Meet the Press: Mark Binetti goes from bands to booths

Photo by Mike Wolforth, submitted by Mark Binetti

 

Mark Binetti did not stay in his first sports-related trade long enough to experience ludicrous geographic misnomers. Nor did he come to his new calling in time for the most outlandish of the same in another game.

In South Dakota since 2013, he joined the rest of the Rapid City Rush in transferring from the Central Hockey League to the ECHL in 2014. By then, it had been 11 years since their new abode ceased to answer to the name East Coast League. Although, the sport’s topmost “Double-A” entity had stopped living up to that exclusive-sounding moniker ages prior.

Come what may, the former pep-bander and current play-by-play broadcaster is living his share of carry-overs. He is living the bus life for 12 of the 26 weeks on the 2018-19 regular-season docket. The majority of those road trips are the culmination of a week’s worth of preparation.

The Rush’s destinations for 2018-19 are Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah. They will also entertain visits from the Atlanta Gladiators and Florida Everblades, but not reciprocate the journey.

Travel-wise, this regimen evokes Binetti’s football marching-band days at the University of South Carolina. Besides his school’s own state, he saw action in seven others: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee.

Entertaining the throngs of the sinewy Southeastern Conference, he made it to eight of 11 opposing stadiums. (He graduated two years before Missouri and Texas A&M upped league membership to 14.) He only missed out on Auburn, Louisiana State and Mississippi State.

“It was a blast,” he told Pucks and Recreation with maximum emphasis. “Seeing how different stadiums and bands did things was eye-opening. And as long as the Gamecocks didn’t have a rough go, the football wasn’t bad either.”

By comparison to what Binetti has now, neither was the mileage. Spared the SEC’s spill beyond the Southeast proper, he joined the Rush for what proved an unexpected CHL swan song.

But barely being in the Mountain, Rapid City itself was one of the circuit’s exceptions to its title time zone. Its 10 teams ranged as far east as Brampton, Ont., for that 2013-14 campaign.

Today’s 13-member ECHL Western Conference boasts a similar geographic spread. Being the third-farthest west, the Rush cannot help charging up four-figure miles one way on some trips.

Contrast that with the 764 miles separating USC from its most distant Binetti-era SEC rival, Arkansas. Or with the fact that the Rush take twice as many annual rides as the Gamecock footballers.

But as with his belated entry into broadcasting as a whole, Binetti benefited from starting small.

“Looking back on it, it really prepared me for what I do now,” he said. “The travel in college football isn’t nearly as rigorous as what we go through in Rapid City. But we bus everywhere with the Rush, and there’s a routine on the road you need to get into to prepare and such. So it prepared me quite well, I think.”

Photo submitted by Mark Binetti

 

Timely crossovers

Binetti was born in New York, the second of three brothers, and lived in the metropolitan area through eighth grade. For the bulk of that time, music was his extracurricular lifeblood.

The piano, which his mother and maternal grandfather both mastered, was a mandated starting point. Two years of that spawned a web of skills, which Binetti transferred to self-taught clarinet lessons.

“It was a release,” he said. “It was something that allowed me to be a part of something bigger in a band, and was just so much fun.”

In his final year living in New Jersey, Binetti was an all-state musician in his newfound specialty. When his family moved to North Carolina, the accolades snowballed at Charlotte Catholic High School. As a sophomore, he cracked the 2004 South Central All-District Band.

He followed that with repeat appearances on the Charlotte Youth Wind Ensemble as an upperclassman. As a junior, he attended the 2005 Winthrop University Invitational Clinic just south of the state border.

Back at Charlotte Catholic, he broadened his horizons and attained the marching band’s drum-major position. In between, he built on his appetite for more of the same in college with another trip to South Carolina.

On Nov. 12, 2005, Binetti accompanied a friend to the Gamecocks football game against 12th-ranked Florida. His first live look and listen at USC’s legendary “Mighty Sound of the Southeast” sweetened a 30-22 upset.

“After that,” he said, “I did my research into the band, and talked to an old high school friend that was there. After meeting with some of the graduate assistants, and taking a tour of the university, I was hooked.

As one of 360 students in the Carolina Band, and specializing in the trombone, Binetti devoted nine hours to rehearsal in a typical school week. At the Saturday culmination, preparation would start as early as 6 a.m., depending on kickoff time.

Binetti would rise to be the captain of his instrument’s section. He also had his major in biological sciences to think about. But the literal payoff for his musical dedication substantially alleviated the cost of the curriculum.

Concomitant with Binetti, Dr. George A. Brozak arrived at USC in the autumn of 2006. A former Star Trek TV writer, Brozak assumed the position of director of athletic bands, and instituted a wave of scholarships and stipends. Among other perks, Binetti garnered a scholarship specific to the clarinet in the university’s concert band.

“Doc’s mindset behind it was to grow the base of the band simply by rewarding them for their sacrifice,” Binetti said. “It seems easy to say that, but to actually follow through with it meant a good deal to those of us in the program in his three seasons.” 

