2022 Year In Review - Dobson Arena
It was another busy year at Dobson Ice Arena, as we continued to juggle the increasing demands for ice time from a thriving hockey and skating community. We are proud to be a place where skaters learn to love the sport - whether it's the Avalanche Learn to Play program (where registration includes a full set of hockey gear for players to keep); or being the home of the Vail Skating Club (where two alumni were accepted into Disney on Ice in 2022); or hosting the Vail Mountaineer Hockey Club - whose PeeWee A team were champions of the 43rd Vail Sportsmanship Tournament. Looking ahead, there are Dobson renovation plans in the works. We're excited to see what the future holds!
The calm before the storm - the arena prepped for the Vail Ice Spectacular on Dec. 23, which welcomed Olympic skaters Nathan Chen and Mirai Nagasu, among others. It was a huge honor to have this caliber of talent at our home ice rink!
The weekend of Sept. 23-25 saw a confluence of big events at Dobson Arena: a large Hispanic dance was hosted that Friday night, with over 2,000 attendees. Then, first thing Saturday morning, the Vail Gymnastic Classic event kicked off with over 300 gymnasts participating and hundreds of spectators in attendance. In order to make the transition between the dance and the gymnastics meet, Dobson staff worked through the night and Jared Biniecki stayed up for over 24 hours.
We had a busy year of hockey with 61 U6 Hockey participants, 67 U8 Hockey participants and 26 Girls/Rec Hockey participants.
Our Learn to Skate program had 63 participants in 2022.
Ice bumper cars continued to be popular! Demand for ice time meant we couldn't offer as many public ice bumper car sessions as we wanted to, but the sessions we did offer filled up quickly.
More Numbers:
- Adult Leagues - summer: 26 teams, winter: 13 teams, fall: 12 teams
- The Vail Yeti averaged 845 people per game
