Little Fans Grow Up

By Bridget (Weide) Brooks

Last week, as part of my blog post about the "Salute to UNO Hockey" at the Storm Chasers game, I showed a picture of my three-year-old niece Emily with one of her (and EVERYONE's) favorite players, Jeff Hoggan.

Here's that picture again:

3-year-old Emily with Jeff Hoggan,
at a "Skate With the Mavs" event during the 1999-2000 season, I believe.
We still have that sweatshirt she's wearing. It was autographed by numerous players over the years.

Thanks to "good parenting" by her aunt and uncle (me and Jon), Emily (and her four younger sisters) have all grown up to become good UNO Maverick Hockey fans.

And that's the way it should be.

They start out when they're young, attending games, getting their favorite player's autograph in the lobby of the game after the Fite Song is sung ... and when they get old enough, they bid for a jersey in one of the silent auction fundraisers.

Okay, maybe not all of them do that, but Emily did ... spending her own hard-earned money (she's a lifeguard and pool manager at our neighborhood pool and works at Aksarben Cinema too) to buy the jersey of one of her favorite players, Johnnie Searfoss. Here's a couple of pictures of Emily and Johnnie.

The "Days Until Emily Birthday" countdown clock was from my "Big Day" app countdown, not hers.
I don't know what that says about me that the picture I have for her on my phone is her with HER favorite player!

One thing that worries me a bit with the move to our own campus arena (a smaller venue) is whether this will have an impact on growing our young fan base. Will having a smaller number of tickets available keep parents from bringing their kids to games, like we were able to do with Emily and her sisters as they were growing up?

Sure, we brought Emily to games at the sold-out Civic Auditorium (starting when she was 2 ... in fact, her first-ever game was the day her sister was born), but she was small enough to sit on my lap. By the time her sisters started coming to games, UNO had made the move to the Centurylink Center, where seats were plentiful, and $99 season ticket packages made it affordable to bring the whole gang.

Ticket prices have continued to go up, and their social lives and schedules have sometimes made it tough for them to attend games, but we had at least one of the five girls with us for every home game last season, I'm pretty sure.

Jon and I have purchased five season tickets for the 2015-16 season (up one from our 2014-15 allotment of four), with the idea that we'll be able to bring one or two of the nieces (or maybe even my other brother's two kids, who got to experience their first UNO Hockey game this past season). We're making a substantial investment in tickets so that we can ensure we're giving the opportunity to experience the next step for UNO Hockey to what will be the next generation of fans.

After all, little Maverick fans grow up to be big Maverick fans.

(And sometimes they even turn into UNO students. That won't be Emily -- although I tried! -- but maybe one or more of her sisters will choose UNO too.)

But if nothing else, they'll wear shirts that say "Omaha" on them from here on out, because once you're a Maverick hockey fan, you'll bleed crimson and black for the rest of your life.