Up until Monday, Arnaud Vachon and his teammates were getting dressed in a trailer.
The Augustana hockey team, without an arena of their very own, were practicing in the Scheels IcePlex in Sioux Falls, S.D., and playing their games a few miles away at the Denny Sanford Premier Center.
So when Vachon and the rest of the Vikings walked into their new arena for the first time Sunday night, it was like being handed the keys to your new house for the first time.
“The vibes were high, guys were excited,” said Vachon, the fifth-year captain. “We’ve been getting dressed in two separate trailers outside the Iceplex for the past couple months, which was rough. Forwards and ‘D’ were separated, so it was a little weird. So being in the same dressing room, walking up on the ice that we call home and not having to pack your bags after every practice or game, it’s a great feeling to have a place where you can all hang out and have a place to call home.”
That home is Midco Arena, where the Vikings host future conference foes Ferris State in the rink’s first-ever home games this weekend.
Augustana coach Garrett Raboin, who was hired in the spring of 2022 and has seen the arena project grow from the ground up, said earlier this season that this weekend was something everyone on the team had circled as a milestone.
“Having been very fortunate at St. Cloud State and University of Minnesota to be in two great venues, it was something that was part of the deal, and now you really gain that perspective of just how much work and time and energy goes into creating something like Midco Arena,” he said.
The 3,100-seat rink is in the heart of Augustana’s campus. Raboin said the building itself is designed with “a lot of Norwegian concepts” and has plenty of Scandinavian flair to reflect the school’s Norwegian Lutheran heritage.
“That’s something that’s important to our campus, and this building’s not just something that’s a hockey rink, it’s something that’s going to be enjoyed by the whole campus, and our alumni and all the fans around our program,” Raboin said.
The Vikings have already done more than enough to make the South Dakota hockey community proud. With a 7-12-3 overall record and signature wins over the likes of Colorado College, Arizona State and Bowling Green, Augustana is already playing much better than outside observers might have predicted.
“Every time there’s a new team, people think they can just step all over them, but Augustana did the right thing during recruiting. We got good players and good people at the same time,” said Vachon, who played four years at Colgate before coming to play his fifth-year season in Sioux Falls. “We’re young in experience but old in age, so we’re a mature team who knows how to behave off the ice and on the ice and in big moments. We’ve shown that this year against ASU and other big teams like CC, Denver, Notre Dame. So we’re looking to keep the ball rolling with that and getting better every day, which is pretty much our motto.”
The Vikings are coming off a weekend at Arizona State, where they earned a split at Mullett Arena. Vachon had a goal and two assists in Friday’s 5-4 win–a literal last-minute victory in which Owen Bohn scored with 30 seconds left.
Vachon ended up Sioux Falls after playing four years at Colgate, where he captained the Raiders and helped them win their first ECAC tournament title in more than 30 years last season. He was attracted to Augustana because of former Colgate assistant Andy Boschetto. Boschetto spent a year in Sioux Falls helping Raboin get the program off the ground before moving on to UMass Lowell, but it was enough to connect Vachon with Raboin.
“I liked (Raboin’s) philosophy on the game for me personally, how to build my game, but it’s also a unique opportunity to come to a new program and build it from the ground up and instill that culture as a fifth year,” Vachon said.
Raboin called Vachon “an absolute gift” to the Augustana program.
“How he carries himself, not only on the ice but also on campus and in the community, is at such a high level,” he said. “He’s so comfortable leading, it’s so natural for him. He doesn’t have to try. As a coach, to have someone like him in your first year as a new head coach, it really has been so critical as we lay the foundation. There’s not a big enough word to describe him.
“Who he is is exemplified through the group as a whole. He’s relentless, he’s hardworking, he’s honest, he’s for the team and for the program. He’s given his all of himself for this program.”
Vachon sees this weekend as an opportunity for Augustana.
“It’s a huge weekend for the program. It’s a big weekend having a new rink for the first time,” he said. “The whole team but also the community and the school has been pumped up for this moment for two years now, so it’s nice to finally have that come about. But we’re also excited because we’re coming off a big weekend against ASU, where we won that first game and then the second game we played so well. We had glimpses of our hockey where we dominated at times, so we want to bring that against Ferris and look for the sweep at home.”
