For the first time since 2014, the Orange jersey of TRU hockey hit the ice. Previously, the Logan Lake Miners spent the last four years establishing themselves as a strong team in the BCIHL and proving they can be financially self-sufficient. It was announced in June that they would officially be joining the WolfPack family.
In their first few games wearing the WolfPack name, players are getting a taste of what it means to be TRU athletes.
The ‘Pack has played four exhibition games since the name change and has gone 2-2. Playing against SFU and the Okanagan Lakers, splitting each series and scoring 19 goals across the four games.
For the Players, the change has brought a new sense of pride and a stronger connection to the university they represent.
“ It’s really cool to be affiliated with the university. I’m a fourth-year student there now, and it feels cool to represent the university [after] being there for four years. I think that probably the biggest feeling I have is the sense of pride,” Talon Zakall, a defenseman and Natural Resource Sciences student, said.
For some players, the connection between being a student and an athlete has grown. Lyden Robertson, a forward and biology student, said he feels more pride and, specifically, more like a student-athlete while playing under TRU, rather than being a student as well as an athlete.
“ A little bit more pride in playing for the university versus what it was in the past, where being a true student-athlete, and you just get that feeling a little bit more,” Robertson said.
The transition into being directly affiliated with TRU also brings more potential for growth in the program’s future, particularly when recruiting.
“it’s gonna be easier for us to recruit players because we sound more legit now being affiliated with the university,” Zakall said. “TRU’s a good school. It’s got lots of good programs, so lots of players are looking for specific things when they go to university. So, having TRU to pull on for all that is gonna make recruitment a lot easier for us.”
The move to WolfPack Athletics comes after years of building the program independently. In 2023, Curtis Atkinson, TRU’s director of athletics and recreation, was quoted to the Omega as saying that the return of TRU hockey was “very unlikely”. This was just a year after the Miners had become a team. Since then, the club has continued to show growth and stability over the past four seasons.
Talks about the merger started last October, when Head Coach Grant Friesen sat down with Atkinson to discuss what it would take now that the club had built a foundation for itself out in Logan Lake. This was not the first time the Miners and Atkinson would discuss the issue. Friesen explained that Atkinson had said they would need to “go away for a while” and prove that the team could operate on its own, have a full-time head coach and check off other boxes.
“In October, we sat down and had the conversation about, hey, here’s where we’re at. We don’t need the financial support, but we do think that us merging together, it’d be great to have hockey back at TRU, and for us, it just brings some instant credibility to the program,” Friesen said. “Cause now we’re not trying to recruit players to play for the Logan Lake Miners and then trying to explain what that is. We’re just explaining like, ‘Hey, we want you to come play for our hockey program, which is, you know, Thompson Rivers University. [You] go to school there and we play and practice out in Logan Lake.’”
Although the team is now part of WolfPack Athletics, it will continue to operate as a self-funded club program, receiving no funding from TRU and remaining responsible for covering it’s own operating costs through sponsorships, fundraising, and other sources. The affiliation allows the team to represent TRU while maintaining the independent funding model it established as the Logan Lake Miners.
While Friesen helped facilitate the merger, he stated the credit for bringing hockey back to TRU belongs to the community of Logan Lake and those who have been supporters of this team over the last four years.
“ I don’t think I’m really a key player in it. I think the people that are the key players in it are our players and our volunteers. They’re the ones that put the work in. I’m just the one that facilitated it,” said Freisen.
As the team begins building its connection with the university, Robertson spoke on how he hopes the TRU community will rally around their new sports team, and help them gain support beyond the Logan Lake community.
“It’s a big drawing factor that people know TRU; people know the Wolfpack. In terms of community as well, just the support for the university itself will definitely help spread to us, and so we’ll get more support just for our games.” Robertson said.
Looking forward, both Zakall and Robertson said they hope to see more opportunities for fans in Kamloops to make the trip out to Logan Lake to watch the team play. One idea discussed is a potential bus program that would provide transportation and game tickets for TRU students and fans.
With the team now representing TRU, the hope is that more students will have the opportunity to experience WolfPack hockey, even if it means making the trip outside of Kamloops.
As the team continues to build on the foundation established as the Logan Lake Miners, its next chapter will be about more than a new name or jersey. It’s about growing the program, bringing a university community together and creating something that future generations of WolfPack hockey players can build on.