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Editor鈥檚 note: The Pioneer sat down with Bemidji State Director of Athletics Britt Lauritsen for a Q&A. This is the first of a two-part series. The second part will detail BSU sports outside of men鈥檚 and women鈥檚 hockey. 

BEMIDJI 鈥� It was an eventful season for men鈥檚 and women鈥檚 hockey at Bemidji State.

Director of Athletics Britt Lauritsen sat down with the Pioneer to discuss all topics involving BSU hockey, including attendance, the state of the CCHA, coaching changes and the future of TV and streaming deals.

Q: The most commonly submitted question revolved around attendance for men鈥檚 and women鈥檚 hockey games. What are your takeaways from the attendance totals in 2023-24?

Lauritsen: There are a lot of things that we're trying to do to attract a crowd, right? We changed our season ticket prices, and we鈥檙e trying to kind of right-size our ticket packages with where those ticket prices fell within our arena because those really hadn't been touched in a while.

We learned some lessons from that. There were some good takeaways, some bad takeaways. Just trying to figure out kind of what that flow was one part around the men's (attendance discussions).

Obviously, winning helps everything, right? We have to figure out ways to get butts in seats for games against the Bowling Greens or the Lake States, you know, the teams that don't attract a big crowd. That's really on us to think in the space of promo nights, theme nights and things like that. We've got to be creative.

Madelyn Haasken / Bemidji Pioneer

I think we owe a lot to the city of Bemidji and the Sanford Center to be good partners and to play well in the sandbox and do the best that we can for each other. I think Bobby Anderson as general manager (of the Sanford Center) will be more likely to help us work on what it looks like if we have a ticket promo, but then also food and beverage ideas there. Can we find ways that make it more feasible for families and younger fans to come in?

A big thing with our women's attendance we saw in the back half of the year as we looked at some of the meal deals and the $2 (tickets) is we brought in people who hadn't been to games before.

We have to make that replicable while also recognizing that we have that fiduciary duty to the institution, to the city and to the Sanford Center to make it work. If you look at our schedule, our nonconference games are going to draw huge numbers. Those always help. How do we generate that same type of buzz every single game in and game out, changing the atmosphere up?

That's the forever puzzle for Bemidji and for us. So, we'll just keep grinding at it.

Brent Cizek

Having more staff (at BSU) will help us think more creatively. In some ways, we kind of fight for our lives just to staff and make sure every game runs and operates. I'm hopeful that in a space where we feel a little more breathing room, that breath gives us creativity.

Q: Talking about the 鈥渇orever puzzle,鈥� have you come up with any short-term solutions or is that still a work in progress? 

Lauritsen: It's a work in progress but the general feedback is how do you make a game more so of an event from beginning to end? How do you get people hyped up and excited to be there from the moment they walk in until the moment that they leave? We've got some work to do there, but we've got the right people in the space to do it.

Working with Bobby, Shelana (Ysen) and those folks at the Sanford Center, and being able to work on our side of stuff like what does a better intermission look like? What are some of those key pieces that help bring excitement? I think the PWHL does a great job of fan engagement. A lot of professional leagues and other college sports conferences lean into the theatrics of an event that maybe we haven't done before.

My favorite question as a leader is, 鈥淲hat would this look like if it was fun?鈥� I don't know that we've totally leaned into that space because we've been so focused operationally on let's do it. We鈥檝e been focused on trying to just pull off the events. That's the next step. We know that we can operate. We know our team is going to play at a high level, especially on the men's side.

I have really high hopes on the women's side that we improve and see great improvements really quickly. We need to let (women鈥檚 head coach Amber Fryklund) do her thing on the ice. We don't need to control that. How do we make it fun elsewhere?

Q: Is this the most opportune time to take that next step in fan engagement coming off of the MacNaughton Cup win? 

Lauritsen: Absolutely. It is absolutely the time to take that step. And I think, at a certain point, we've got to allow ourselves to enjoy the moment a little bit more. The reason people love sports, and the reason people are drawn to sports on a psychosocial level, and just on a soulful level, is because it's fun.

We get really, really caught up sometimes in forgetting that and running a business. But success tends to breed fun.

