact the rink, hire volunteers, determine available ice time and schedule it on a date and time that would be appealing for students to attend.
“Ashely [Lane] asked me to volunteer at the event and of course I said yes,” said junior volunteer Megan Foley. “I was happy to help.”
Fortunately, time and ice was available for Sept. 13 and the opportunity was taken full advantage of by the club sports office. They then had to market it to the student body through Instagram posts, flyers and emails.
“I saw an email about the skate night and signed up right away,” said junior Jessica Guanci.
All three time slots were fully reserved before the event’s 6 p.m. start time to skate on the same ice as the Pioneer’s Divison I hockey team.
“It was really cool to experience the arena from that perspective,” said junior Shannon Willard. “Especially since I’ve never been a hockey player but have been to many of the hockey games.”
Lane hopes the skate night’s popularity will call for this these events to be more normalized.
“It’ll probably be something we do again next year and hopefully at the end of this semester as well doing one in December and another one in the spring,” said Lane.
She said that the times and day it happens may change, but she wants to have this event again to ensure that students who missed out on it the first time and want to go will have two more options to attend.
Aiden Reilly contributed to this article.
