What: UNLV vs. Arizona
Where: Fiesta Sobe Ice Arena
When: 6:30 p.m. Oct. 13,
6 p.m. Oct. 14
Aaron Baca somehow believes it's weird that he's the captain of the UNLV ice hockey team, even though it's doubtful the program would exist without him.
He contacted Eddie Kawa about coaching the squad, shepherded paperwork between the American Collegiate Hockey Association and the university, and appealed to the Student Senate for funding.
"He's an impressive kid," Kawa said. "He's put his heart and soul into this."
After helping UNLV defeat Arizona State recently in its season opener at the Fiesta Sobe Ice Arena, Baca, a 20-year-old center, claimed he isn't outspoken enough to be a prominent figure on the Rebels squad.
"I like to think I just go out there and lead by example," he said. "I'm not the guy always yelling on the bench. I'm a lot quieter."
He wasn't so quiet last season when he pleaded to the UNLV Student Senate. He got $6,000, or about 10 percent of the club team's annual operating needs. Each player pays $1,200 a year in dues, and sponsors provide the rest of the balance sheet.
In the Sept. 22 opener, about 1,000 puck-crazed fans - about the same size as the average crowd during last season's games - supported one of UNLV's more obscure teams.
Kawa even convinced former Rebels basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian to drop the ceremonial first puck.
"Anything I can do to help out," Tarkanian said. "I didn't even know they had a hockey team. I'd never met Eddie, but he was excited about it. I said, 'Heck, I'll do it.' "
The team went 28-3-1 last season in its debut, although probationary status kept it from ACHA Division 2 playoff competition. This season, the top two teams from each of the four regional playoffs advance to the national tournament in March.
The Rebels have arranged an impressive schedule that includes trips to NCAA Division I programs Oklahoma (where UNLV lost two games over the weekend) and Texas Tech, and heavyweight Michigan visits the Fiesta in mid-January for two games.
"A lot of teams are willing to come extra miles just because it's Vegas," Baca said.
Kawa, 43, left Detroit for Las Vegas nearly 20 years ago. He owns a mortgage company, but he lives and breathes hockey.
As a hard-hitting defenseman, he once earned team MVP honors for the junior Kitchener Rangers in the Ontario Hockey League. Back problems forced him to the bench, and he coached the short-lived, semi-pro Las Vegas Royals four years ago.
"The kids appealed to me," Kawa said. "I'm so grateful they gave me the chance."
The Rebels have an intriguing cast, from the 25-year-old goalie who isn't sure if he likes the sport but signed up for graduate school to keep playing, to the 5-foot-8 forward with a scroll tattooed on his right rib cage.
That would be Anthony Greener, the 20-year-old forward who serves as an alternate captain. He suffered a broken right hip in a traffic accident four years ago and hasn't skated the same since.
His parents wrote him an inspirational message, about having inner strength and overcoming stiff odds, and that's the prayerlike note within the elaborate scroll. He winced through the tattoo session last month.
"Probably the worst two hours of my life," he said.
Greener laughed at the $600-a-semester dues. He said youth travel hockey costs about that much per month.
"This is pretty cheap, but we shouldn't have to pay for anything," he said. "The basketball and football teams all get new equipment, and we're struggling here, taping up stuff to make it work."
Chris Tate, the 6-3, 230-pound Los Angeles native who has a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and a full-time job at Bank of America, couldn't stay away from the team. So the goalie who's been playing for six years signed up for graduate school, in business finance, to keep gauging his zeal for the ice.
"I always try to tell myself I don't like the game," Tate said. "I don't like it. I don't like it. For whatever reason, I'm always out there. It's gotta be something I'm not seeing yet."
Tate said he doesn't talk puck on campus.
"No one really knows about us yet," he said. "They will soon."
Anthony Marinello, a slick-skating 19-year-old forward and architecture major, gave UNLV the lead for good, at 2-1, off a sweet, point-blank Colby Cookson assist in the opener against ASU.
"We don't have any kind of scholarship; so it's more love for the game," Marinello said. "We just want to play."
As a club team at UNLV, the hockey program operates on its own checkbook.
"I hope that some of the people in the athletic department come to our games this season and take a look," Kawa said. "The basketball team, the last couple of years, has been mediocre. The football team, they've stalled. All we do is win."
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