Success and Community Impact
The Chill would send five players to the NHL and promote countless others to the American Hockey League and International Hockey League. Numerous Chill front office employees advanced their careers to NHL, NFL, NBA, MLB, NCAA, NASCAR, Indy Racing League, etc., including several front office employees of the Blue Jackets.
In addition to the Chill being the catalyst for the NHL coming to Columbus, the franchise provided much-needed services to the skating community. The Chill has the distinction of becoming the first minor-league team to build, own and operate its own facility (Chiller Dublin, 1993) and at the time they opened their second dual ice rink (Chiller Easton, 1997) they joined the Anaheim Mighty Ducks as one only two franchises at any level to own and operate two facilities.
Considered to be among the finest ice rink facilities in the United States, the Chillers provided the platform for an explosion of hockey from learn-to-skate classes to adult leagues: Nine high-school hockey programs and youth hockey participation grew from 150 to over 1,300 kids during the 1990s while the Chill was in existence. The Columbus Chill Youth Hockey Association (CCHYA)continues to thrive.
A partnership formed in 1997 between the Chill and Blue Jackets has today resulted in the Chillers and the NHL club owning and managing eight sheets of ice in Central Ohio - Chiller North was added in 2003 and the Chiller Ice Works in 2005 - as well as serving as an integral marketing extension of the Blue Jackets' brand.
Read more about this topic: Columbus Chill
Famous quotes containing the words success, community and/or impact:
“People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved.”
—Anne Sullivan (1866–1936)
“when Mrs Kindhead comes to collect for the Community Chest
grab her and tell her There are unfavorable omens in the sky!
And when the mayor comes to get my vote tell him
When are you going to stop people killing whales!”
—Gregory Corso (b. 1930)
“One can describe a landscape in many different words and sentences, but one would not normally cut up a picture of a landscape and rearrange it in different patterns in order to describe it in different ways. Because a photograph is not composed of discrete units strung out in a linear row of meaningful pieces, we do not understand it by looking at one element after another in a set sequence. The photograph is understood in one act of seeing; it is perceived in a gestalt.”
—Joshua Meyrowitz, U.S. educator, media critic. “The Blurring of Public and Private Behaviors,” No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior, Oxford University Press (1985)