Midco Arena takes shape as ticket sales surge

How eager are hockey fans to begin going to games at Augustana University’s new Midco Arena?

The 350-seat club section already is sold out for the season.

“It was our highest-demand ticket, and we’re really pleased with that,” director of athletics Josh Morton said.

There’s a lot to be happy about as the arena and the program that will fill it start to take shape, he said.

“When you go inside now, you get a sense of what a hockey game will look like now that the concrete is poured and they’re ready to put the ice in,” Morton said.

And while the club seats at center ice, served by a private bar, restrooms and upscale food, might not be an option unless you moved fast, Morton contends there’s not a bad seat in the place.

“The highest row is 13 rows up, and it’s made for hockey. It’s steep. So you are on top of it,” he said. “We have great seats really all around the whole bowl. The sight lines are terrific.”

Arena construction is progressing at 33rd Street and Grange Avenue such that “we’re in good shape” for the official Jan. 18 move-in date, Morton added. The first game in the arena is scheduled eight days later.

“But they’ve poured the concrete for the actual ice bowl, the cooling unit has been brought in, so it’s really starting to come together inside,” Morton said.

The Midco Arena is about more than hockey, though. The goal was to determine what other needs within athletics it could serve, he said.

That led to the GreatLIFE Strength & Conditioning Center that will be open to all Augustana athletes, in addition to a women’s soccer team locker room and lounge, which Morton describes as “much needed and deserved.”

There also will be offices for athletics staff who are out of space at the Elmen Center, plus a players’ lounge and locker room for the hockey team.

In the lobby, spectators will be able to shop the “Skol Store” team shop.

An image of mascot Ole the Viking will be seen through the large arena windows, “so it will catch people’s eye driving down 33rd Street,” Morton said.

Within the arena, a student section “will terrorize the visiting goalie during two of the three periods,” he added, and a dozen suites will serve corporate or other private event needs.

“We’ve had huge demand for our bar rail seating in the bowl and our club seating, and we have great seats still available in the arena bowl,” Morton said.

Overall arena capacity is just over 3,000. Season ticket sales are ongoing, and an online ticketing platform offers virtual views from each seat.

“We’ll play our first five games at the Premier Center, and because of the size of that facility, we’ll be able to accommodate all season tickets, and people won’t have to pay for those tickets. It’s part of their package,” Morton said. “We will still play 10 games at the Midco Arena, and I’m really proud we’ll have 15 home games our first year as a startup.”

The team itself now counts 26 players on the roster, including 14 transfers.

“In college athletics, there’s no better time to have a startup program, so we’re excited, and they’ll start to come in this month. Classes start at the end of August, and they can be on the ice,” Morton said. “The (Scheels) IcePlex has been great, so we have a temporary home for practice before we move into the Midco Arena.”

Coach Garrett Raboin, most recently assistant coach for the University of Minnesota, has “embraced doing something from scratch,” Morton said. “It’s so much more than recruiting and putting the team together. It’s about building excitement in the community and setting a foundation for decades with the program. And we found the perfect person. Garrett has been everything we could have hoped for.”

The puck will be dropping soon. The first game is less than two months away, Oct. 7 at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

“It’s coming really, really fast,” Morton said. “But the work that’s been done the last two years has just set us up to be in a great place.”