OHIO Hockey History at Bird Arena

      

        Having worked at Bird Arena for the past two years, I decided to take a look into the history of hockey at Ohio University. Hockey has always been a part of my life as I have played hockey since I was in the 5th Grade and continue to play recreational hockey at Bird two nights a week. I can remember waking up super early during my peewee days to drive down to Athens for a Saturday morning game at Bird. Bird Arena began as Bird Field house in 1956 when it was built with the intention of being used as a practice facility for football, basketball, and track. It did not take long for the university to realize that the building was not well suited for the intended activities. Fortunately for hockey loving Bobcats like myself, university President John Baker's wife enjoyed ice skating and convinced him to add an ice rink to the building. Before this time, students often skated on the Hocking River and frozen ponds around Athens in the winter months.
        The vision of hockey at Ohio University started in 1959 with the arrival of physical education teacher and former Boston College hockey player, John McComb. When John discovered that an ice sheet would be added to Bird, he talked to a bunch of students playing hockey on a pond on the Athens Lunatic Asylum grounds. He offered to teach them the game of hockey and be their coach. This began the new age of hockey at OU. Bird Arena was the only the second facility to house an indoor rink at a university in the state of Ohio. This allowed the Bobcats to make a name for them selfs nationally. In their first game ever, the bobcats defeated Ohio Northern by a score of 22-1. In the fifty years since the inaugural season, over one-thousand student athletes have played for the Bobcats with great success winning many league titles and three national championships.  
        The history of Bird Arena and Ohio Hockey are significant to the history of Ohio University and the Athens community as they represent a tradition that is decades old. Bird arena has provided a home to college  hockey in Athens as well as recreational hockey, figure skating, public skating and broom ball.
 
Works Cited
Gosiorowski, Tom. "History (Ohio Bobcats Hockey)." Ohio Bobcats Hockey. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2012. <http://ohiobobcatshockey.com/Pages/1010/History/>.