Legendary UNO Hockey Coach Joins the Show

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm ready to go. I'm fired out of a cannon.
I am so excited because guess what, It's hockey season
officially here in Omaha. And my team that I follow religiously,
not just because I'm at every single game, but because
they really do represent Omaha in a great way in
an incredible sport is the Omaha Mavericks Hockey team. And

(00:20):
I'm being joined by a legend who is synonymous with
this program and this sport in Omaha, Mike Camp, the coach.
He is here in the studio. Coach, thanks so much
for coming in.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Well, thanks, Emory. It's my pleasure to be here. I
always loved coming down to Kfab and talking whenever I'm.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Asked, well, I gotta tell you this hockey program. When
I first moved to Omah a couple of years ago, I
knew that going to a hockey game at Baxter Arena
was something that was kind of appointed emphasis before I
could become a true Omaha resident. And I had so
much fun. At the first game I went to. I
was super impressed with the arena. I was like, Wow,
this is a great arena. And then as I dug

(00:57):
in more and I learned more, about the program and
then eventually was hired to do the intermission stuff. I
just realized how deep this program has roots despite being
only you know, a quarter century old. You go back
to the beginning here, tell me where the genesis of
this program and just the effort that was made by

(01:18):
this institution to make hockey what it has become for
this school.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
Well, you go back to nineteen ninety six, ninety five,
ninety six. It was an incredible investment by the university.
There was a you know, Del Weber who was the
chancellor at that time, and the legendary Don Leahy as
athletic director, had a vision that they could make our
Division two institution nationally identified by starting a Division one

(01:45):
hockey program. And they worked with a group of civic
leaders to kind of formulate what the idea for the
program would be, and you know, amazing things that came
to be. Of course, they had to convince the city
up to do grades to the civic auditorium so that
it could have ice. It had never had ice. They
did a huge renovation of the city did of the

(02:07):
Civic to allow us to have a home when they started,
and then they went out and sold tickets. They sold
tickets in May, first month of May fourth in nineteen
ninety five for a team that was not going to
start until nineteen ninety seven, and the tickets were sold out.

(02:28):
The building was sold out in sixteen days, with commitments
down payments to tike four tickets. And that was without
any players, without a schedule, without a coach, with nothing
other than the fact that they were going to have
a program that would start in nineteen ninety seven. I
had the fortune of being hired in June and July

(02:50):
actually of nineteen ninety six. Came down here, had nothing
but a desk and a phone, and of course, in
those days we weren't dealing with cell phones. We weren't
necessarily dealing with the technology today, and we commenced to
put together a program, and I hired David Quinn, who
of course has gone on to coach in the NHL
at both New York Rangers and the San Jose Sharks,

(03:13):
currently as an assistant coach of the New York Rangers,
he being being my first hire, and the two of
us went out and recruited that first team. We added
Steve Rollock the following spring was now the head coach
at Ohio State, and those guys are kind of formed
a group that went out and created a program that
I'm extremely proud of twenty six years later to see

(03:38):
what it has become. Probably and I think the benchmark
if you look at those first teams we had where
we brought players from every place else but Omaha. They
were from Canada, across the country of Canada, they were
across the country the United States. They came here. And
what I'm probably most proud of is the fact the

(03:58):
number of players from those first teams that are still
here living in Omaha, contributing to our community, you know,
coaching youth hockey, working in charity in the community. It's
something that I'll always be very proud of.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Well, coach Mike Kemp joining us here, your name's on
the ice for a reason. Unprecedented success for a school
like you mentioned that wasn't even a Division one school
at the time. I know that the football program, the
wrestling program, a lot of people, you know, they remember
and have great memories and fond memories of that. But
if you look at how much this hockey program has

(04:34):
meant to the elevation of status of this athletic department
and of this school. It's really something. And you got
number twenty Minnesota State coming in for non conference hockey,
very important games here tonight and tomorrow at Baxter Arena.
And you walk into Baxter if you've never been there before,
it is something else. It is a very interesting arena.
It is designed very uniquely, and it holds sound amazingly.

