Cal Lutheran Warms to the Craze of Hockey

It was an accident, really.

Wayne Frye, a professor at Cal Lutheran, said that he was just looking for a way to give his marketing students some practical experience. He never envisioned the minor wave of madness that the Cal Lutheran hockey team has inspired since it was formed last season.

“The whole thing basically evolved from a marketing project,” Frye said. “It was so successful, we just ended up with a hockey team.”

And a following.

Using flyers, posters and newspaper advertisements, Frye’s students--who could sell Zamboni machines to desert dwellers--have given a twist to an old expression: What if you started a hockey program and everybody came?

Before Wayne Gretzky skated onto the Forum ice for the Kings, the Kingsmen were packing fans into the Conejo Valley Ice Skating Center, which is located inside an abandoned discount store in Newbury Park.

The rink has a seating capacity of about 200, but last year the Kingsmen attracted audiences as large as 600. Last Wednesday’s opener against UCLA drew 500. As a comparison, the football game Saturday at Cal Lutheran between the Kingsmen and Portland State drew about 400.

“We’ve reached the point where we’d actually like to limit access because of the crowds,” said Frye, who is the team’s coach. “We have people coming in an hour to an hour-and-a-half early to get seats.”

Pretty heady stuff for a club program that went 13-7 last season.

The Kingsmen compete in the 14-team Pacific Coast Collegiate Hockey Assn., which is broken into 2 divisions.

CLU, Cal State Northridge, UC Irvine, UCLA, USC, Caltech and Pepperdine compose the Worden Division.

UC Berkeley, Stanford, Arizona State, Cal State Fullerton and second teams from UCLA and USC compose the Adams Division.

The Cal Lutheran roster consists of 20 players, including 8 Norwegians, 2 Finns and a Canadian.

The Kingsmen try to blend the finesse of their European players with the blue-collar style preferred by most of the league’s teams.

“The rinks are much smaller and the people are much bigger than what I was used to,” said wing Truls Midtbo, who is from Oslo. “The game here is tougher. I was amazed at the amount of hitting and fighting. I thought it was pretty fun.”

Players, however, aren’t altogether thrilled with the team’s practice schedule, which consists of once-a-week workouts Sunday nights at 10:30.

“In Minnesota, high schools practice two hours a day and we get two hours a week,” said John DeVries, who grew up in hockey-crazed Edina, Minn. “It’s tough to get everyone there at that hour. It’s hell.”

For the fans, however, the results of the players’ efforts have been heavenly.

“People really get into it,” Midtbo said. “That was really amazing when we had 600 people telling us to kill people. It gives you kind of a push in the back.”

As coach, Frye pushes for a good show. Frye, 41, grew up in North Carolina and started playing hockey in the Army. Until last year, his coaching experience was limited to 12- and 13-year-olds.

“The fact that we have Wayne as the leader makes the whole thing fun,” Midtbo said. “It’s like a show. He says, ‘No. 1, you’re entertainers. No. 2 you’re hockey players.”

To that end, the Kingsmen are already giving away vacations, stereos and televisions during games. The promotional philosophy should serve them well when the Conejo rink is moved to an as yet undetermined location in 1991.

In January, the team will make a tour of Norway. Those kinds of opportunities seem certain to keep the program attracting players as it skates toward success.

“I figured that when I came out to California, I wouldn’t be able to play hockey,” said Jim Berguson, who grew up in Minnesota and Colorado. “To have the warm weather and still be able to play, well, it’s great.”