The irrepressible Trev Alberts is pushing the envelope again.
What's in the envelope this time?
A vision for UNO hockey and Maverick athletics.
The centerpiece is an 8,000- to 9,000-seat on-campus hockey rink and multi-purpose facility. Hockey would be the major focus in the building. The Mavericks would play and practice there. It would house the Omaha Hockey Hall of Fame. The Omaha Lancers might even play there one day (UNO and the Lancers have had preliminary talks about it). The likely site for the arena would be in the Ak-Sar-Ben area. That should raise goosebumps in the Omaha hockey community.
But this would be UNO's athletic hub. Men's and women's basketball would probably play there. So would volleyball. Mostly, this would be a statement that the Mavericks are on the move in Omaha.
Where are they going? Well, it says here that this building would be the precursor to a move up to Division I, which I believe will take place in the next decade. Who knows? Maybe sooner.
The way Alberts moves, anything is possible. So far, this arena is only an idea, part of a survey that was sent to UNO boosters and “stakeholders'' last Monday. But Alberts doesn't act like a Maverick in a china shop. Though he says they haven't gotten around to things like site and cost, you can be sure that this arena, and any Division I talk, has been on the athletic director's plate since he accepted the job last April.
Alberts' timetable may not be conventional, but he's already heard that.
“I've said since I got here that we are going to have the courage to not be conventional,'' Alberts told me on Thursday. “When I got here, one of the first things we did was have Coach (Mike) Kemp move up to assistant athletic director. The conventional wisdom is, you're a new A.D., you watch the new (hockey) coach for a year. I just didn't feel like we had time to be conventional.
“I've gotten feedback; (they say) ‘What is he doing?' We are going to make mistakes, but we are not going to be afraid to try things. The conventional wisdom got us in this position. We tried that. It didn't work.''
Conventional wisdom would say that the Qwest Center Omaha should be just fine for UNO hockey. Shouldn't it be big enough to grow into? Shouldn't it be a recruiting advantage? The coach with the national championship rings says no.
“A half-full building doesn't help you at all,'' UNO coach Dean Blais said. “The Qwest people have been great, but when an athlete comes, he wants a full house.
“When we get it rolling, we probably could fill this (Qwest). But it's going to take a few years for us to get our recruits, our type of players in here. If we don't have an arena where we call home, it's going to hurt us in recruiting the best kids.''
As for having the Lancers as a possible tenant, Blais said, “That's what we hope. That would be a great deal, good for both programs.''
How you would fit the Mavericks hockey, Lancers hockey and two UNO basketball teams into that schedule would be interesting. But that's for later. This thing is bigger than hockey or scheduling. As Alberts says, “It's about a lot of things.''
It's about an identity. It's about a “commuter'' school trying to grow a campus. It's about Alberts' relentless campaign to pump up UNO's self-esteem and place in this community. It's about UNO coming out of its shell.
“Absolutely,'' Alberts said. “We need to start acting internally like who we are, which is a major public institution in a dynamic, diverse cosmopolitan area. There are 15,000 students, 3,000 in the master's program. If you separate out all the other nonsense, you think, ‘Wow.'
“Right now we drive all of our hockey fans downtown. We drive baseball to Boys Town, softball to Westgate. We drive everybody away from our campus. In football, it drove me nuts. We would have people come to games, park in the garage, come in the back way and never set foot on campus. We're just a small piece of the puzzle, but we should be used to help the institution along. We want people to see our campus.''
That's a nice speech, but is this plan economically feasible? I think the money's there. As Alberts says, “We have 40,000 to 50,000 UNO alums living right here.''
I think UNO people — paging David Sokol — have been waiting for someone competent, someone with a plan, someone to believe in. I've seen more UNO shirts around town in the last year than in the last 18 years. That might be Alberts' greatest feat: He's making it cool to be a Mav.
The new facility would be the biggest testimony to his impact. Again, I think he took this job with the idea of building this arena and moving UNO up to Division I on his watch. Alberts says “dramatic major changes are going to happen in intercollegiate athletics'' in the near future. He also says, “speaking for me, and nobody else,'' that UNO should ultimately be Division I.
Draw your own conclusions, but you can't go Division I without a bigger athletic facility. And you can't go Division I without a healthy, winning Division I hockey breadwinner. You can connect the dots from the Sapp Fieldhouse to Ak-Sar-Ben.
“This community has expected a lot out of this institution and we have delivered,'' Alberts said. “I think it's time to deliver again.''
Contact the writer:
444-1025, tom.shatel@owh.com
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