The University of Alabama’s hockey team is a budding program that was started by students in 2005. The
team continues to be fully student run and has gained enough support over the years to build a large team
and program.
“Alabama hockey is a fully student run organization with very little outside help from the school. Being
run kids running essentially a small business is both rewarding and challenging at the same time,” said
Matthew Keoshkerian, player and treasurer of the hockey team. “At the end of the day when everything
goes smoothly it’s fun to see it come to life and go out there to have fun and play hard.”
Keoshkerian takes responsibility over planning and managing the team’s budget along with playing
center. He works closely with president of the team Jacob Oldham and the rest of the student
management. Both players credit their job being possible to the other students working to make the
program possible.
“They help with all the ins and outs that people don’t really see,” said Oldham “They help take pictures,
they help all gameday operations, they make sure all social media is up to date, pretty much they make
sure all the inner pieces are running smoothly and it honestly makes my job a whole lot easier when they
are helping out.”
Oldham plays forward and is responsible for ensuring everyone is getting everything done and to
communicate with the university and league to keep the program running smoothly. He said he learned
some of the ropes from former the president who is his close friend giving him confidence to continue
growing.
The respect students involved in the hockey team have for eachother continues behind the scenes.
Savannah Murphy does photography and media for the team and has nothing but good things to say about
everyone she works with.
“I love the boys, theyre amazing and they really are there for you. They seek out conversations with the
interns so it’s not awkward at games, theyre all very approachable and so nice,” said Murphy “It’s become
another family for me. We carpool together to games in my car, so we’ve become really tight knit and i
love working with them so much.”
The team of girls behind the social media pages have built the team a platform.
“They’ve done a lot this year. They blew us up on tiktok. I think at the beginning of this year we were
pushing 4,000 followers and we’ve just reached like 12,000 which is super awesome,” said Oldham.
This is huge for the team to grow because with more fans and support they can get the more revenue and
university involvment. These aspects are key because of the inconvenience having a rink an hour away
brings. This makes fans getting to games, players getting to practice, and revenue opportunity
considerably more difficult.
There is a campaign called Alabama Build-A-Rink that helps grow the game through fundraising and
other efforts to build a rink closer to campus. This campaign has made progress and helps with the
financial burden building a rink would take, but the teams following and support is just as important to
make it a reality.
While university support and more resources is what the team is striving for, Murphy and Oldham agree
that they like the student run aspect.
“We love the student run. I think it’s great so other students can get involved because I feel like if we do
have more of a more authoratative run it would be a lot harder for students to get an opportunity to do
what they want to do kind of freely. They work with our schedules because they know us well because
they’re students,” said Murphy.
“I like the student run. It is always nice because the rec helps us a lot so we have our guys at the rec that
know what we’re doing and what is going on, but I like how it is student run right now. In the future we
will probably have more help from the university but right now I’m happy where we are,” said Oldham.
Giving the students these opportunities helps them further their resume and career. There are so many
different roles to apply for and get involved that students can do what they are interested and gain real-life
experience.
“I’m a finance major so, obviously, managing a $130,000 budget looks good on any resume. RIght now I
don’t know exactly what I want to do with my finance major, but nonetheless I am securing internships
and opportunities for my resume,” said Keoshkerian.
Alabama hockey has grown from one team to two mens teams and a womens team. The credit is due to all
the student that put in work to continue furthering the program.
