With the Stanley Cup Finals in full force, let’s note every university in the Southeastern Conference has an ice hockey team.
These teams are not varsity but club, as so many scholastic hockey teams in the United States are.
Yet they’ve found a niche of their own. Tennessee’s team dates back to 1966. Alabama plays on a Division I level in the American Collegiate Hockey Association. Kentucky’s program has become famous for their midnight games and posters featuring some of the sexiest women ever to set foot in the Commonwealth, including Ashley Judd, Rebecca Gayheart, and Tara Conner wearing Wildcats sweaters and little else.
And one player, former Vanderbilt kicker Robbie Chura, has the distinction of playing both football and hockey at his university.
Though Commodores hockey dates back to 1976, its history is inconsistent.
“When I first started at Vanderbilt, there was no hockey team,” recalls Chura, a freshman in 1989. “At some point in time, somebody put up some flyers to find out if anyone was interested in starting a club team.”
The person in question was likely Peoria, Ill. native Rob Campbell, who ran the Vanderbilt hockey team at the time. Additionally, the Centennial Sportsplex had just opened near Vandy’s campus, so the time was right for a resurrection.
“I can remember looking through old yearbooks in the student lounge and there were pictures of Vanderbilt’s hockey teams,” said Chura, a St. Louis native. “Hockey was really my primary sport for most of my childhood. I thought that was something I’d devote my time to. I started playing hockey when I was 5 years old.
And since Chura wasn’t the primary kicker for the Commodores yet, why not go with one’s first love?
“I was a right wing/center,” said Chura, who, before scrapping the blades his senior season at De Smet Jesuit High to concentrate on kicking, had competed on the amateur hockey level with Team St. Louis. “We only had 20 guys, and it was in the offseason of football anyways. A little overlap, but because it was club and the small scale, nobody knew I was doing that.”
“Rob was a really good player, and one of the anchors on the team,” remembers Win Latham, who was one of the co-captains on Vandy’s hockey team. “Strong skater with good hockey sense. There was an article in the school paper that mentioned him scoring or getting an assist that said ‘That’s right, Vanderbilt’s placekicker!’”
It was also a time when Gerry DiNardo replaced Watson Brown as Vanderbilt’s football coach.
“When DiNardo came in, he was clear your commitment was to the (football) team. You have nice scholarships, and that’s what you’re here to devote your time to. There was never a conversation about it, but I figured it out on my own,” Chura said.
DiNardo placed small cards reading “WIN” in the facemasks of football helmets where the manufacturer’s brand name usually was. Additionally, DiNardo refused to utter the most horrible of words to a Commodore, “Tennessee,” and Vanderbilt rose from back-to-back 1-10 seasons to a level of respectability.
Reading the writing on the wall, Chura limited his college hockey career to the Commodores’ restart season of 1990-91 against the likes of his hometown Washington University, Emory, and the Ice Vols.
“I wasn’t trying to hide anything. It was probably me not being as thoughtful as I could, but saw I could play hockey again. I thought, ‘This will keep me in shape and be good.’ I wasn’t thinking of any injuries,” said Chura, who naturally as a club sport athlete had to pay his own way to take the ice.
Two years later, Chura became Vanderbilt’s first-string kicker. In three seasons of play for the Commodores, he never missed an extra point, and his 51-yard field goal in a 27-7 victory against Navy in 1992 was the seventh-longest such kick in school history at the time.
A Russian and German language major in college, today Chura teaches Russian at St. Louis University High School. He also is the offensive coordinator of the Jr. Billikens football team, who are coming off an 8-3 record, and is rather proud of the fact he has sent a few of his students to his alma mater.
Today, Vanderbilt is part of the South Eastern Collegiate Hockey Conference with nine other SEC schools, playing on a Division III level in ACHA.
The four SEC members who are not part of the conference — Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, and Texas A&M — play at a higher level than the SECHC offers.
Georgia was the SECHC champion last season after posting a perfect 9-0 record in the conference and a 19-3 overall mark.
Ole Miss graduate student John Jenks, the Vice President of Fundraising for the Rebels’ hockey team, even has ambitions of an SEC school playing hockey at their football stadium, much the same way many varsity programs and NHL teams have.
But if Jenks is successful, thanks to Chura, it will only be the second time SEC football and hockey mixed.
