New York, NY -- NYU freshmen Kai Ocean and Emma Poltrack had a dilemma. Avid fans of NYU's ice hockey team, the duo wanted to advertise their pride at home games through their wardrobe. The problem is that NYU doesn't sell hockey jerseys.
"NYU doesn't provide us with much - just T-shirts with the word 'hockey' on them," Ocean said. "We wanted to go the extra mile like real fans."
Now, clad in purple-and-white face paint and self-decorated white-and-purple jerseys, Ocean and Poltrack are just two of the nearly 100 die-hard fans who trek to Chelsea Piers to experience NYU hockey, which is quickly becoming one of the more popular sports at a college where most of the student body is rather apathetic to athletics.
Add to the equation the fact that the hockey team only plays at the club level, while teams like fencing and women's volleyball are varsity teams that compete in the NCAAA, and the fan turnout might seem rather shocking.
At last Friday night's game against Montclair State University, about 100 fans spent the entire game screaming the names of players and chanting "N-Y-U" while thumping the benches with their feet.
Passions often run high in the crowd. If the fans aren't shouting at the refs for bad calls, they're shouting at the fans who are cheering for the opposition.
It's this atmosphere, fans say, that makes the games so appealing.
"Hockey's just a more visceral sport," Poltrack said. "[With] other sports we're good at, it's hard to really get into cheering at the moment. With hockey, you just get drawn in."
And it would appear that the fans who do get drawn in, get drawn in for good.
Boyd Hottenstein has been attending NYU hockey games for nine years. Dressed in an old NYU jersey he got from Assistant Coach Elizabeth Miller, Hottenstein is a fixture at home games, sitting directly behind the home-ice net.
Hottenstein first heard about the hockey team in 1995, when he arrived at NYU to study applied mathematics as a graduate student. As a life-long hockey fan, he said he decided it might be fun to attend a game.
"It was free and I could walk here from my home," Hottenstein said. "I quickly realized that watching this was just as fun as watching NHL hockey."
Hottenstein said he got hooked and just kept coming back. And in light of the recent NHL lockout, he doesn't see his love for the team fading anytime in the near future.
"They always play hard," he said. "And I know they're not quitting anytime soon."
Other fans came out of love and stayed for the game.
Laura Marchesani, for instance, the girlfriend of junior goaltender Steele Filipek, has become quite a fan.
"Originally, I only came because of Steele," Marchesani said. "But after a while I began to really understand the sport. Now I come because I genuinely love hockey."
Marchesani, who is acquainted with other players' girlfriends, said her story isn't unique. Many girlfriends adopt the sport after coming out of loyalty.
"We always come," she said. "They don't expect us to come. But we always do, because we really learn to love it."
Thankfully, fans like Marchesani aren't just falling in love with hockey; they're bringing new people to the sport as well.
Gallatin junior Lisa Maniglia attended her first NYU sporting event last Friday night with Marchesani. Despite her prior fears that she wouldn't take to the oil-and-water that appears to be NYU and sports, she enjoyed the experience.
"It was very exciting," Maniglia said. "I don't really know the rules. I don't know everything about the sport. But for my first NYU sporting event, I enjoyed myself."
And for Maniglia, it probably won't be her last game.
"I'd definitely come back again," she said.
Judging from the turnout this season, that seems to be a consensus.