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Fremont is Nebraska's Hockeytown

By Jason Buzzell, 01/27/25, 3:15PM CST

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The following was sent to the Fremont Tribune and posted across social media and is the author's personal views.

I write to you to inform you, whether you know it or not, Fremont is Nebraska’s Hockeytown.

My name is Jason Buzzell. I have lived in Nebraska now for a combined 15-plus years on two different occasions after growing up in New England, Montana, and parts of Canada. I have now lived in Fremont for almost four of them. One of the many reasons we moved to, and live in Fremont now, is because of hockey and the sense of community around it at the rink.

Recently, as you may or may not know, parents of hockey players took it upon themselves to save the rink as it had reached an age where deferred maintenance had threatened to make ice skating and hockey in Fremont not possible after close to 20 years at Sidner. 

The operation of the rink until 2029 is now done by SETT, LLC, owned by a parent of hockey kids in the program with family connections to those from Fremont. Every single dollar was privately raised. Much of the construction and work done by local businesses and people connected to the community and hockey. The family operates it just to keep the lights on, and give the kids a place to play locally.

As you can see, the rink, and the sport, are a little different than anything else you can probably imagine. Picture the fields in town or gyms closing down, and the only solution would be for parents to create a business and pay for it, so they can keep them alive and operate them or the sports and kids would be forced to drive, or even move and live in, neighboring towns to continue to play.

It wouldn’t happen.

Fremont also has numerous coaches who have played junior, college and even pro hockey at the NHL level at the moment. The equivalent of having multiple former Huskers and Chiefs players coaching football for example. That’d be quite a story in and of itself.

In addition to this excellence and commitment to keep the sport and ice going at the very basic level of keeping the lights on, you may or may not also know that teams from Fremont are REALLY GOOD. 

Despite the challenges of a pandemic hitting right after the program launched its Varsity hockey program in 2018, success has continued. Most recently with:

  • The Fremont Tigers, a recreational/house team at the high school age level, won the Omaha league just a couple of years ago in 2022.
     
  • In 2023, the first ever all girls team was rostered and a game at Fremont was hosted. Girls currently play co-ed but the program has already produced several high-end girls players, including a couple collegiate players in its short history. 
     
  • The Nebraska Warbirds, who practice and play out of the Sidner Ice Arena and under the Fremont Ice Association, won the USA Hockey 14U 1A National Championship in 2024.
     
  • Five teams from the Fremont Ice Association have qualified by winning the Westminster Colorado Regional tournaments to attend an International Silver Stick Final three years in a row now (2022-2024) in Michigan and Ontario, Canada.
     
  • Most importantly, we hit a growth milestone this year of being the largest since the program’s inception. Now larger than Sioux City, and almost equal to Lincoln’s program, both of which have long-time USHL teams and multiple sheets of ice in their towns.

But even without the accolades and good teams or if you don’t even care about sports, hockey impacts the community in ways other sports can’t. Sidner hosts several weekends throughout the year where hundreds visit town and STAY. It is estimated the economic impact of hotels, sales taxes and restaurant visits during the slow cold months of the year in winter, total hundreds of thousands of dollars each year that would have melted away had the ice at Sidner Arena stopped being made. 

All of that aside, we are still unfortunately losing some of our players at the high school level to neighboring programs - not for better opportunities but for those with more fans showing up or different kinds of support. I can only think of the recent magical run our volleyball team just went on thanks to someone like Mattie Dalton and teammates, seeing themselves as a part of the Fremont community and sports teams.

I would like to see our youngest players have a local option to stay and play with their friends from middle school days. Saving the rink was the first step. The next step is continuing to get better on the ice, and the final is continued support from the community and enhancements to the rink. As I attend football, baseball, softball, basketball and volleyball, as a Canadian, I am always amazed by the attendance and coverage! I’d love to see that for our hockey players as well.

The aforementioned Author Fredrik Backman, author of several books, including A Man Called Ove, and Beartown, was asked “WHY HOCKEY?” for his book topics, to which he responded, 

“If a kid plays hockey, their entire family plays hockey. No one has a kid playing hockey without the whole family and community investing in it. Everyone has invested something, including the whole family. They’ve invested time and energy and money and LOVE so there’s more at stake at all times.”

Whether it is the fact you like our “pull yourselves up by the boot straps” mentality in fixing the rink with no cost to the community, supporting winning teams or helping build them, or just love how Fremont’s economy benefits from hockey being here; we’d love see you at the rink, and if you want to invest in the future, please email us at information@fremontflyers.org.

We ourselves have, and would love for you to visit, support and embrace this opportunity to transform the community - as Nebraska’s Hockeytown.

Jason Buzzell, Fremont Resident
Volunteer Fremont Ice Association Board Member, Coach and Hockey Parent

Fremont is Nebraska's Hockeytown