This article originally appeared in the Election print issue, in stands November 2024. It has not been updated and some information may be out of date.
When most people think of politics they might think of Congress voting to pass a bill or the Senate deliberating on hot-button topics. But politics exist on a smaller scale too within the organizations and businesses that serve as a fundamental part of so many of our lives, and the world of sports is no exception.
With Utah and Salt Lake City rapidly growing into a sports boom town, the city itself as well as the surrounding communities need all the support they can get. This support can take many forms — financial, logistical, developmental — and much of it happens behind the scenes.
Just this past summer the state was gearing up to welcome a highly anticipated addition to the Utah sports scene: the Utah Hockey Club. Executives and politicians statewide had been advocating to bring an NHL team to Utah, before finally receiving the call on April 18. With the inaugural game slated for Oct. 8, only a few short months were left to set up an entirely new franchise in Salt Lake City.
In light of the exciting news, an experienced team of leaders from the Utah sports community was assembled to make it happen. Chris Armstrong, president of hockey operations and an alternate governor for Utah Hockey Club, was one of those leaders, and jumped headfirst into development.
“It was a summer of working around the clock and everyone working together, not worrying about who’s going to take credit,” he said at the Utah Sports Summit in October. “People in Utah know how to get things done, it just happens here. It’s a community asset.” Armstrong was joined by the Chief Commercial Officer for the Utah Jazz, Chris Barney, as well as Jim Olson, the president of the Utah Jazz.
Though the team knew the amount of work that needed to be done — including establishing venues and training facilities, developing new ticket infrastructure and managing community outreach — they knew it was a group effort, and that the surrounding Utah community couldn’t be more excited to help welcome the team.
As a result, the team also knew it would create a demand for ice time: with the pros now playing in Salt Lake, more people are going to want to try out the sport as well. Because of this, examining how the community could get involved added another layer to the leaders’ plans.
“My favorite way to do it is with youth programs,” Barney said. “It’s going to help us build a fanbase, so when we fast forward 20 years we’ll have a strong hockey culture and build that community.”
To help support kids and the wider community getting involved in hockey the Utah Hockey Club’s training facility in Sandy will be open to the public on days the team isn’t training.
“It’ll be the No. 1 place where we can establish a relationship with our fans,” Armstrong said about the training center. “Kids will be able skate on the same ice as their NHL heroes.”
However, new developments to support the sports community doesn’t stop with hockey. Fans of University of Utah baseball will know that after sharing Smith’s Ballpark with the Salt Lake Bees for almost 30 years, plans are underway to get the Utes their own park on campus.
“They played at Smith’s Ballpark and then had their locker rooms and practice facilities on Guardsman Way, but we knew that really wasn’t fair to our athletes,” the U’s Associate Athletic Director for Facilities, Operations and Capital Projects, Gavin Gough, said at the Summit. “It’s time to bring baseball home.”
But in the same way that the ice rinks won’t just be for the Hockey Club, the new stadium won’t just be for the Utes.
“We’re going to be able to have programming that allows groups,” Gough said. “Particularly underrepresented groups are going to be able to use that facility.”
In a world that is becoming increasingly concerned with multipurpose products and venues, choosing to open these facilities to underprivileged kids who may not otherwise have a chance to play these sports only makes sense.
Fostering relationships with the community like the ones above are, like Barney said, one of the most pivotal steps in creating a strong sports culture in a new area.
And with the addition of a new NHL team in a state already filled with top-notch athletics and venues — and improving teams that are already here — Salt Lake City is undoubtedly on the path to building an even stronger culture, all thanks to these initiatives to support sports in Utah.