Brozak has since moved on to other institutions, but Binetti attests to his long-lasting mark at USC. Ditto the late Jim Copenhaver, who directed USC’s band program at large for 35 years, retiring the year Binetti graduated.

Copenhaver’s tenure transcended the university’s rise to prominence among pigskin pep bands. To that point, in September 2017, USA Today ranked the “Mighty Sound” third among its top 10 college football introduction shows.

“Mr. Copenhaver was an incredible individual who just loved music, and loved teaching it,” Binetti said. “So many of the people I was in the band program with went to USC just because of him. They knew they’d be world-class musicians or music educators simply because he was the director of bands. He was loved by everyone in the music community.”

Copenhaver died at age 71 in November 2014, Binetti’s sophomore season as the Rush announcer.

“The impact of his passing was felt nationally,” Binetti said.

Besides his collegiate family, Binetti’s bloodline savored finales of their own during his senior season. For his final performances at Williams-Brice Stadium, his grandparents traveled from New Jersey for their first live glimpse of college football.

Business-like as usual that day, Binetti now admits he sacrificed a little enjoyment of family antics at the pre-game tailgate. With a noon game time, it was one of those 6-a.m. last-minute tune-up sessions.

“Sadly, I was blissfully ignorant to my grandfather roasting my dad for everyone cooking in trailers and on mini-grills with these gigantic spreads,” he said. “But hearing my dad recap it all was absolutely hilarious. My grandfather passed away four years after that game, so it was definitely special to look back on.” 

As it happened that day, the Gamecocks doubled up on intrastate rival Clemson, then ranked 15th in the nation, 34-17. Their other home win over a ranked team (No. 4 Mississippi) that year marked the beginning of South Carolina’s “Sandstorm” custom.

In the decade since, the stadium DJ has routinely given the band a breather and aroused a rave-like rally with the Darude classic. The ensuing visual, complete with white towels for every spectator, is not unlike that of a professional hockey playoff crowd.

 

Photo submitted by Mark Binetti

Invincible ambition

Hearing Binetti summarize the story of his rise to the Rush booth vaguely evokes Vince Papale.

Like the unlikely NFL walk-on immortalized in cinema by Mark Wahlberg, Binetti logged a little time on a gridiron. But to crack the competitive ranks of pro hockey play-by-play, one might assume, he must have called action in college.

Yet if someone asked him where he called his college puck, he would say he didn’t call college puck. In fact, he called no athletic action whatsoever as an undergraduate. That is how mighty a commitment the “Mighty Sound” was.

The Carolina Band was also expected to be the grand finale of Binetti’s involvement of sports. After he graduated in 2010, he was supposed to pursue medicine. After all, his mother, both maternal grandparents and one uncle have all worked in the field.

But then there was Jason Shaya, his fellow transplant from the northern U.S. to the Carolinas. While Binetti was a senior in Columbia, Shaya was in his third year broadcasting the ECHL team in Binetti’s adoptive city of Charlotte.

Hailing fron Michigan, Shaya had also gone to a hockey-free university (Madonna in the Detroit suburbs). After working as a sports producer with his local NBC affiliate, he enjoyed play-by-play stints with short-lived Detroit- and Chicago-area teams in the now-defunct United League. With more bountiful offerings at the de facto Double-A level in “non-traditional” markets, he found the Charlotte Checkers in 2007.

Binetti had been in town since 2002, and had taken an easy shining to the Checkers. For the better part of their 17-year ECHL run, they were affiliated with his beloved New York Rangers.

Acting on a belated craving for a sports-oriented career, Binetti reached out to Shaya in 2010. Their initial discussion left him disillusioned, and he turned to Chicago, where his brother works as an anestheologist. But a lack of openings up his presumed alley turned him back to Charlotte and, for a time, back to college football.

“My brother had a friend that was a production assistant at ESPNU,” he said, “and said they needed loggers to watch games and help them cut highlights. After about two weekends on the job, I realized that I loved it too much to not try and see it through in sports.”

By this point, the Checkers brand had been promoted to the AHL. One of the few personalities to withstand the overhaul, Shaya accepted Binetti’s bid for a rebound.

The Checkers’ younger broadcasting brother started as a statistician and storyline builder. He then broke onto the air by filling in pre-game, post-game and intermission segments. From there, he started taking cracks at play-by-play, applying lessons he had absorbed through up-close observation during ESPNU football productions, during the second periods of home games.

“Once I got the opportunity at ESPNU, and got my first air time with the Checkers, I just knew this is what I needed to do for the rest of my life,” he said.

After two years under Shaya’s wing and a slew of go-nowhere applications to teams in Junior A, major junior and minor pro, Binetti received Shaya’s greatest assist for their last shift in Charlotte. While working at a Wells Fargo bank to supplement his income, he heard of Rapid City’s vacancy from his mentor.

In less than a month, he dished up his demos, pressed with continued interest, got the job and moved back north. He arrived in his new South Dakota home the day 2013 training camp commenced.

“The rest, as they say, is history,” he said.

