In 2020, UAB made a decision to cut their hockey season short and shut down the program. What led up to UAB making that decision? What was the process of getting the program up-and-running? Were there any early signs?
I got the chance to talk with former UAB Hockey team presidents Adil Patel, Steven Carey, and current president Joseph Hume. Patel told me that in 2019 there weren’t many returning players for the 2020 season to begin with. “A lot of the roster was older and graduated, so a thin roster with COVID spikes after 2020 basically shut the team down… we needed to be more on top of recruiting.” The two year stint of no hockey at UAB was rough, the team had trouble finding recruits. Carey said “With two years of no recruiting, we were left with maybe six guys to make a team; We couldn’t hit the interest requirements.” Carey went on to tell me about troubles the team was experiencing, such as tentative ice times and difficulty communicating with the UAB Rec Center. This made it very hard for the blazers to have ice time. With no ice time, came no recruits. Despite all the odds the team was reborn under the combined efforts of Steven Carey, Joseph Hume, and Will Creech. Hume talked to me a little bit about the program getting set back up and some challenges that came alongside that process. “The South is a difficult place to maintain a sheet of ice, so finding a hockey player is extremely rare… Steven, Will, and I were the only three.” Hume, Creech, and Carey attended roughly 30 expos and multiple on-campus events and still had trouble finding enough recruits. “It felt impossible to find more players.” Hume said. They finally landed a fourth member, Wyatt Trimble. Trimble had a “snowball effect… his connections and our increased recruitment efforts led us to have enough players for the inaugural game vs Alabama’s DIII hockey team.” The team was still without a few key spots, including goalie. Hume suited up with six days of experience in net. “It was the hardest game in program history.” It may have been a very rough first game for UAB hockey, but it brought life to the recruitment and UAB is officially a DIII team through the CHS (College Hockey South Association), with 19 players and a 28 game 2024-2025 season. “I thought the team would never come back after COVID… I was surprised and happy to see them make a return,” Patel later said. UAB prepares for their rivalry games against APSU in Clarksville October 18th and 19th, see the game live or recorded on the UAB Hockey Club Facebook page.