Texas Tech Hockey Packs Up, Moves Out of City Bank Coliseum
By: Julie Musgrave
Updated: January 8, 2009
It's been a long battle, but this afternoon, the ice debate is closed. Texas Tech Hockey announces they are officially done, and are packing up and moving out from City Bank Coliseum. We've been following the team's story for months now, and at first -- the outpouring of public support was promising to try and keep the program alive. But today, unfortunately, the team's time is up.
The signs of a Texas Tech hockey program are slowly disappearing, after the city ended it's contract with the team last month. Today, Coach Paul Foironi and his team met to gather up equipment, belongings, and for one last locker room meeting as a team inside the Coliseum.
Right now the team's in debt to the city for about $10,000, and the funding that was originally promised to help out never came through.
The team will finish out the season's away games because of previously contracted agreements, but there will be no more home games. And the Big 12 tournament that was supposed to be here won't happen either.
Head Coach Paul Foironi: "The sad thing that people aren't understanding here is that Tech hockey has the option to finish the season. Our other hockey entities don't. Our youth programs, our adult programs, figure skating, ice skating, public skating, all of it comes to an end now. They've got nowhere to play. And that hurts me just as much 'cause that was half the reason why we were doing this."
Coach Foironi tells us they're going to back out of the spotlight now, hopefully see what the public can get together, and hopefully eventually get a place built where Tech hockey can continue -- but of course for right now, there's really no future in sight.