Photo by Mike Wolforth, submitted by Mark Binetti

 

‘…the same between both worlds’

All of the crowds surrounding Binetti have plummeted in sheer volume since he shot up to South Dakota’s Mountain edge. He is apt to note that, at a capacity eclipsing 80,000 spectators, Williams-Brice Stadium at USC could more than fit Rapid City’s population, which is estimated at under 75,000.

The difference between those figures almost amounts to the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center’s capacity of 5,119. Naturally, Binetti’s audience is not in that seating bowl, but an unquantified figure beyond the building.

Regardless, the number of people standing by his side has drained from 359 to one. Only a rotation of color commentators will blend another voice in with his output for the listeners.

That aside, he says, “I’d argue that there are more parallels than differences” between the band and the booth.

“If there’s one difference, it’s that you can’t really rehearse broadcasts,” he continued. “Sure, you can have meetings on what you’re going to say and how you’re going to say it, storyboarding pregame shows and such. But you can’t ever really script and practice anything.

“Plus, if you do, it comes across as inauthentic, and it kills your credibility as a broadcaster. So much of what we say, how we react, and the emotion that goes into and comes out of broadcasting is spontaneous.”

Even a reprise of old patterns can catch Binetti off guard. His two years as Shaya’s intern in Charlotte marked an instant immersion in AHL-caliber hockey. Unlike the lower levels, nearly every player is a protected prospect, and arguably matches the skill of overseas major leaguers.

Granted, the preceding Checkers had just logged 17 seasons in Double-A before giving way to the new edition. But Binetti had not seen as much of them since going to USC. While he was there, he was so absorbed in bands and biology that he also missed out on another ECHL team, the neighboring Columbia Inferno.

The Inferno would fold in 2008, after Binetti’s sophomore year. He partly regrets failing to catch their games because their mascot, Blaze, was portrayed by one of his fraternity brothers. In addition, defenseman Justin Sawyer played in Columbia during Binetti’s freshman year, then on the first Rush team Binetti worked with.

About that team: Rapid City granted Binetti a blast back to Double-A, albeit in the Central League to start. He figured he was in for a spectacle a little closer to Slap Shot than the “A” will ever produce.

“I thought I was in for a huge change in pace and speed,” he said, “and was surprised to see how wrong I was. The CHL was very physical, very veteran-laden. But it was a great league to break into the professional ranks with.”

Nonetheless, it was on thin ice at the time. Membership whittled from 10 teams to nine early in the 2014 offseason. Arizona and Denver’s teams, both languishing in the ever-pivotal attendance column, then withdrew for the approaching campaign.

With only seven active chapters to speak of, the Central League gave out and latched on to a welcoming ECHL. The Rush, who had always stayed within the 4,000 attendance range, were properly rewarded by the rescue. And a mere 10 days after the late-coming merger was announced, Binetti was back behind their mic.

Upon stretching his Rapid City tenure to five years this past spring, he has stayed at the same base longer than anywhere else since his days as an all-state middle-school musician and long-term in-the-making medicine man in New Jersey.

In that span, he has discovered gratifying quantities of leisure time and attractions to fill it with. He has taken up adult-league hockey and softball, joined Knights of Columbus and kept his voice sharp in the summer via American Legion baseball broadcasts.

But he has yet to add pure-sport percussions or winds to that mix. “It kills me that I haven’t been able to,” he admits. “I dust off the instruments every now and then and practice, but it’s really been a long time.”

That does not, however, mean he is letting his inner musician log mothballs. His second-nature instincts from the metropolis and the Carolinas get ample new use in his vocation.

“I liken calling a game to sight-reading music,” he said. “The pressure of people listening to you, the amount of preparation needed to be successful at both music and calling a hockey game and the performance ‘game-face’ mentality are all the same between both worlds.”

South Carolina Stingrays at 25: Secrets of the ECHL’s longest-running brand

Photo credit: South Carolina Stingrays

 

The South Carolina Stingrays have long zapped the platitude of a “non-traditional hockey market.” But beyond that, they have outlasted all of the other ECHL mainstays, including those in Northern markets. Their unique formula lies largely in catering to a champion community for natives, tourists and transplants.

The blurb in the visitor’s guide at a North Charleston hotel room started with the obligatory, albeit cliché, Q-A combination.

“Hockey in the South? You bet.”

The rest of the text used its limited space for a fundamental explanation of who the South Carolina Stingrays were. Most guests might have overlooked it, but exceptions did not even need it.

The date was Tuesday, March 18, 2003. Two tourists were heading south for spring break, and North Charleston was their last overnight stop. As it happened, the Stingrays game would the crux of their evening in town.

That had been their plan coming in. These out-of-towners were heading to Florida, but first went out of their way to see how Low Country did hockey. They had looked for it, which was strange considering the organization’s most influential figures had admittedly not when they came.

Yet by this time, the Stingrays were celebrating their 10th season as an ECHL franchise. They were looking like a refreshing mark of stability in the ever-volatile minor-league hockey landscape.