Everybody loves a winner. We鈥檙e trying to ride that high knowing that you have some of those key pieces. We'll have the McNaughton Cup in the building for every game next year. And hopefully, we'll just continue to keep it, right? When you have hardware in the building, that's a level of swag that you don't get when that hardware is not there.

I'm excited for that because you can build a lot of hype just around being a defending champion. We've seen that in soccer, and we've seen it in football. When you've got something to defend, and something to really be proud of, that takes things to a whole new level for your fans, just as much as for your teams.

Madelyn Haasken / Bemidji Pioneer

On the women's side, we played at an entirely different level when there were 900 people in the building.

And it sounds like such a small number for that building. When your average attendance is 125 for a women's game, then you have 900 people in there, the place was rocking. It was so much fun. I had the best freaking time. So we've got to just continue to make it into that type of atmosphere day in and day out.

Q: Does Amber Fryklund take on the challenge of growing women鈥檚 hockey in Bemidji? You look at the coaches who have been at BSU for a while 鈥� Tom Serratore, Brent Bolte, Jim Stone 鈥� all of them are community ambassadors in their own way. Do those efforts pay off in terms of fan engagement? 

Lauritsen: 100%. Amber and I have had a lot of those conversations. I do think that Amber brings a lens to it where she has been super involved in our youth programs here in Bemidji and our region. When we had 900 people in the building, we had a lot of youth teams and they came because of those connections.

I want to make sure that we are very, very clear about what the goal is for Amber as a coach: to put the best team we can out on the ice and be able to find a stride there. But also utilize truly the God-given talent she has at making connections just like a Tom Serratore, a Jim Stone or a Brent Bolte can.

Courtesy / Brent Cizek Photography

That's why I love this sized community and our institution in particular because we can build a grassroots following. Whereas if we were in a much bigger area, schools are a dime a dozen. But here, we can build that. This is our team, it鈥檚 just BSU's team. I think that's important and Amber understands that and will lean into it really, really well.

Q: What are your thoughts on the new streaming deal with Midco? Does this new TV deal open any doors to broadcasting games locally again?

Lauritsen: Super excited for the deal, it's great for the CCHA. Again, when we're talking about branding and putting ourselves out there, having a partner like Midco who is willing to not only invest financially but in the resources to create a great product is really exciting.

I heard enough complaints or just issues with FloHockey, it was not super accessible and didn't feel like a platform that our fans in particular enjoyed.

The day it was announced I got this job, I got a message on Facebook from somebody saying, 鈥淗ey, congratulations!鈥� How they found my Facebook, I don't know. But they're telling me their life story about being a Bemidji State hockey fan. And then the very last sentence was, 鈥淐an we please get hockey back on TV?鈥�

I didn't know what that was even about at that time. I was not clued in or dialed into what was going on. But that was my first introduction to this whole conversation of hockey on TV. For 22 months, it鈥檚 been a recurring theme of hockey on TV.

There are a lot of moving parts to that. The reasons for not going through Lakeland or all of that, I've talked to a lot of people about them. There were a whole lot of factors that were just extremely complicated and complex. I respect everybody in that situation trying to do what was best. But it's also a complicating factor.

When your conference has a streaming deal with a FloHockey or a Midco, some of the reasons become contractual. The carve-outs for linear television change with every contract. That was a whole other piece that not many folks have the opportunity to be clued in on. It's not just a BSU decision in some of those respects. It is also contractual in what we can or can鈥檛 do in those spaces.

And some of it's just purely functional. To my understanding, when that Lakeland deal ended, they had a lot of television equipment in the Sanford Center for hockey. When we parted ways institutionally from Lakeland, my understanding is they pulled a lot of their equipment out of there and have repurposed that and reutilized that. There is a financial piece of how do you do that again on top of the other financial piece.

When hockey was on TV, it gave fans an opportunity if they weren't at the Sanford Center to still see our players on the men's and women's side. When you watch any game on TV, if you're watching the Timberwolves or you're watching the Indiana Fever, you feel like you get to know those players because you hear their names. That builds that allegiance in your heart for whatever team you're watching.

Eric Hylden / Grand Forks Herald

When it's not as accessible or on a streaming platform or something like that, you are seeing some of those fans who may have been watching on Lakeland who aren't converting over to a FloHockey. They're losing that connection to the team and to the program.

