For UF Ice Hockey Club president Noah Horwitz, every home game starts the same way: not in a locker room, but in a car.
That’s the reality of playing hockey in Gainesville, a city without an ice rink. The closest sheet of ice is the Community First Igloo in Jacksonville, a 90-minute drive. The team’s “home games” aren’t really home at all. Instead, they start with gear bags thumping into trunks, sticks clattering against back seats and players squeezing into borrowed rides.
By the time players finish the game and cram back in for the return trip, it’s often well past midnight. They don’t roll back into Gainesville until the early morning, stumbling into bed just hours before their alarms drag them up for class.
Horwitz says the players have learned to live with the travel. The team’s accolades prove the setbacks haven’t hurt its play, as the Gators secured their first national championship in 2024. But the setup is still far from ideal, he said.
“It doesn't necessarily feel like a home game every game,” he said. “But we can't really blame people for not wanting to drive an hour and a half on a random night to come watch us play.”
The ultimate goal, Horwitz said, is to bring a rink to Gainesville, or at least somewhere closer than Jacksonville. Other southern programs are proof it’s possible, he said. Georgia plays right in Athens at Akins Ford Arena, and Tennessee has rinks in Knoxville and the neighboring Farragut.
Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward said he’s open to building a rink in the city. However, there’s one glaring issue: funding. The city is facing financial pressure related to public transportation, and taking on a new project on an already-tight budget feels daunting, Ward said.
“I cannot imagine that in a scenario like that, we would say, ‘Sure, let's fund an ice rink,’” Ward said.
To make it feasible, Ward said, the rink would have to double as a year-round multipurpose facility — something the city could justify keeping open long after the hockey season ends. Still, a significant portion of the money would have to come from the university or the team itself.
That’s a tall order for a club program with little more than player dues and merch sales to cover expenses.
Using a rink an hour and a half away makes every game a slog. But for the players, the road itself has become part of the story.
“ You're usually driving with different people every time, so you get to hear a lot of new voices, have a lot of different conversations,” Horwitz said.
Jack Tepper, a 20-year-old UF construction management junior on the lower-tiered squad, is familiar with the grind. Sharing the same arena as the top team means packing up, carpooling and following the same routine for every game.
While exhausting, the travel also creates moments he said he wouldn’t trade. Car rides turn into karaoke sessions, impromptu football watch parties or long stretches of laughter with teammates.
“At the end of the day, you're with your boys in a car going to play the sport that you guys all love,” Tepper said.
About a year ago, Tepper said, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He dove into research, eventually creating a business plan for the City Commission outlining how Gainesville could realistically support a rink.
He never got to present it — school got in the way, he said — but the file still sits on his laptop, a reminder the idea isn’t dead.
To him, the rink wouldn’t just belong to the team. It would be for the whole community, he said.
“ [We’re] not just helping the club hockey team drive less hours, but turning the ice rink into a community center where we raise money, help out charities and we're introducing people that might have never seen a hockey game in their life to the sport,” Tepper said.
For now, the Gators will keep packing cars, filling them with sticks and duffel bags, and chasing ice that isn’t theirs — but the possibility of a true home rink still lingers on the horizon.
Contact Daniela Ortiz at dortiz@alligator.org. Follow her on X @danielaortizUF.
Daniela is a junior sports journalism student and the enterprise/hockey beat reporter for Fall 2025. When not writing an article, you can catch her drawing or playing with her roommates' cats.