Of course, the average sightseer could have been forgiven for not having the slightest idea. Most people passing through the city on their own brief getaway who decided to check out that night’s action would have been startled.

“It’s a football region,” admits Rob Concannon, who last played in 2003 and has been the team president since 2010. “But it seems like the interest in hockey picks up in December.”

“As the season goes on,” he continued in his recent interview with Pucks and Recreation, “more people come out.”

Even with the 2003 playoffs looming, there were stark challenges selling tickets to this particular game. Perhaps topping that list was that it was on the eve of the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Debates swirled in every circle of the sports world over whether continued competition was appropriate back home. But like everyone else, the ECHL heeded the government’s encouragement and carried on, officially stating its intent the next day.

No official attendance record is readily available, but enough would-be attendees were convinced to come out. The crowd easily eclipsed 3,000 in the 10,000-seat North Charleston Coliseum for the Stingrays-Peoria Rivermen matchup.

The visitors surmounted a 3-0 deficit, making good on a mid-game goalie change to seize a 4-3 shootout victory. But the Stingrays’ early assertiveness on the scoreboard invigorated the audience. So did the scraps, one of which reportedly clocked in at two minutes and 10 seconds. That’s 10 seconds longer than a minor power play with no stoppages.

The cheering for the home squad’s regulation goals, shootout strikes and interspersed fights left one’s ears momentarily ringing back in the hotel.

That was none too shabby for a mid-level minor-league hockey game. All the more impressive for a weeknight when surely not everyone was on spring break.

Still more outstanding for a nonconference matchup with a team from western Illinois. Peoria could hardly expect to draw the same animosity or anticipation as Augusta, Columbia or Greenville that year.

And yes, not bad for a “non-traditional hockey market.” But really, given the other factors, it was not bad for any speck on the map.

Fast-forward 15 years. The ECHL is twice as old now as it was then, and only five of its teams from 2002-03 have stuck.

For their part, the Stingrays have cemented an unprecedented distinction. They just finished the formalities of playing 25 consecutive seasons under the league’s banner, all with the same moniker.

Wheeling has fielded the same franchise for 27 years, but it has assumed two identities as the Thunderbirds and Nailers. Meanwhile, Toledo’s team has logged a quarter-century of ECHL play, but that run was disrupted by a two-year dormancy. The Toledo Storm dissipated after 16 seasons in 2007, resurfacing as the Walleye in 2009.

A handful of other brands currently in the league have a longer uninterrupted tenure than the Stingrays. But the Fort Wayne Komets, Kalamazoo Wings, Tulsa Oilers and Wichita Thunder sought ECHL auspices when other Double-A leagues caved in.

South Carolina stands alone as an ECHL original that liked what it was doing from the start. North Charleston is one of the few bona fide coastal markets in the circuit formerly known as the East Coast Hockey League. Next season, Jacksonville, Norfolk and Portland will be the only others.

But South Carolina especially represents a throwback to the league’s origins. It also typifies the ECHL’s rise to prominence above all leagues of its level.

“It’s one of those places where guys want to play,” said Concannon.

Concannon is living proof, being one of 10 men to have skated in all or part of six or more seasons in North Charleston. Six others have stuck around or returned for five. Another 15 logged four.

In either a matter-of-fact or detracting manner, some pundits assert that warmer-climate leanings have upset the NBA’s balance of power. Cleveland and Golden State aside, recent memory has seen superstars prefer Florida, Texas or Southern California. The pool of contenders and scroll of champions reads accordingly. Only six of the last 20 titles have gone to “cold-weather” cities since Michael Jordan left Chicago.

But when the ECHL was taking shape, it built its nucleus around North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee. The Stingrays, who were almost the Sharks until San Jose’s NHL team stole their thunder, were the first South Carolina-based team.

As Concannon reflected, the fledgling league was indistinguishable from other Double-A unions around the continent. It was far from the definitive training ground for NHL prospects not ready for the AHL that it is today.

As such, building teams hinged far less on affiliations. The front office could sell the city of Charleston at will. That measure of autonomy compared to the American League was itself a selling point for the club’s ownership group.

Through a Stingrays spokesperson, Concannon and team office manager Julie Thoennes concurred “that there are a lot of great things about Charleston. The city is consistently voted highly as one of the top cities to visit in the US and in the world.

“There’s great golfing year-round, the local beaches, excellent food from restaurants in addition to great nightlife. For those same reasons, a lot of our players’ girlfriends and significant others enjoy staying here.”

Perhaps due to infectious hockey humility, they left out one jutting detail. Per an annual reader’s survey in Travel + Leisure, Charleston is the five-time defending champion among top U.S. cities. Last July, it was also deemed the second most-attractive town in the world.

Even today, as partners of the Stanley Cup champion Washington Capitals, the Rays round out their roster with independent players. The nightlife and no need to wait to hit the links until the offseason can still hook key cogs.

It is a continuation of a marriage built on once-hidden compatibility.

Sticking out and going all-in

Hockey in the South?