(04:59):
You have great crowds every single game that you know,
get seven eight thousand people just packed into this really
intimate field. There's not a bad seat in the house.
Take me through this arena and what the thought process
was on making it what it has become, which really
is one of the premier I think buildings in all
of college athletics.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
Well, thank you. You know, when we went back and
looked at what we wanted to build when the time came,
you know, we had great civic partners, community partners that
were helping us design and build this building. And the
one thing we wanted to do is we wanted to
recreate the Civic Auditorium. The Civic Auditorium was one of

(05:38):
the best buildings I've ever been in as far as
fan engagement and entertainment, and so we wanted it to
be very steep, because of course the Civic was vertical.
We wanted the fans to be right on the top
of the ice. So with our design going with a
candle levered second deck over the lower bowl, making the

(06:00):
out closer to the action if you're in the upper bowl.
It was going to enhance the entire experience for the
people in the building, plus help us to kind of
centerize cent centralize where the sound was going to be,
so it would make it louder, more intimidating. You know,
it was really amazing when I was coaching several of

(06:21):
the coaches when they announced it was made that we
were going to move from the Civic Auditorium to at
that point in time, the Century Link Building or actually
Quest Center, the now CHI Highest Health Center. Several of
the more famous coaches in college hockey in that era,
the Ron Mason's The Red Bearonsons of the World at

(06:42):
Michigan State and at Michigan All was said to me,
what are you moving for? This building is really intimidating.
It's one of the toughest places we have to play.
So with that in the back of our mind, when
we decided to start designing our own building, we wanted
to try to recreate that home ice advantage, that experience.

(07:02):
Thus why we have the benches on opposite sides of
the ice, which is so unique home ice advantage. We
were looking for those kind of I was trying to
design those types of things into the design so we
would get an edge of everything that we did.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
The benches are incredible. I first showed up, I was like,
what is going on here? Because usually for those who
haven't been to a hockey game, first of all, Backstorrena
is a perfect place to go to your first one.
You have the two benches, and then there's kind of
a space in between the two benches where maybe official sit.
A lot of times the announcer, the officials will be
on the opposite side, in between two penalty boxes. You

(07:38):
did not do that here at backst Arena. It is
very unique. You have the home bench next to the
penalty boxes and then the away benches on the other
side of the ice. It creates a wild environment of
other coaches kind of mentioned to you after this building open,
just like what were you thinking here?

Speaker 2 (07:55):
Well, yes, you know, and that was one of the
things with the design. I wanted to put in things
that I hated about other buildings, and I was going
to put them into our building. And one was putting
the bench on the opposite side with no exit off
the bench except on the ice. So you got to
walk out there in your street shoes. You get your
leather bottomed soles at slip where you're worried about following

(08:17):
as you go to the bench. It's an irritant. The
other thing is our staff and our our equipment. People
have access to our locker room and our equipment room
ten feet away from the bench. The visiting team has
to wait for a stopage of play, they have to
get off the bench. They have to go through the
student section to go behind the student section to get

(08:38):
back to their locker room for any kind of equipment repairs.
So the theory behind that was if they had to
do that, we could keep their best player maybe off
the ice for three, four or five minutes of the
game and give ourselves a tremendous home ie advantage. The
same thing with having the penalty boxes directly next to

(08:58):
our bench, players get out of the box and right
into our bench, so we make a quick change. The
visiting team player has to come off and go all
the way across the ice, which may require him to
stay on the ice out of position for a while
before he can get to the bench to get the
right change made. So those were kind of the thought

(09:19):
processes of that. And of course having the visiting team
come through the student section to go on the ice
was another one, because I always remember a couple other
places where we had to do that. One in particular
Alaska Anchorage. I'll always remember this. It was at a
time when I was my hair was really receding and
there was bald spots, but I had my pat Riley

(09:42):
hair going over nice back over the overcovering up. And
I always remember going off through their student section and
all the students yelling at me, going comb over, comb over,
And I thought, well, okay, I'm going to add that
to our building.

Speaker 1 (09:56):
It's a smart head. Coach, Mike Kemp's with us. We're
going to take a break, come back with more. We're
going to preview this year's team that's going to be
on the ice. Coach camp is at all the games
still even if he's not on the bench, and you'll
see his name on the ice when you go to
a backsto arena. Now you're just a great ambassador for
this program. You're seeing in all of these games. They're
about to start their season tonight at number twenty Minnesota State.
You might be thinking out there, it's like Minnesota State.

(10:18):
I didn't know that this was a thing, but you
just informed me. This is actually a rivalry and there's
a trophy.

