On Wed, 7 Dec 1994, John Kohlstrand wrote: > > But when I was there Bowling Green fans were great. Not all students of the > game, but great, great fans. BGSU Ice Arena was a fun place to watch hockey > then. > > John Kohlstrand > Bowling Green '92 > When I went to Bowling Green (1971-1975) it was a fun place to watch hockey, too. Hockey was the only sport where you could count on seeing a lot of winning games and the fans really got into the game. There were special cheers for the teams we saw the most during the year and everybody had a great time at the game. The crowds were pretty rowdy, but I don't remember anybody being particularly bloodthirsty (OTOH, it was 20 years ago!) The cheers I remember particularly were a cheer that said the word Guelph like a sound seal makes (for some reason we didn't like Guelph), shouting "Bozo" at an OSU player who had long, curly red hair that stuck out of his helmet like Bozo the clown, and, of course, all of the yells at the refs. One of our favorite things, rarely seen, was a ref sandwich where one player from each team banged into each other with a ref in the middle. This got the crowd as excited as anything else. I don't remember any of this as being mean-spirited. It was just a bunch of excited kids blowing off steam. None of us wanted anybody to get hurt. I can remember, a number of times, seeing players from the other team down on the ice, hurt, and the crowd applauding when he got up and skated to bench, apparently unhurt. I don't know what the crowds at BG are like now, but 20 years ago they were just a bunch of kids out for a good time. You're right, though, many of the fans were just learning about hockey. For me and my 3 brothers who went to Bowling Green those were the first hockey games we'd ever seen. We all loved it and we're all still hockey fans. Carol