At this point, around here, to elicit the “non-traditional hockey market” label is to sting a dead seahorse.

Even at their inception, though, the Stingrays were debunking the doubts. They were an instant hit at the brand-new Coliseum, and ticket sales buried some behind-the-scenes stumbles with ice chips.

Jon C. Stott’s 2006 book, Hockey Night in Dixie, devotes a substantial section to South Carolina. D.J. Church, the team’s first equipment manager, confessed to Stott he had never heard of a skate sharpener before joining the Stingrays.

Church later left the team, only to return when they needed a new athletic trainer. As he explained in the book, “I was the only one they had with any hockey experience.”

That didn’t mean no one wanted their first hockey experience. The Stingrays’ attendance means for its first two seasons were 9,151 and 8,589, respectively.

Playing their inaugural home game on a Saturday, the Stingrays drew 9,363 ticketholders. More than a few had surely already gotten a weekend sports fix through homestretch high-school football, the Gamecocks or Clemson. But they craved some shaved ice for dessert.

According to Stott, South Carolina’s second season opener also fetched a crowd north of 9,000. And Church noticed that novice spectators took a shine to the game for its reminiscence of NASCAR.

“They liked the hitting and the noise,” he told Stott.

More seasoned spectators displaced from Northern states, now living at nearby military forts, added quantity and quality to the crowds. But pure-bred Palmetto Staters, especially those who worked for the team, needed to lean on local pride. And maybe a little happenstance.

Thoennes is the lone Stingrays employee who has witnessed their entire quarter-century. She started as an administrative assistant, then wore several other lids on her rise to office manager. The team enshrined her in its hall of fame in 2011.

But if not for a timely stride across the great pond and one shot yielding a rebound, it all may never have happened.

“I never actually applied to any job with the Stingrays,” Thoennes confessed to Pucks and Rec. “My husband and I had just moved back from Germany in 1993, and I was sending out resumes, looking for a job.

“One of the jobs I had applied to was no longer available. But they forwarded my resume on to the Stingrays, who called me and said they were interested.”

The interest was mutual, and Thoennes has inevitably embodied the club-community dynamic with her daily presence at the Coliseum. Her current profile lists among her tasks, “accounts receivable, accounts payable, payroll and the day-to-day responsibilities of the front office.” Moreover, “she assists the team’s coaching staff with player operations which include worker’s compensation and immigration issues.”

“Julie’s not a flashy person,” Concannon said. “She’s very loyal and very, very proud of the accomplishments of the team. I don’t think the team would be here if it wasn’t for Julie.

“She’s the one who understands the ins and outs. She’s not only helped me, but whenever we transition to another coach, assistant coach or office staff, she’s the one we go to for guidance.

“Her kids grew up going to the games, and she’s been instrumental in continuing our tradition.”

The framework and philosophy that fostered the tradition came from another unlikely source. At their inception, the Stingrays were owned by Jerry Zucker, an Israeli-born businessman and philanthropist.

By the time the team came, the Zucker family had been a Charleston-area staple for 15 years. There is now a North Charleston science-specific middle school and several local charity events in Jerry’s name.

But having moved from Zucker’s wife, Anita’s, native Florida, they were a quintessential “non-traditional” hockey ownership group. Except their exemplary presence around the city matched the sport’s principles of humility and selflessness.

When Jerry died of brain cancer in 2008, then-Stingrays president Darren Abbott fondly recalled his approach in the Charleston Post & Courier.

“First and foremost,” Abbott told the paper, “he really wanted everybody in the organization to be community-driven.”

Not every member of the organization got to know Zucker on a significant personal level. But everyone who was with the team for its 2008 playoff run attended his funeral.

Afterwards, Zucker’s widow, along with his son, Jonathan, retained majority control for another decade. They expressly sustained relationships with as many players as possible, particularly those who made the area their post-hockey home. And they savored the franchise’s third Kelly Cup championship in 2009, then four additional multi-round playoff runs.

“I think the reason we’ve had such great consistency is due to our ownership,” Thoennes said. “The Zucker family gave so much to the team for so many years.”

In mid-April of this year, the family gave the team to an enthused Northeastern migrant. With his purchase, Todd Halloran has fulfilled a longtime dream of owning a hockey club. He told the local press that he had limited his horizons to familiar territory, but made an exception for the Stingrays.

Neither party in the transaction is taking many C-cuts around an uncomfortable reality. Yearly attendance has melted, never reaching the same heights as the 10th anniversary, let alone the honeymoon or sophomore seasons. In this decade, yearly averages have been more like what a single nonconference weeknight game once drew.

Still, Halloran sees the staying power of the club’s values, along with its value to the league as a signature franchise. By all accounts, he intends to keep the South Carolina Stingrays as they are, where they are.

Concannon’s conversion

Hockey in the South?

Halloran is a Connecticut resident with other business interests in New York City and Los Angeles. But like so many Stingrays players, coaches and rooters before him, he plans on being a precocious snowbird.

