Take Me To The SportChek Zone

The nose bleeds. The cheap seats. The attic. The bleeders. The Sport ChekZone.

Call them what you will, but I love watching game from up there.  Give me a couple beers, a hot dog and a few hundred rowdy fans and I’ll take the SportChek zone over potentially getting stuck with a bunch of clappers.

Clappers are the people who stay relatively quiet all game and get mad at you for making a lot of noise, but when the home team does score, they will softly clap or whistle. I’m not saying games are packed with these people, they they certainly do exist in the more expensive sections. They are not to be confused with blistering slap-shots.

The SportChek zone are the blocks of seats in the very last rows of the upper-bowl of the Saddledome, and is what hockey games are all about. OK, that opinion is subject to change If start making more money…

But for now I want to watch a game in the realest atmosphere possible. A place where drunken hooligans can jeer the opposing team, and fans (or the home team in some cases). A place where I don’t have to worry about blocking some middle-aged couple’s view. A place that I can only get to by climbing 90 degree stairs. I want to see everything happening on the ice surface, even behind-the-play penalties.

As I shuffled through the freshly-released 2011-12 NHL schedule this morning, it made me not only miss hockey, a lot, but I started to think about the Mardi Gras-like atmosphere that goes along with being at a live hockey game in a rabid hockey market.

The first time I ever watched a game at the Sattledome I was in my first year of university, and me and my friends paid $20 dollars each for our tickets in the SportChek zone. You can buy the tickets right in the store. I had no idea where these seats were, though. I was a student on a budget and the price was cheap enough for me to afford at least three more beers at the game. This was also my first experience with “heroin beer.” Flames fans know what I’m talking about.

There’s nothing better than that feeling of giddiness as you’re walking up the steps and into the concourse of a particular arena for the first time . You’re always greeted by that same familiarity, whether you’re in Tampa Bay or Toronto, it doesn’t matter.  The background noise of vendors, game-program floggers and fans, and the smell of popcorn and beer instantly hits you. Then there’s always those fans wearing the same jersey as you, who you develop an instant camaraderie with, and sometimes start obnoxious chants with.

I thought we finally got to our seats. Then I looked up. We had another half Kilometre of stairs to go. This was the furthest I’ve ever been away from ice-level. There were literally no rows of seats behind me, just the cement wall of the Saddledome. You can’t even see the scoreboard from that high, because go figure, the Dome is built in the shape of a saddle.

I loved being in the last row. The most animated fans in the Dome sit up there. There is not one part of the ice you can’t see, unlike those prime seats on the glass where you can see 25 per cent of the ice perfectly and the other 75 only on the jumbotron.

I’ve seen a number of games from the SportChek zone since attending my first one, and by no means am I saying they’re better than any seat in the house, visually. But they will show you a side of ‘fandemonium’ you probably won’t see anywhere else in the building. And If the Flames make it back to the playoffs, the intensity will increase ten-fold.

Not to get too far ahead of myself with these ramblings, seeing as we’ve barely go a foot in the door of August. I’m clearly delirious off hockey deprivation

Best believe that until Sept. 20, I will barely hanging in there as we trudge through yet another monotonous baseball season. The old SportChek zone is calling my name, though.