Every game day, one thing is on my mind: how can I be first in line? Before every semester, I perfectly craft my schedule to get out of class early on Fridays. I line up between 2 to 3 p.m. every game with my fellow Maineiaks. We have experienced the worst of Orono’s weather while in line. During my first year, my fellow Maineiak faithfuls and I waited in line in freezing rain for over an hour. I can say with confidence that we have braved it all.
This previous matchup at the Alfond was for the ages; ranked number seven UMaine vs number 10 Providence College. Being one of the first top-ten matchups in a decade at the Alfond, the anticipation was widely felt. At 1:30 p.m., the first students arrived. Mind you, doors open for students at 6:00 p.m. typically. This gameday, thankfully, the university put on a hot dog and hot chocolate event for students in line. Anytime we are given food in line, the experience becomes 10 times better.
The average line experience is below-freezing temperatures and early on-set frostbite. The line may be grueling, but it is a great way to make friends. It is hard not to talk to the people around you when you stand next to them for three hours. You’ll learn that strangers in line quickly become chatty friends.
At 6:00 p.m. we are allowed to enter the Alfond. As all the students file into the student section, we Maineiaks at the front of section JJ disperse the flags of the players’ home countries. This game marks the debut of a new flag, the Italian flag. UMaine doesn’t currently have a player from Italy, but we do have a kid from Staten Island. Anthony Calafoire, the freshman forward, would score his first collegiate goal in the second period. Scoring the game’s second goal, he set the UMaine Student section on fire. After the student section chanted “Sieve,” they broke out the traditional “It’s All Your Fault” chant, which is a rarity during the second period because the opposing goalie is on the opposite end. I love the chanting “It’s All Your Fault” because it’s a chant I started last year. Although I didn’t create it, I first learned it at an Allen Americans game down in Allen, Texas.
One of the things that I enjoy most about the student section is that it’s all people bringing their best ideas forward to pick on one guy for 60 minutes of game time and timeouts. To be fair, the goalie doesn’t always take all of the jeers. In this game, we faced up against a player with the last name McDonald, which led to a rendition of “Old McDonald Had a Farm,” except “farm” was changed to “sieve.”
If you are unfamiliar with what a sieve is, it is essentially a strainer, something that lets things in easily. In this case, the “thing” is the puck. Hockey jeers are usually made of weird comparisons, I don’t know of any other phenomenon in sports where it has its dictionary of slang. I have also realized that most of them are food-related, lettuce is hair, apple is assist, and the goalie is Swiss cheese. There’s a lot to learn about hockey, so that’s why the Maineiaks usually provide a cheat sheet for the average fan. The group even has its own website, “Maineiaks.fans,” in which you can find all the chants and what they mean. So, if you ever wanna go a little crazy, get in line early and become a Maineiak.
