The Arctic Freeze

When I played hockey, during my freshman year, our team played at a place know as The Arctic Freeze. The name of the ice arena pretty much sums up how poor the upkeep was. To start off, the rink was freezing and I was always shivering at the beginning of each period. Sure once my body heat kicked up I was able to get comfortable, but those first three minuets were horrible. Little to my knowing, my toes would go numb during both practices and games, but luckily I never noticed it. Aside from the cold, the arena was extremely dirty. The locker rooms were hardly cleaned, and the toilets never flushed. The showers had mold spreading all across the floor. The floors were littered with tape balls and trash. The locker rooms did not have the usual suffocating smell of sweat. Instead it had an odor of moldy puke and food; it smelled absolutely disgusting. Not only were the locker rooms extremely dirty, the entire facility had trash littered throughout. For example, the public bathrooms were rarely cleaned and they reeked of urine and other body fluids. To sum it all up, The Arctic Freeze was a run down place that desperately needed to be renovated.

The Dreams for The Arctic Freeze would eventually come true. The owner went bankrupt and it was put up for sale. This time, a rich native to Auburn, Ohio, the ice arena is in Auburn, bought the deteriorating place. The rink was closed for a few months in the summer and was reopened just in time for the season of my sophomore year. I still remember the first day I walked into the newly named Auburn Ice Palace. I was welcome with a surprising gust of warm air, this meant they had heat! As I made my way into the locker room, there was no horrible stench of moldy and rotten food. The locker rooms were clean and I felt comfortable in them. The best part of the locker rooms was that the toilets actually flushed! Once we finally hit the ice and began practice, I noticed that the rink was still cold, but not as freezing as it had been before. My toes never went numb and everything was good.

To this day, I still call the Auburn Ice Palace, The Arctic Freeze. There have been so many memories created in that arena and I refuse to call it something else. It is also brings humor to me and the guys who played there during its rough times because we remember how cold and run down it was. The word “freeze” is what reminds us of the poor conditions and the events that happened there. As far as continuing to use this facility, we used it for a year and then we got a new coach. Our new coach moved us to a new ice rink in Gilmour, Ohio. It was about the same distance away, but the facility was run by a private catholic school. The school is one of the best in Ohio and has an outstanding hockey program. Despite our team’s change in location, every time we played at the Auburn Ice Palace, myself and a few others in my grade had to correct the coach and younger players and tell them that it is know as The Arctic Freeze.