Hard-Core Skaters Play Like Chips Off Ol’ Apple Cup

Fifteen minutes remain before the start of something that either is or isn’t the Applesauce Cup, and tumult is brewing.

Spectators, it seems, aren’t going to be allowed inside the No. 2 rink at Eagles Ice-A-Rena.

Virtually anything can happen when Washington State University tangles with Washington whatever the sport - football, mah jongg, intercollegiate belching or, in this case, ice hockey.

But you’d never expect a quarantine.

Hey, they found a bomb in Martin Stadium one year and still let 37,600 people through the gates.

This is different. This is hockey. Club sport hockey.

This is the Cougs and the Dawgs on ice - an Apple Cup, depending on the beholder, either half-full or runneth over.

“If I’da slashed him,” a Cougar defenseman named Herb Ahten grouses loudly to the referee and anyone else who’d care to listen after being sent off for a penalty, “he wouldn’t have gotten up.”

Hmm. Probably runneth over.

It is almost 10:30 p.m. when the first puck drops and the first irony is duly noted. A fan mutiny was in the works when word got out last month that the UW-WSU football game might begin as late as 7:15, a possibility since quashed. But for the Wazzu puckmeisters, every home game is a 10:15 affair - to accommodate not TV but Myers Drywall and the rest of the Spokane rec-league teams which get first dibs. And the Cougs are happy to get the ice then.

And the Ice-A-Rena is happy to have them. Sort of.

It seems a busload of, uh, well-fortified fans accompanied the Cougs to a recent game against UCLA and decided to make the event interactive. According to one eyewitness, bathrooms were trashed, a whiskey bottle - among other things - was thrown on the ice and spectators tried to scale the glass.

In other words, amending an old joke, they went to a hockey game and college broke out.

Rather than doling out two minutes for high-shticking, rink management decides to lock the doors for this one - though assorted moms, dads, grandpas and girlfriends who tagged along with the Huskies are allowed inside, after a pledge that they’ll be on their best behavior.

Perhaps all this good behavior contributes to a first-period malaise which falls over the Cougs, who after a 1-1 tie get caught flat-bladed as a lanky Husky - oxymoron? - named Mike Palmer pops in three straight goals.

Then again, it just could be lack of practice.

The Cougars don’t have any - no ice in Pullman. They don’t have a coach, either. Or sponsors. Or sanction from the athletic department.

What do they have?

“We have a meeting once a week,” offers Kristofer Winquist, a 30-year-old graduate student in fine arts who plays on the blue line.

They also have a $1,000 check from the Associated Students of WSU, with which to fund their trips to Cal, Oregon, Seattle, the Tri-Cities and - perhaps - Los Angeles. They have a league - the Pac-8 - which will stage its playoffs at USC in February. They have a pipe dream that someday, there will be ice in Beasley Coliseum.

Likewise, the Huskies are making due with $1,100 from ASUW, which goes even faster because they have access to a rink in Seattle and the ice bill for even just two practices a week can run up to $3,500 a month.

You guessed it. These fellows are self-scholarshipped.

“I’ve already spent $700 this season,” reports Ahten.

“I spent 18 grand last year going to school and playing hockey,” says Winquist.

“He fishes in Alaska in the summer,” Ahten says, “and I sell roofing in Denver. I just follow the hailstorms. I had a banner year.”

So much for the motivation factor. If you’re paying the tab, you get your money’s worth. The skills may not be sharp, but the elbows are and so are the appetites for action. The tin acoustics bring out the thunder in the rink’s old boards, and everybody plays percussion.

No prisoners.

“Toughen up,” counsels Tim Hess, an assistant coach in charge of the Huskies this night. “Give me a body check, not a European body check.”

Behind the bench, Hess has a bearing which could get him cast as a villain in the next Mighty Ducks sequel, but he’s a good deal more personable off the ice. Perhaps that’s because he’s Dr. Tim Hess - aka Timmy the Tooth, who used to play for UW while he went to dental school.

“The nice thing about this rivalry,” he says, “is that guys know each other. You play hard, but after the game a guy will come over and give you a beer. That’s the way hockey should be.”

Actually, the guy giving Hess the beer is Ahten, a 38-year-old who played with Hess at UW before transferring to WSU’s civil engineering department.

“Hazardous wastes,” he says, grinning. “That’s what I’m into.”

In hockey, that’s another term for crosschecking, eh? “You get some camaraderie out there,” confirms Winquist. “It doesn’t get too chippy.”

Of course, Winquist does get tossed for unsportsmanlike conduct and Kevin Miller is run for throwing hands and a UW goon named Tim Carroll comes off for holding - that is, holding a Coug by the collar and throwing him to the ice - and makes kissy faces at the Wazzu bench. The Huskies leave 5-1 winners, but the big concern seems to be whether any offenders will have to sit out the following night’s game, pre-empting revenge.

Yeah, this is U-Dub and Wazzu, all right.

“Last year we played for the Applesauce Cup,” says Winquist, “but this year we changed it up and had it against UCLA. Most people on our team we’re from all over, so they don’t really know the Apple Cup thing. I think next year we’ll have to go back to having it with Washington.”

Get your tickets early - though, obviously, there’s no assurance a ticket will get you in.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review