Loyalty marks Winter Hawks fans
By Brad McCray
The Oregonian

Sunday,October 2, 2005
Edition: Sunrise, Section: Sports, Page C01

SUMMARY: Old-timers or newcomers, they share their passion for their hockey team and for the sport

It's a little after 5 p.m. Saturday, and Wendy Showell is leaning against the door of the Rose Garden arena. Showell, 29, has been first in line for the Portland Winter Hawks' home opener since 3:30 p.m. The doors don't open until 6, and the game starts at 7.

When asked if there is something else she could be doing, she replies, "This is all there is today. There's nothing else of any importance."

Showell might speak for thousands of Hawks fans, many of whom begin to trail into the Rose Garden hours before faceoff. After 30 years, the Hawks are an Oregon sports institution. They have outlasted at least a dozen Portland professional sports franchises, and other than the Trail Blazers, no non-collegiate sports team in the state has a larger fan base. And no fan base is more fervent in its support.

"I love coming to Winter Hawks games," said Aaron Hotchkin, 37, who has been attending games for 28 years. "It's never disappointing, even if they lose. It's good, cheap entertainment."

Portland averaged 5,860 fans last season, but nearly 8,000 for games at the Rose Garden. The Hawks pulled in 8,788 on Saturday, and to some of those, the Hawks have become more than a hockey team.

Following the Hawks, a collection of high school- and college-aged players who hope to be drafted into the NHL, is a shared experience, befitting of secret handshakes and knowing glances. The scene includes baptisms, conversions, heroes, villains and the ardently faithful.

Showell says one of her Hawks jerseys is covered with autographs. Saturday, she wore a red jersey with one signature on each shoulder.

"They are our goalies," she said. "I have a thing for goalies."

She also has a thing for hockey in general. She came to Portland from New York and attended her first Hawks game seven years ago. She has had season tickets for six years.

"When you are watching hockey live, with the energy and atmosphere, and you are right in the middle of a couple of thousand screaming people, it's like nothing else," she said. "Hockey fans are a different breed. You are like a family. I always say, 'Never pick a fight with a hockey fan, because you don't know what you're getting into.' "

Showell broke off in mid-sentence to answer the frantic waves of two women in white jerseys.

"I've had seats next to them for a long time," Showell said. "They had me over for Christmas dinner last year."

"Christmas dinner," she repeated.

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Six-year-old Eric Mull is playing in the fountain near the southeast corner of the Rose Garden, waiting for the doors to open. His father, David, 34, is worried his son might get too wet. The two have been attending games -- usually five or six a season -- since Eric was 3. The game-night routine of dinner, fourth-row tickets, parking, souvenirs and ice cream runs about $100.

"Anymore, you have to take price into consideration for just about everything," David Mull said. "We enjoy doing the dad and son thing. Most of the time it's just the two of us. It's like a guys' night out."

The image of the beer-guzzling, foaming, sweat-hog hockey fan does not necessarily fit in Portland. The Hawks market to families, and they primarily draw families. Kids for $5. Adults for as low as $10.

"We come for the hockey," Tad Caster said.

"And the crowd participation," wife Tina Caster added.

The Casters brought four girls between the ages of 8 and 15 to the Rose Garden. The group could have blended in at any Portland-area mall or movie theater.

"This is just as economical as going to the movies," Tad Caster said.

The Hawks say they have around 2,500 season ticket holders and that their fan surveys show more than 100,000 casual fans attend at least one game a season.

Coach Mike Williamson easily recalls the names of individual fans who travel to road games. Other staff members visit longtime fans when they become ill.

"They have a target audience," Hotchkin said, "and they really cater to it."

*

Jerry Sade paces the Rose Garden concourse, a living connection with Portland teams of the past. Radio earphones around his neck, Sade, 61, decorates his red Hawks hat with a fistful of commemorative pins. He has been coming to Hawks games for 20 years and has been a season ticket holder for 19.

When Sade was 20, he watched the old Portland Buckaroos with his father-in-law. He started coming to Hawks games with his teenage daughter. Eventually, his daughter got married and moved to Canada, but Jerry kept coming with his wife. Saturday, they brought their grandchildren.

"I grew up in Colorado and didn't know much about hockey," he said. "I started coming to the games and just stayed. I would rather watch kids trying to make it up into the national bracket than watch a pro team that will try half as hard and cost twice as much money."

Hawks players and their competitors in the Western Hockey League, the major-junior level of the professional hockey developmental ladder, often reach the top rung of their sport, the NHL. Two-thirds of NHL players come from the Canadian Hockey League, an umbrella federation that includes the WHL.

The dozens of Hawks alumni to play in the NHL include Cam Neely, who became the face of the Boston Bruins, and the Atlanta Thrashers' Marian Hossa, who in 1998 led the Hawks to the Memorial Cup championship.

Sade's experience of watching such players grow and develop here is typical of the Hawks' fiercely loyal, cyclical fan base.

"My dad started bringing me when I was 10," Hotchkin said. "He'd sit there and drink a beer and I'd run all over the Memorial Coliseum. Now I'm the one drinking the beer, and my daughter is the one running all over trying to get autographs."

Brad McCray: 503-412-7038; zonesports@hotmail.com