Few things in life stimulate my senses more than walking into an empty ice rink. The pristine sheet of white, the expanse of vacant seats and the gentle chill in the air set a scene of tranquility and promise for memorable nights to come.
Since I became the radio voice of Notre Dame hockey two months ago, I’ve seen a handful of empty collegiate barns for the first time. The wooden bleachers of St. Lawrence’s Appleton Arena and the outdated center-ice scoreboard at Clarkson’s Cheel Arena brought visions of old-school hockey to life. The creaking sounds of metal under my feet at Michigan’s Yost Ice Arena echoed with passion and tradition.
When on the road with the hockey team, I never miss a game day morning visit to the rink. I’ll sleep in and get my homework done on Sunday. Fridays and Saturdays will always belong to hockey. As the Irish take the ice to practice, I scope out every inch of the venue, taking in all vantage points and reading markers of history scattered throughout the concourse.
Last weekend, however, I didn’t need to do any of that. I was back at Michigan State’s Munn Ice Arena, a place I had already visited less than a year earlier. As I walked into the building for Saturday morning’s skate, I didn’t go upstairs to read about Ryan Miller’s Hobey Baker season or the Cold War game for a seventh time. I just picked out an empty seat behind the glass, sat down and began to think.
My first trip to East Lansing in December 2023 marked the beginning of a year that has changed everything. I pulled out of Lake Lot on an overcast Friday morning, frustrated by the previous month. I had been struggling with friendships, less than satisfied with the opportunities I was creating for myself in student media and dumbfounded that none of the eight Northwoods League baseball broadcasting internships I had applied for were amounting to anything.
Thankfully, the weeks and months that followed took care of those last two grievances, but the drive I made to Michigan State that December weekend wouldn’t be my last alone. Three hours to write for The Observer in East Lansing became five hours to call a game for student radio in Pittsburgh in January. Then four more hours to cover another February hockey series in Madison. And the magnum opus: a 22 hour round-trip to Albany to cover Notre Dame women’s basketball in the Sweet 16 over Easter weekend.
While I found a way to visit family on a couple of those trips, all of those miles on Midwest interstate highways I spent alone. As sophomore year wrapped up and I left home to spend the entire summer calling baseball games six hours away in Minnesota, I began to understand the dark side of chasing after the crazy life I wanted in sports media. Taking on the hockey position has forced me to accept it.
I didn’t go home for fall break because the Irish had a series in South Bend on both weekends. As this piece publishes, I’m not heading to Kansas City for a traditional Thanksgiving with my grandparents, but instead across the Atlantic Ocean to broadcast hockey games in Northern Ireland. With Notre Dame football likely to make the College Football Playoff and hockey scheduled to play in Chicago just after New Year’s Day, I’ll be home for a week at most this Christmas.
I miss out on perhaps even more during the school year. Because the standard college hockey series covers Friday and Saturday, Notre Dame hockey almost never plays at home on football weekends. I haven’t been inside Notre Dame Stadium since the Louisville game. My head sometimes begins to spin when I hear the Victory March cut through the television in my hotel room, rather than the stadium air.
Life looks very different now. Long gone are the slow freshman days of spending time almost exclusively around my dorm and covering hardly more sports than rugby. At times I feel as if I’ve put my college career on double speed, barreling into my post-graduation hopes with still so much left before I need to get there. It's like I’m playing a push-and-pull game with the present and the future. Stop to take a breath and regret the decision in 10 years, or attack the future and miss the chance to live right now?
Finding the right balance will challenge me more than any other broadcast assignment, production shift or exam over the next year and a half. I’ll spend plenty of time — too much time — questioning myself.
But I can count on one thing. When I step into that empty rink, be it down the street at Compton or across the pond in Belfast, I’ll have no second thoughts.