Speaker 2 (10:23):
Yeah, it goes back to the first years of our program.
They elevated from Division two to Division one at the
same year that we started our program, and it was
a two guys that were presidents of the blue line
clubs of each team, both schools being Mavericks, and they said,
you know, we should have a traveling trophy for this
because we started early on playing this series and we

(10:45):
had played it most years, not all years, but most
since nineteen ninety seven ninety eight, and so they started
this traveling trophy called the Spirit of the Mavericks Trophy,
and it's awarded every year to the team that wins
the series. We held it for quite a few years.
We lost it last year up at man Cato. But
it's a two game series, so what happens is if

(11:06):
the team wins, a team wins both games automatically, you're
going to have it. If a team wins one game
each then it's going to be a total goals will
decide who gets the trophy, and if they're tied in
total goals, then the team that had the trophy keeps it.
So Minnesota State has it now. It's a beautiful trophy

(11:26):
and so we're going to be fighting for it over
the weekend and hopefully we keep it. We'll get it
back here in Omaha.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yeah, for sure. Kemp I is at Baxter Arena seven
o'clock tonight and tomorrow. I had a chance to see
this team in action. With the exhibition game against air
Force went to overtime. We're able to finish it off
in overtime. Air Force does have a solid hockey program,
but it's not the caliber of the teams in this
conference that the Mavericks are going to have to try
to work their way through. Just outside the rankings to

(11:55):
start the season, Minnesota State's number twenty the cutoff line. Essentially,
what can we expect for this team because there is
a lot of returning names that people would recognize that
they know the team, but also there's a lot of
new guys in youth and a lot of Canadians who
are a bit part of this program.

Speaker 2 (12:11):
This year, well in this year, you know, in this
current age of college hockey, and it's totally changed. And
you know, I've been in college hockey for fifty years.
This is my fiftieth year. Wow, actually working and I
still do work a little bit for the university. It's
fifty years and it's changed dramatically. You know, we're seeing
tremendous turnover. Players are you know, the new transfer portal

(12:35):
and with a new Canadian Hockey League being able to
be eligible now for the first time ever to play
college hockey, we're seeing a real transition of players into
the game. And again this year more than half of
our team has turned over. So to know exactly what
we're going to expect, it's kind of like Christmas. We

(12:55):
don't know what we're going to get. We're going to
have to open the package and see. But it's going
to be very interesting watching our exhibition game, watching our
intersquad scrimmage. I've watched several practices. I like the tea,
the way it looks. Many of the new players who
brought in are mature, older players with high skill levels,
it's exciting, you know. And then we have a couple

(13:17):
of younger ones. Jeremy Lrange, who is a two thousand
and seven birthday. He's going to be the youngest player
on our team. He's coming up like a true freshman
like Jake Gonzel did when he was a freshman, coming
in straight out of twelfth grade. He is really a
super talent. Led the British Columbia Junior League last year

(13:38):
in scoring. He's a kid for the future. He's going
to be a star, as will Joel plant who's another
young freshman that's coming in as a true freshman. And
then we have some really high level incomers like Brett Hyland,
who's an experienced major junior player a little older with
again high talent level. I think we have a lot

(13:58):
to look forward to with this group, and we're getting
great leadership from those returning seniors. We're fortunate to have
a senior class that was was groomed under some of
the great leadership we've had in the previous five years
of this program. And I think those older players like
the Griffin lud Keys, like the Simon Latcozzi's, the Jacob

(14:21):
guy Vans, Cam Mitchell, Jacob Slippeck, Miles Hillman. Those people
are coming in and being able to kind of give
the newer group a kind of idea of what the
culture is here. And I think what you see with
the Mike gab and a team is we may start
out a little slow, but by the end of the season,

(14:41):
this team's going to be clicking on all eight cylinders
and will look very very good.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
Definitely going to want to try to get wins or
at least a win against the ranked team here worked
their way. That was one thing last year started a
bit too slow, kind of fell out of favor in
the rankings, and by the time things got turned around,
they were able to rally, but kind of in a
we have to win the conference tournament to make it
to the Big Dance otherwise. But it's gonna be fantastic.
We're gonna do a lot of coverage on this all

(15:07):
season long. We'll certainly be talking to the legendary coach
Mike Kemp throughout the year to update this. Coach. I
can't thank you enough for coming in here. Can't wait
to see you in the arena tonight.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
Thanks very much, appreciate it. Emily