We have to find unique ways to build that back in the absence of having it on Lakeland at this point. I would love, in my heart of hearts, to get to a place where we have the most avenues for accessibility and for everybody to watch and get the most butts in seats that we can. Whatever that kind of magic bullet looks like, we'd love to get to that spot.

But there's just no magic bullet. Right now, we're having to kind of pick and choose battles of how do we make this decision that maybe continues to domino effect into other ones. But it's all connected.

We wouldn't necessarily call it a work in progress because there's not really anything to work off of. But in the ideal scenario, BSU would essentially prefer that that is an option or something of that nature is an option to connect the games to the local audience without having to be there, without having to sacrifice attendance.

Ultimately, I would love to get to a point where we can have a really engaged conversation about the next steps versus kind of getting to a stopping point.

Q: How does BSU feel about St. Thomas leaving the CCHA?

Lauritsen: That's a decision that they make in what they feel is the best interest for their institution. I won't ever fault anybody for making a decision that they think is best for what they need to accomplish and what their goals are institutionally. I think knowing that they're leaving, now is the time that we shift our focus away from that.

If they're leaving, they're leaving. That's fine, and we wish them the best. We have to focus on doing what we can do to make sure the CCHA is strong. We have to make sure to position ourselves within the CCHA to continue to be competitive, to fight for the McNaughton Cup, for the Mason Cup and fight for those NCAA bids.

I think that we are unique in the CCHA in that we have other institutions that are similarly situated to us, being multi-divisional. That is to our benefit, to have similarly situated institutions who understand the regional concerns that we have, the financial concerns that we have, the sport concerns that we have.

Madelyn Haasken / Bemidji Pioneer

What do we want the CCHA to look like in five years? Going down to eight member institutions, we get to redefine that and declare that as a conference. I hope that we wholeheartedly step into that version of forward thinking and strategic planning of, yeah, OK, here we go. It鈥檚 go time, eight members, let's rock and roll, let's do the thing, and we're a part of it.

I know that President (John) Hoffman and I have had conversations about the CCHA and what it means for us institutionally. Tom's been in the game a long time. He's seen everything under the sun, and we have full faith in him steering the ship for us in the conference too. We want to do the best for Bemidji State and do the best for the CCHA that we can to keep us strong.

Q: When you speak about building up the CCHA and talking about the league as a whole being more forward-thinking, what can Bemidji State do to increase the league鈥檚 brand outside of putting a good team on the ice, being a perennial contender and competing for at-large spots in the Pairwise Rankings?

Lauritsen: I think for us it's continuing to tell our story and to be more proactive about telling our story. We have such a rich history and tradition of hockey. When you look at the CCHA, there are a lot of schools that do have that as well. The CCHA can be better about branding ourselves as a league of hard-nosed, incredible hockey programs.

We play blue-collar hockey in a lot of respects. We have folks who make it to the NHL. We have national contenders. We just have to tell that story in a much better way. For us, regionally, we have the advantage of people understanding Bemidji State's history and tradition. Perhaps with that Midco agreement, we are getting out to a wider audience than what we would have on FloHockey.

Q: How firm is Bemidji State鈥檚 commitment to the CCHA?

Lauritsen: We are diehard in the CCHA. It's a great place for us. I love our nonconference rivalries. I think those games when we have St. Cloud or Duluth, North Dakota or Minnesota come to town, that's great. But I love the brand of hockey we play in the CCHA.

God, I just love the parity. This past year was so fun. As we all continue to elevate and find ways to navigate through the changes in college athletics and find ways to continue to assert ourselves, we're only going to improve.

Q: Minnesota State has reportedly tried leaving the CCHA in the past. Has Bemidji State ever tried to move to the NCHC? 

Lauritsen: Not to my knowledge.

Q: A big discussion topic in college hockey was the potential of the NCAA shifting to host-site regional tournaments. For now, they鈥檙e sticking with neutral site regionals Does BSU have a stance on this? 

Lauritsen: Personally, I really didn't have a stance on it. Those conversations tended to happen more among the coaches at their convention. I got the sense in talking with Tom that even though there was a squeaky wheel about home site regionals, most people really were still bought into the neutral site. The NCAA is more bought into the neutral site. I don't actually know if it had as long of legs as we thought it did.