Per Patrick Hoff of the Charleston Regional Business Journal, Halloran said, “what happens in a market like this (Charleston) is the team takes on a greater importance. It is a team in the truest sense of the word. The popularity, the interest, isn’t in any one player or any one star, but in the team and what it brings to the community.”

The way the Rays drew Halloran in supports Concannon’s statement, “I think we’re an oragnization that people know.”

Indeed, like those two tourists in 2003, Halloran went for the Stingrays experience head-on. Yet his epiphany from afar was one Concannon needed to test two-plus decades ago.

If he had his way as a 24-year-old, Concannon would have played in North America’s most intensive hockey market. Undrafted out of Division III Salem State, the Massachusetts native pounced on an invitiation to Toronto’s training camp in 1995.

The Maple Leafs soon sent him to their AHL affiliate in Newfoundland. St. John’s, in turn, cut him, and Charleston was his next option.

Rick Vaive was entering his third season as head coach in as many years of the Stingrays’ existence. A 15-year veteran of mostly NHL play, he had started his own career in Dixie with the WHA’s Birmingham Bulls.

But try as he did to twist Concannon’s arm over the phone, Vaive had trouble spinning the southward spiral. The geographic trajectory into uncharted ground appropriately reflected the bubble-bursting sense of demotion.

“I still wasn’t sold on it,” Concannon admits, looking back.

It would have to be something he saw before he could believe it. With that said, a pair of fellow twentysomething Massachusetts transplants convinced him to give it a look.

Twin brothers Mark and Mike Bavis had played together for the Stingrays’ in 1994-95, each catching AHL breaks in the process. Mike would retire from playing after that season, but Mark came back for more. Yes, more Double-A hockey and more life in Low Country.

And even while one was leaving, the Bavis brothers collaborated on one last assist. Their pitch to Concannon effectively enabled a move that led to his current position as Stingrays president.

“They said if I go to Charleston, I’ll love it and never go home,” Concannon recalled.

To that point, Concannon played the better part of the next five seasons for the Stingrays. During his rookie campaign, he enjoyed a 20-game call-up to the St. John’s Maple Leafs. In 1999-00, he played five more AHL tilts with the Saint John Flames, under a since-promoted Vaive.

Otherwise, he stuck in South Carolina, partaking in its first Kelly Cup in 1997, among other highlights. And after one year out of state and out of the ECHL, he found himself pining for Palmetto.

“I felt like my heart was in Charleston,” he said. And officially speaking, his home has been there for the last 20 years.

In 2001-02, he came close to setting his situation right again, playing for the intrastate rival Greenville Grrrowl. But then he reached the point where being in town year-round eclipsed his desire to play.

He would suit up for all of three games in 2002-03, all with the Stingrays, before retiring in earnest. Throughout the current decade, he has run the team’s front office.

While Concannon was away, South Carolina demonstrated its two-way street of staying power under the most horrific circumstances.

Besides encouraging one of the team’s most vital on-ice figures, Mark Bavis scored 68 points in 87 games for the Stingrays. He added 10 points over 17 games in two playoff tournaments, then retired as a Ray in 1996.

Five years later, he was on the Los Angeles Kings scouting staff when he boarded United Airlines Flight 175 with colleague Ace Bailey. They had been in Boston, and were about to fly cross-country for the start of the team’s training camp.

A month after Mark died in the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, South Carolina retired his No. 12 jersey. The banner bears his name and numerals, the dates of his Stingrays tenure and an American flag. The unveiling made for an evening of mixed emotions, as that home opener was also banner night for the 2001 Kelly Cup champions.

Per a team spokesman, Bavis “made a big impact here in the organization and in the community, even though he was only in Charleston for a short amount of time. He and his brother were very popular.”

No one who comes to the Coliseum will forget that. Nor will anyone with inside knowledge forget what the Zuckers, their partners and their employees have done.

“I think it’s a pretty cool achievement that, next to Wheeling, we are the longest-tenured team at the ECHL level,” Concannon offered. “We’ve had a lot of good people here who have been able to carry on that tradition on and off the ice.”

And now the new boss in town is tackling that task to begin another quarter-century. That is what every natural-born and naturalized Charlestonian hopes, and trusts.

“It’s exciting to see that Todd Halloran has lots of energy and excitement,” Thoennes said. “We’ve done really well throughout the transition.”

So, hockey in the South? Now and for a long time to come?

With Charleston, North Charleston and the Stingrays, that looks like a safe bet.

The women who put Tulsa in the Tulsa Oilers

 
A golf cart was as close as Amy Henderson and Jessica Adams would get to their own DeLorean. Their joint ride in it as two fresh-faced Tulsa Oilers employees now lives as the start of their shared journey into the new millennium.

Today their tenures dwarf those of all other Oilers front-office personnel. Henderson, the ECHL club’s vice president of marketing and sales, is in her 19th campaign. This is Year 18 on the staff for Adams, the vice president of business operations.

