By: Trey Layfield
Athens is a town known for its sports culture, from the UGA football team winning back-to-back national championships to the 1990 College Word Series. One thing that links all of Athens sports culture is the University of Georgia. UGA is the very fabric of the town when it comes to sports … until 2024. This is when the Athens Rock Lobsters were born.
The Athens Rock Lobsters have only had a team for a year and they have already taken Athens by storm. The Rock Lobsters, who play in Akins Ford Arena, are a minor league ice hockey team. In the teams first year, they managed to finish the season in second place in the Continental Division of the Federal Prospect Hockey League (FPHL) They also had the league’s Most Valuable Player in forward Garrett Milan and Defensemen of the Year in team captain Carter Shinkaruk. With the addition of new head coach Garrett Rutledge, a CHL Memorial Cup winner and former FPHL Coach of the Year, this team shows no signs of slowing down.
The Rock Lobsters have to face plenty of challenges being a local team in a warm weather state. “One of the biggest challenges of being in a small market like Athens is visibility,” said Scott Hull, president of the Athens Rock Lobsters. “Whether its corporate sponsors, media outlets, or venue venue availability, we don’t always have the depth a bigger city might offer.”
The Rock Lobsters have to be extra creative in the small market that they inhabit due to the nature of the sports business. Despite this, the Rock Lobsters have posted the third best attendance average in the league and the best attendance for a team in the southern half of the league.
The Rock Lobsters are able to do this due to the exact reason it can be difficult to succeed — the Athens area and its small market. “Being in a college town like Athens is a massive advantage that goes far beyond just having a built in population,” Hull said. “You’ve got a young, passionate audience that’s always looking for something exciting to do, and when we bring the lights down and the puck drops, its an experience that fits right into that culture of entertainment and community.”
The team has quickly become a part of the fabric that UGA has taken up for decades. This ground level link with the community has made the team a fundamental part of the sport culture within Athens.
The sport of ice hockey is growing throughout the Southeast, which is one reason why the Rock Lobsters are getting so big within the city. “The South is providing one of hockey’s fastest-growing frontiers, just look at the success stories; The Florida Everblades (three titles in four years in the ECHL), the Florida Panthers (back-to-back Stanley Cup championships) have made huge momentum in recent years. From a players perspective, this has drawn them down south due to the warm weather off the ice,” Hall said.
We are not fighting the cold down here, we are embracing it and using our lack of it to our advantage.”
The South is getting bigger and bigger when it comes to hockey, when even 30 years ago, there were only two NHL teams and almost no lower-level teams in the south.
Hall hopes the Rock Lobsters are going to continue to be popular in Athens, further fueling hockey’s growth in the South. The Rock Lobsters have created a culture that runs deeper then just the locker room and the ice, it has spread all across Athens and Northeast Georgia as they continue to rise with the region.
Rock Star Writers Blog 