fanlogs.com: Sioux from afar To Columbus for the Frozen Four

Sioux from afar

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To go or not to go

My group has hit 4 of the past 8 Frozen Fours ('98, '99, '02, '04) and the Sioux have made 3 ('97, '00, '01). The astute reader may not need a Venn diagram to analyze the intersection between those two sets. Despite my long-running observation that the Sioux seem to do best on the "rebuilding years" as opposed to those in which they rode in on a #1 ranking, the years we had gone to Frozen Fours were only coincidentally those in which the Sioux were highly ranked; we chose them because of the host cities (Boston, Anaheim, Minneapolis, and Boston). We had not planned on coming to Columbus, though we did hold onto a set of tickets and I did quietly observe that Columbus was only about a 6 hour drive from my home. Everyone knows what the Sioux did in Worcester and I was on the phone from my local sports bar making travel plans as the B.C. game wound down. I'm now happy to report that the curse lies not with me, but with those other friends who were with me those other four years but could not make it this year (you know who you are).

Thursday -- Before and after the games

We thought entertaining ourselves in Columbus could prove a challenge, compared to past hosts such as Boston and Anaheim, so on Thursday morning we didn't come up with much of a plan beyond going to the arena (despite having been warned that there's nothing in that neighborhood). It turned out that there was a (as in one) bar, The Varsity Club, though the Holiday Inn had set up a tent (which seemed to be Gopher home base) and another Columbus group had set up a giant beer tent. We approached the bar just as it was opening (11am) and found that every table was nearly instantly full of hockey fans. A Maine fan commented that they failed to drink the plane out of alcohol this time, while another complained that his first segment wouldn't serve him beer because the flight was only 55 minutes. I knew instantly that I was back home among hockey fans.

Sioux fans always travel well to these. Every bar, every tent, every restaurant was full of Sioux fans (and I hadn't even made it to the area of the team hotel yet). After the win we stopped at the outdoor tent and then at the Varsity Bar briefly to soak up some Sioux atmosphere and revel in the win; but, we quickly left to head closer to our hotel, about 10 miles out. Not quite ready to end the night, we stopped by a small bar in a strip mall about a mile from our hotel, where we found ourselves among the only patrons on a lazy Thursday night... at first. As the minutes ticked by, the Sioux fans kept trickling in, until every single table in the bar was full of rowdy Sioux fans, starting cheers and singing songs. One in my group (who was appropriately wearing a Sioux hat, but not a Sioux shirt) was approached at the bar by the establishment's lone non-Sioux patron who asked quietly, "where did all these North Dakota people come from?" She replied, "We're here for the college hockey tournament". The lone non-North Dakotan at the bar noticed the "we", then noticed her hat, and realized he had lost his lone compatriot.

Friday -- The day to fill

The next morning I woke up just before free breakfast ended, so threw on a Fighting Sioux sweatshirt and scurried downstairs. The lobby was full of Fighting Sioux fans, though one group had a Gopher fan in tow. They were perhaps the only somber people in the lobby, there was a palpable giddiness among the rest. Another Sioux fan relayed to me how a Gopher fan had told him at the Final Five that Sioux fans are like cockroaches. "In the good way, or bad way?", I asked while struggling to figure out the good way. "Wherever there's a hockey game, thousands of Sioux fans just scurry there." I decided that was the good way. Sioux fans kept streaming into the lobby, and the breakfast host commented to one, "I was afraid I made too much breakfast because it's normally empty by 10, but you all just keep coming". She also shared with another that she wasn't sure if we were all there for the Frozen Four because there was also a horse show. I think she's now aware that we're all here for the Frozen Four, not the horse show.

With no real plan for what to do on Friday in Columbus, we left the hockey-friendly confines of Columbus to visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. Though a 2-hour one-way drive, there were plenty of hockey fans there, so we weren't alone in our struggle to figure out how to burn all of our leisure time in Columbus. Like all museums visited as a tourist, I left wishing I had far more time than the few hours I spent there, but I can highly recommend it to any rock fan.

Saturday -- Game day

We visited Short North, Columbus' downtown revitalization district, on Saturday afternoon. It was as you would expect, nice bars, restaurants, eclectic shops (including a surprising number of a "mature" nature -- see "the entertainment" below). We managed to stall until about 3:30pm, when we headed to the UND reception at the team hotel.

The UND reception was like the others I've been to: a rousing pep rally filled with Sioux fans, the band marching in, and cheerleaders. $15 bought you access to a taco bar, but the cause was worthy. The usual lineup of speakers (Kupchella, O'Keefe, Harmeson) were joined by Eddie Belfour (former UND goaltender, NHL star, Vezina trophy winner). The crowd loved Eddied and goaded him into saying a few words with their continuous chants of "Eddie, Eddie". Mobbed by fans after the formal ceremony, Eddie happily signed autographs and posed for photos. Eddie rebuffed numerous attempts by UND officials to "save" him, stating that there were still people in line who wanted to meet him and that he thought that was cool.

My only words about the game -- the Sioux fans were loud until the end and stayed until every Sioux player had left the ice. CC and Maine fans were definitely cheering for the Sioux, and the only noticeable block of non-DU fans obviously biased toward DU were some groups of Gopher fans.

Most of the UND crowd leaves immediately after the championship game, win or lose. I've always found that baffling, but assumed it was related to travel times. Following the loss and not sure where to find the remaining Sioux fans, we decided to retire from the campus arena area to the more friendly confines of the bar near our hotel.

The destination

While I doubted Columbus as a vacation destination, we had a good time and the city was generally very nice. There was a high awareness of the tournament everywhere I went and good coverage in the local media. I always enjoy seeing what coverage the tournament will get in the host city's newspaper, and the Columbus Dispatch delivered. Finally, it's nice to have the Frozen Four in a climate that I actually want to visit in earl April; most days were 60-70F and sunny.

The "entertainment"

Though I can't claim Columbus has particularly more or fewer gentleman's clubs than any other city of its size, they were definitely more pervasive. Unlike most cities I visit, the official hardcover "Welcome to Columbus" guide in the hotel room contained dozens of "adult entertainment" ads, as did the softcover monthly events guide. Though I heard SiouxSports.com denizens favored "Danny's Platinum Fox", I found out too late to make an appearance, so will have to leave it to others to comment on if they're really worthy of being the seemingly primary focus of Columbus tourism.

Sioux fans

Sioux fans had a more impressive presence than any other team throughout the weekend with green jerseys everywhere around town (props to Minnesota for having a very good showing on Thursday, though it faded significantly after their loss).

I met many Sioux fans, including a couple who brought up discussions about SiouxSports.com, at which time someone in my group usually outs me (my wife frankly often chides me for never mentioning SiouxSports.com myself when talking to Sioux fans). Hopefully there will be many such opportunities to meet more of you in future years. I heard reports of Sioux fans meeting for the first time and greeting each other by exchanging SiouxSports.com handles -- stories like that remind me why I bother with the effort of the site.

The team

Thanks, Sioux, for giving me another season that I can point to as a reason I'm a Sioux fan. How closely I follow the Sioux has ebbed and flowed now that I live nearly 1500 miles away and have been out of UND for nearly 10 years, but with performances like this, you keep managing to suck me back in.