Ice Bears making a mark in inaugural season

After a season high crowd of 4,755 Saturday night, the Knoxville Ice Bears, a first year franchise in the Atlantic Coast Hockey League, are proving that Knoxville is not just a college sports town. The crowd was the Ice Bears second consecutive over 4700. They currently lead the league in attendance and General Manager Tommy Benizio says that position did not come by accident. “We’re leading the league in attendance and have earned the largest increase in all of pro hockey,” said Benizio, who has spent that past 11 years in professional hockey, and comes to Knoxville after a two-year stint in El Paso, Texas, where he was responsible for a major attendance increase for that team. “God has been a part of this. He’s put me on the path to be here and we operate to please him. It’s important to us as a franchise to take care of two groups specifically—our guests and our partners. Our guests are anyone who has a ticket, they’re not fans or customers, they’re our guests here. Our partners are local corporations that we help through advertising.” Benizio said that he moved to Knoxville seven months ago “to start this business,” and that the team is up 50% in attendance over what last years team, the now defunct Knoxville Cherokees, did. Benizio said that one of the keys has been that there is a core group of hockey fans in Knoxville who will support the team regardless. But since he took over, the franchise has been trying to reach out to all demographics of people who are just looking for something interesting to do on a Saturday night, or any night for that matter. “It’s important to us that there is more going on than just the hockey game,” Benizio stated. “We try to have something for everybody. If you notice, our audience is 50% female, and a lot of kids. We’ve had many interesting promotions that are appealing whether you love hockey or not. You might come for a give-away or a post-game concert. This is an easy event to get hooked on.” According to Benizio, it doesn’t hurt that the team is competitive and enjoyable to watch. The Ice Bears are currently 28-20 and in second place in the ACHL behind the Orlando Seals (38-12). The Ice Bears fell to the Seals 3-2 Saturday night, failing to gain any ground with the playoffs fast approaching in March. “We’re doing very well,” Benizio commented. “We’re put together a more experienced team and they’ve kept us solidly in second place all year long.” The team is guided by Head Coach Tony Martino, whose overall record and winning percentage are among the best in minor league hockey over the past three seasons. Martino is known as a master recruiter and has said that his goal is to assemble the finest hockey team that Knoxville has ever seen. Fans have picked up on Benizio and Martino’s approach to building the team. “Knoxville is a hockey town,” said season ticket holder Alan Fleming, who along with his wife Christy attend every Ice Bears home game. “There is a core group of fans who come to games no matter what. The difference now is that the owners, the staff, the players and everybody associated with the team are trying to get the community involved. There is a television commercial that says ‘Knoxville, it’s your team’, and they’re really doing a good job of selling that.” Christy Fleming said that she wasn’t originally a hockey fan, but after seeing her first game in person, she was pretty much hooked from thereon. “I’m from the Tri-Cities and there is just not a lot of talk about hockey there,” said Christy Fleming. “But after I moved to Knoxville, Alan dragged me kicking and screaming to a Cherokees game. After that I kept asking ‘when is the next game.’” Philip Ary, the Ice Bears’Director of Game Operations, attributes much of the franchise’s success to the Knoxville Speed’s demise last season, which didn’t sit well with a lot of hard-core hockey fans. He believes that those fans are just excited to see a quality product on the rink night in and night out. “The Speed was one of the worst teams in hockey history,” said Ary, who worked as an intern for the Speed. “They ended up going bankrupt, it was horrible. There was a lot of bad blood between the fans and the team. So the first thing that we’ve tried to do is get those people to come back, and they have. We get calls every day and it keeps getting better. We’re competing with basketball right now, which is not as bad as football, but Tennessee played Florida today and we still had our biggest crowd of the season. “Having a successful team doesn’t hurt us either,” Ary continued. “This team has been marketed better than any team that we’ve ever had here. There’s no doubt that if somebody comes to their first hockey game here, they’ll come back. Everybody that I’ve talked to has come back after their first game, and they usually bring their friends.”