Tadd Austin, manger and Zamboni driver, at Arctic Edge Ice Arena in Edmond, Sunday, Jan. 29, 2012. Photo by Garett Fisbeck, The Vista
[Click here to view an audio slideshow by Vista Photo Editor, Garett Fisbeck]
Have you ever wondered if UCO biology students make good Zamboni drivers?
Probably not, but it turns out that at least one of them does. Tad Austin has driven the Zamboni at Arctic Edge Ice Arena for the past four years.
He’s in charge of prepping the ice for a multitude of events at Arctic Edge, including UCO hockey games. Arctic Edge stays busy during the winter season which means Austin and his Zamboni are well acquainted.
“It depends on the day, but the least you’ll run it is probably six or seven times, says Austin. The most is during a tournament, you’ll run it about once every hour.”
Zamboni driver isn’t likely to make the list of jobs commonly held by college students, but the 2011 graduate of UCO explained how a biology major from Oklahoma City winds up behind the wheel of a Zamboni.
“My dad moved to St. Louis after Vietnam right about the time the St. Louis Blues moved into town so he was a big hockey fan, said Austin. We moved down here and we always grew up big hockey fans but we never really played. Then my sister married a guy from Pittsburgh and he asked why the heck I didn’t play. At that point I was 19 but he got me out on the ice and a little while after I got the job here to get some more ice time and now here I am.”
Although he admits he didn’t spend his childhood dreaming of manicuring ice, and has only worked at Arctic Edge for a few years, Austin explained the many intricacies of his job like a savvy veteran. Even detailing the mechanics of the “zam” over the hum of the machine as it glided along over the ice.
Austin began to recall some funny moments provided by the bulky machine as he finished his last pass down the center of the freshly glazed ice.
“It’s really a practice makes perfect kind of thing but even then I’ve seen just about everything that could happen, happen, he said chuckling. I wasn’t here for this but someone dug up a pipe below the ice one time. Somebody knocked off the swinging door at the side of the rink once too.”
After pausing for a moment to think about his own worst experience behind the wheel of the $50,000 dollar machine he recalled an infamous run-in with a Gatorade bottle.
“I ran over a Gatorade bottle and it got jammed. So I had to take the whole thing apart and reach my hand down in there to get it out. People think it can take up everything but it’s pretty fragile actually.”
The hazards of the job don’t stop once you’re off the ice. Dumping the excess snow from the Zamboni into the pit can be tricky. “The pit”, as Austin referred to it, is a nine foot deep hole that looks like a tiny sliver of the Arctic Ocean.
“Someone lost a wedding ring in there, his name will remain anonymous though. There have been people that have fallen in, I’ve never fallen in but I have gone down there willingly, that doesn’t count though, he said matter of factly. It was about 90% drained one time and there was just sludge on the bottom, I don’t know what it was actually, but it was gray and it smelled like the pachyderm house. I tried to find his wedding ring while I was down there but it is so ice cold down there your hands freeze in seconds.”
Although things don’t always go smoothly Austin says he genuinely enjoys his job.
“Obviously being around hockey this much is fun. But I’ve told a lot of people and they don’t believe me, it’s very cathartic to be out on that thing, it’s kind of Zen-like to fill in the cracks on the ice, he said. Sometimes if it gets busy up front you have an excuse to come back here to zam and you have 15 minutes to just slow down, you can think a lot of thoughts on that thing, you know?”
