Knoxville has embraced the Ice Bears, and the hockey team has embraced the city | Opinion
Knoxville’s reputation as a sports town extends far beyond the prominence and pageantry of the Tennessee Vols. Few settings compare to a sold-out Neyland Stadium or a packed Thompson-Boling Arena at Food City, but the city doesn’t receive enough credit for how it has supported teams outside of the University of Tennessee.
Minor league baseball has been an East Tennessee staple for decades, and now the Tennessee Smokies are slated to return to Knoxville. One Knoxville SC has brought professional soccer back to the city with great fan support.
Then there are the Knoxville Ice Bears, who survived the ending of two leagues, became founding members of a third and fought through the COVID-19 pandemic to break through into the team’s third decade of existence.
25 years straight of hockey in Knoxville
The Ice Bears are the fourth professional ice hockey franchise in Knoxville, all of which have been hosted at the Knoxville Civic Coliseum. The eras of the Knights, Cherokees, Speed and now the Ice Bears have totaled 41 professional seasons since the arena was built in 1961. After a brief hockey hiatus following the departure of the Cherokees in 1997, the consecutive run of the Speed and Ice Bears has now reached 25 straight years of hockey in Knoxville.
In what many would consider a nontraditional hockey market, the city has embraced the sport, largely because the sport has embraced the city. Former players have often made their permanent homes here following their playing careers. Multiple youth hockey programs have been established in East Tennessee by former players and coaches. Others have stuck around and have stayed involved in the sport despite working in non-hockey careers.
Knoxville is a special place for sports
That type of career path certainly sounds common for a student-athlete from a major university such as UT, but how does an independent minor league hockey team in the South attract northerners and Canadians hundreds of miles from their hometowns? It makes Knoxville a special place. Especially for sports.
Money spent through Ice Bears games is effectively reinvested into the city of Knoxville. The team emphasizes supporting those who support the Ice Bears. Fans are great about doing business with partners of the organization and players are informed about which restaurants, pet stores, automotive shops and other businesses to seek out for personal needs while they’re in town. Jobs are created as a result of the team's presence as well.
The Ice Bears have now played more than 600 home games at the Coliseum. That happens only with fan support from a community whose passion for its sports teams rivals any other. One doesn’t have to dig too far to see the depths of the Ice Bears' fandom. From having a back tattoo of the team’s logo to boasting a jersey collection that spans 20-plus years, it's what makes players and coaches praise the atmosphere as one of the best to play in and, in many cases, a nightmare for opponents.
It’s for these reasons, among many others, that so many people who have attached themselves to the Knoxville Ice Bears brand in some fashion end up attaching themselves to this community. Players and coaches turn from temporary visitors to permanent residents. One-time spectators become season ticket-holders. The community is infectious regardless of which sport appeals to someone the most.
So whether you’ve purchased just one of more than 2 million game tickets sold over the past 22 years or you’re ringing cowbells the size of my torso along with the rest of the M1 Mafia on a nightly basis, please know that the support from this city has not gone unnoticed by the players, coaches, owners and team employees who make this sport a large part of their lives year-round.
So thank you, Knoxville, for being home to a franchise that has invested as much into this city as it has invested into this nontraditional sport. We hope to keep it that way for many years to come. We’re grateful to the city’s administration for its investment in our team over the years and are simply asking that it continues.
Joel Silverberg is a Knoxville native and serves as the play-by-play broadcaster for the Knoxville Ice Bears and a producer at 99.1 The Sports Animal.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Opinion: Knoxville embraces hockey as Ice Bears embrace the city