Only by the end of this season will any of their colleagues hit the decade mark. That distinction goes to general manager Taylor Hall. Everyone else will have been around for six years or fewer, a majority for fewer than three.

Delete Hall’s prior ice-level Tulsa tenure, and he and the other eight front-office employees have combined for 37 seasons of Oilers service. By the time 2017-18 runs out, Adams and Henderson will have matched that 37-year sum.

“The amount of time and energy they’ve put into the team is something I don’t think any of the rest of us can truly grasp,” said John Peterson, the Oilers’ second-year broadcaster and vice president of communications.

This is what happens when no other arrangement can match the evergreen gratification of home cooking. Of the 11 staffers, Adams and Henderson are the lone natural-born Tulsans.

“Amy is not just a fellow local,” Adams said in an interview with Pucks and Recreation. “She is an amazing friend and coworker, and she is my work sister.”

The sisterhood started over the holidays in 2000. Henderson was a sophomore in the Oilers offices, Adams a junior at Oklahoma Baptist University. Although a two-way commute between her campus in Shawnee and the Tulsa Convention Center ranged between three and four hours, Adams was home long enough to insert one foot as an intern that December.

The chaos of the season must have hammered the higher-ups. When Adams made her debut, Henderson was supposed to receive her. But word of the former’s hiring did not reach the latter until it manifested itself that morning.

“I remember that first day like it was yesterday,” Henderson told Pucks and Rec.

“Interns are often the forgotten helpers,” Adams mused, “and that was no different on my first day, except for Amy.”

Indeed, despite the lack of a heads-up, Henderson was anything but David Spade as Dick Clark’s receptionist. Fast-forward 17-plus years, and the two still laugh off that inconsequentially awkward first impression.

“Amy handled the situation with grace, and was kind and welcoming,” Adams fondly remembers.
And so ended the first phase in Henderson bringing Adams along on a once-unplanned, but now-cherished saga. Neither woman had envisioned working in sports, let alone one considered “non-traditional” for the locale. This despite the likes of Hall helping the Oilers to a Central League championship as a player-assistant coach in 1993.

Instead, both wandered a few hours out of town, though still in state, with vastly distinct fields in mind. Henderson majored in political science at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah. Adams had figured a career in law was her destiny after clerking for a firm in her hometown. Upon enrolling at Oklahoma Baptist, she also accepted the potentiality of a career outside of Tulsa.

The two had never crossed paths growing up in a town whose population hovers around 400,000. But both were pulled back via a deep pool of connections at the Convention Center. Through a family friend, Henderson landed her Oilers internship. Going in, she envisioned a simple filler for her resume and the scorching hiatus between semesters at NSU.

As it happened, the internship was not merely filling, it was fulfilling.

“I ended up falling in love with sports marketing,” she said, “and my plans for the future changed completely.”

She returned to finish what she started in Tahlequah, an hour east of home. That higher-ed quest would be extent of her venture out of Tulsa.

Within two years, the Convention Center was seeing just as much of Adams’ shadow. Former Oilers owner Bobby Gilbert had helped her land the 2000-01 winter internship. At that point, she was still eyeing a long-term career around courts, albeit of the hoops variety.

“I knew I wanted to work in sports and was looking for any opportunity,” she said. “I’ve always loved in-game entertainment, specifically the NBA.”

This was still a decade before her hometown would nab the WNBA’s Shock from Detroit. It was eight years before her state capital turned the NBA’s Seattle SuperSonics into the Oklahoma City Thunder.

For the time being, a hockey-centered homecoming would suffice for Adams. With the Oilers, she explained, “my intention was to take the experience and eventually look for something in the NBA.”

By the time of the Oilers’ links tournament — where, as Henderson recalls, “We first bonded while driving a golf cart around” — the conversion was complete. Adams followed her work sister’s lead in completing her undergraduate credits on schedule. But she added a three-day work week with the team to her regimen as a senior.

“What I didn’t expect to happen was to fall in love with my hometown again,” she said. “And, most unexpectedly, love hockey, our staff and the Tulsa Oilers fans so much.

“I realized as I got older that you can’t put a price tag on being close to your family, loving the organization you work for and all the while being in such a great city like Tulsa.”

A Lund-erful foundation
The Tulsa Convention Center is now the Cox Business Center. Even before the corporate bug bit the building in 2013, it lost the Oilers to the larger BOK Center in 2008.

While the old building was modifying its moniker, the team was sold to brothers Brandon, Johnny and Roddy Steven. A year later, the 22-year-old Central League folded, leaving the Tulsa Oilers of 2014 to make like the Edmonton Oilers of 1979 and find new auspices in a stronger league.

Another year elapsed before the Oilers, who once shared the BOK Center with an indoor football and women’s basketball franchise, became solo tenants again. The aforementioned Shock bolted for Dallas in 2015.

At times in this business, the winds of change rival those churning in the current presidential administration. But Tulsa’s puck posse’s stability has let its two native-born, self-proclaimed work sisters settle down and forge a second family.

