The ice rink at Connecticut College didn’t have a name when doors first opened on Feb 1, 1980. What would eventually become known as Dayton Arena, or alternatively, the Camel Dome, would remain nameless for the first several years of its existence. Not until brothers Judson Dayton ’80 and Duncan Dayton ’81, graduated did Dayton Arena receive its official moniker. It is with these brothers that the history of our storied rink begins.
The Dayton brothers of Minnesota came from a very wealthy and philanthropic family. Their father, Ken Dayton, was the CEO and grandson of the founder of the Dayton Hudson Corporation, now known as the Target Corporation. The family has a strong tradition of philanthropy: Ken Dayton founded the One Percent Club, a club of extremely wealthy members who donate one percent of their net worth or five percent of their income, whichever is larger, to charity every year while trying to convince other affluent people to match their commitment.
Coming from Minnesota, the Dayton brothers were also avid hockey players. The only problem was that Conn had no ice rink. At the time, the nearest rink was at Wesleyan, in Middletown, a 45 minute drive away. The Dayton brothers decided that Conn needed its own ice facility and put a substantial donation forward, a figure in the realm of a third of the total cost of the two million dollar rink. After that initial investment other donations soon followed until construction finally began in 1979.
The rink was designed by Daniel F. Tully, a prominent architect known for his non-traditional geometric design patterns. Tully is responsible for buildings on over 100 different schools and universities, many of which are ice rinks or Olympic swimming pools. Tully, a graduate of the Coast Guard Academy, has buildings on other NESCAC campuses including Middlebury, Trinity, and Amherst. He also designed the renowned Alfond Arena, home of the U-Maine Black Bears, and would go on to design Conn’s athletic center several years later.
The rink, which was scheduled to open in October of 1979 but was delayed until February, had many problems. “I remember when I first got here, I couldn’t believe it” said Phil Siena, the rink manager. “There were no players’ benches or penalty boxes, just doors on the boards. There wasn’t even rubber tiling on the floor, you couldn’t walk around in your skates”.
If the Dayton brothers are where the history of the rink begins, Phil Siena is where it finds itself today. An ex-Army Ranger, Siena was working as a Zamboni driver and mechanic at a rink in Glastonbury when the rink went bankrupt in 1979. He was hired that spring by the College, along with ex-NHL player Doug Roberts, who was brought in to operate facilities and coach the Men’s Hockey program.
Neither could have been overly pleased with what they saw when they first started in the fall of ’79. In addition to forgetting to give the players benches, there was no scoreboard and only two tiny locker rooms, which as Siena recalled, “weren’t big enough to fit a high school swim team”. To make matters worse there was only 15 feet of space from the sides of the rink to the walls of the building, which, when coupled with their aggressive angle, left very little room for things like bleachers or a snack shop. “It’s also the only rink I’ve ever seen where the Zamboni bay is right by the front entrance and not at the back, away from all the people.”
What the rink lacked in design, Roberts and Siena made up for with ingenuity and scrappiness, literally. When the Glastonbury rink went bankrupt, it was seized by the bank. Roberts and Siena made a deal with the bank, and in exchange for $1,500 they were given a key to the shutdown rink with permission to take anything they could carry. The two rented a U-Haul truck and filled it with everything they could find: from wall clocks, office furniture and lobby benches, most of which are still in use today, to goal posts and the scoreboard on the wall. In a separate deal, Conn won a bidding war with Wesleyan to purchase the rinks’ used Zamboni from the bank as well. Eventually, everything came together with the first ever sheet of ice made on Dec 27, 1979.
That first year, Conn spent half of its season driving to Wesleyan for practice. The following year they joined the ECAC South. Hockey quickly caught on at Conn, and games became a large attraction on campus. “It used to be rowdy in here, man, the roof would be bumping” recalled Siena. Even last Friday’s seemingly rowdy Coast Guard Game would have been tame. “The first three or four years we only had half glass on the sides by the stands. We had to put in the taller glass for safety, but in the earlier years you could literally get right on top of the players and tell them what you thought of ‘em from the stands”. Siena recalled countless instances of people throwing beer cans and such from the stands: “Once there was even a live chicken that someone threw on the ice during a game. Another night, everyone threw rubber super ball out there. It was a different time back then, the College didn’t have to be as strict on drinking”.
And, surely, drinking was very common at the rink in the early days. Siena remembered how players that were injured would sit in the Zamboni room and imbibe a few bottles of beer during the game. It wasn’t just the players: after home games, Coach Roberts was known to have a beer in the office with Siena and the other game workers. One year, they even used the Labatt Blue logo for center ice.
As the team got better, things got more serious. In 1990 Roberts lead the Camels to their first and only ECAC South Championship. On that team was Roberts’ son, Doug Roberts Jr. ’91 and Rand Pecknold ’90. Pecknold is now the head Coach of the Quinnipiac University Men’s Hockey program that lost to Yale in the Division I National Championship last year. If you are wondering why you never noticed a championship banner before, that’s because it was stolen several years later. Perhaps spurred on by their success, Dayton Arena got an update that same year, with the current men’s locker room built as an add- on at the back of the building. The addition allowed for the two lockers to have a wall knocked out and be converted into the women’s locker room.
Coach Jim Ward replaced Doug Roberts in 2000 and really cleaned things up. “Roberts was a great coach, but he was an old school guy, and had an old school way of doing things” recalled Siena. When Ward came in, the games got less rowdy. There was an effort to really crack down on the drinking, while giving the College and its hockey program a more serious and respectable reputation. Certainly, the Men’s Hockey team has done so by bringing The Green Dot Game to campus, and giving talks on responsible drinking habits to incoming first years during orientation as well as work with the Gordy Foundation, which works to reduce alcohol abuse on campuses.
On the ice, the program has struggled, though this year saw a very strong finish with the Camels making playoffs for the first time in several years. And on some level, it is very hard not to equate our success partially with our lovable but quirky and outdated rink. When teams come to play, they have to either get dressed next door in the AC, and walk over in their gear or get dressed in the “plywood palace”: two small open roofed locker rooms made out of plywood at the back of the rink that share a single toilet and have no showers.
While the rink itself may be sub-par the ice, itself is anything but. Siena has been driving a Zamboni for close to 40 years now and is something more like an artisan than a mechanic or technician. His goal is to always make a sheet that is as flat as possible “just like a pool table, baby”. His devotion shows through: as a life-long hockey player, I can attest that Conn has some of the best ice I have ever skated on. Ultimately, games aren’t won in warm locker rooms and new grandstands, they are won on the ice. That is what sets Dayton Arena apart, as the common saying at the rink goes “our ice is nice”.
Dayton Arena is quirky, non-traditional and perhaps in need of serious improvement, but it is functional, and it is ours. Next year, Dayton Arena will reach its 35th anniversary, and while I will have graduated, the rink will still be here and so will Phil. There will be a new group of students coming to enjoy it and playing the game they love on its ice just like all those students before them.