“I am so grateful that Jessica and I have shared this ride together,” Henderson said. “We’ve been through the ups and downs of 9/11, the changes in the economy, different bosses and an ownership change.”

As one of the ups, Adams and Henderson were both there when Angela Ruggiero broke new ice by dressing for the Oilers in 2005. The four-time Olympian and future Hall of Famer made the Oilers famous as the first pro team to roster a female skater.

More generally, Tulsa has sustained stable fanfare, with average attendance staying above 4,000 and sometimes crossing 5,000. This despite having won only one playoff series since 1994 and missing 10 postseasons since Henderson arrived.

That does not mean the franchise has been immune to scares. Early in the post-Great Recession recovery, an intrastate rival and fellow founding Central League franchise of the Oilers’ caved in.

The Oklahoma City Blazers, one-time perennial CHL attendance leaders, folded in mid-July 2009.
In response, a Tulsa World headline speculated, “Blazers’ end might spell trouble for Tulsa Oilers.”

Reporter Bill Haisten wrote, “The news had a chilling effect on Oilers owner Jeff Lund. As Oklahoma City loses its CHL team, the Oilers could be doomed to losing a lot of money.”

Naturally, the franchise made it through, along with its then-nearly decade-long employment of Adams and Henderson. Ditto the squad’s then-new lease at the newer, bigger BOK Center.

But four years later, the last of the four upheavals Henderson cited implicitly had the greatest internal impact. From the Oilers’ 1992 inception, Jeff Lund had been their front-office anchor. He was their inaugural general manager, then assumed the owner’s box in 1999, mere months before Henderson’s internship.

“Jeff helped create the family atmosphere that we love about our team,” Adams said. “Through the years, he has been like a second dad to both Amy and me.”

Both women’s tenures had hit their teens by the time the Steven brothers took the reins in 2013. Now at the five-year mark of the new ownership, Adams, Henderson and Hall are the front office’s lone Lund-era holdovers.

A hockey mind first and a second-time figure in the organization, Hall represents the Oilers from before they had Adams and Henderson. As proud locals, Adams and Henderson represent Tulsa from before it had its current hockey franchise.

Adams went on to credit Lund, Hall and Hall’s predecessor as general manager, Corey MacIntyre, with fostering her professional growth. As far as Henderson is concerned, Adams burgeoned into “the glue that holds this office together” on their watch.

Besides accumulating her administrative adhesive, Adams tore the hardwood out of her mind. She has long learned about the enriching elements in the surface beneath, and not just for those whose blades have touched it.

“What is so amazing about our team is that we truly are a family,” she said. “Hockey is family.  The players, coaches, fans and staff, we each play an important role.

“My favorite quote about hockey is something Wayne Gretzky said: ‘The greatest thing about hockey is the people you meet. The people I’ve met....the friendships I have, the memories, and there’s nothing like it. It’s the greatest game in the world.’ Mr. Gretzky was so right.”

Long familiar, never old
For both of Lund’s homegrown business daughters, embracing a family tree made of Sherwood twigs has meant branching out to other gratifying roles. On their respective paths to vice presidencies, they have vocationally matured into the cool aunts of adopted Tulsans and born-again hockey and Oilers devotees.

“I’ve watched little babies grow into adults, and have become so close to so many people through the years,” said Henderson. “We are a family. I have stayed this long because I truly believe in sports marketing and what it can do to help other businesses grow and because I love the people I have met and relationships I have built through the years.”

That R-word is all but a refrain around the Oilers staff. Peterson singled out the two locals’ “relationships with many of our season-ticket holders and sponsors.”

And in another testament to their synced status, Adams cites Henderson’s self-proclaimed passion as her forte.

“Amy is great at taking on new challenges,” Adams remarked. “She has been an awesome leader in group and corporate sales for our organization. What she is best at, though, is building relationships. She has been able to establish and grow our partnerships in a way that affects not only our organization but also our community.”

All 25 Oilers home games between New Year’s and the 2017-18 regular-season finale have promotional flair on the side. Per Adams, a breast-cancer fundraiser Jan. 20 and a military appreciation night Feb. 23 were particularly rife with Henderson’s fingerprints.

As the regular season dusks, St. Patrick’s Night, Euro Jersey Night, Marvel Night and a block party are still to come. With her oversight of group ticket sales, Henderson also takes charge of getting the Oilers to put other uniquely Tulsa entities’ names in lights.

The sheer game-by-game variety of highlighted clubs, corporations and causes properly reflects the adage of no two hockey games being carbon copies. Just as appropriately, it meshes with the definition of daily Double-A hockey business.

“Minor-league sports can be tough sometimes” Adams concedes. “All our employees wear lots of hats. That is a challenge, but it is also something I love about working for the Oilers. Each day seems to include a new adventure of some sort.”

But at least two of the adventurers have spent this century symbiotically ensuring each other at least one familiar face.

“I don’t know what it is like to have a job without Amy by my side,” Adams said.

“She knows me better than most people,” Henderson reciprocates. “We have shared so many of the best and worst of life experiences. I don’t know what I would do without her.”