An Inside Look at The Macon Coliseum
Ice and More
By Connor Cable
Inside the Macon Coliseum, there are people hard at work making the arena just right for the Macon Mayhem hockey team.
The reigning champs of the Southern Professional Hockey League are off to a good start this season, and fans are flocking to the Coliseum for every game. The Coliseum is part of the equation of success for the Macon Mayhem, and all the work that goes into it is invaluable to the players and the fans.
Dennis Perez is the director of events for the Coliseum, and he oversees what goes into getting the arena ready for an event, including hockey.
“We started on Sunday night when we flipped from a Christmas festival, Christmas Made in the South, we had no ice on the floor, so we had to clear the floor of of all the power cables we had there” Perez said of the daily work his crew does.
The Coliseum hosts numerous events, from monster truck shows to circuses, and the Mayhem ice rink is only one of the many things that he has to have ready for the arena.
Perez has only recently begun to make ice for arenas. He previously worked for The Sun Dome in Tampa, Florida, which hosted the University of South Florida basketball team.
Perez said he came to Macon because it was “the chance to be a part of something that’s kinda materialized” referencing the rich sporting culture that Macon has, including football, baseball and hockey.
The making of the ice is one of the most interesting parts of the job for Dennis.
“We turn on the chiller… and it gets that ground nice and cold a few hours before the event ends, so by the time we are ready to put water down, say eight to 12 hours later, in 5–10 minutes it will freeze, it’s really great,” Perez said.
Perez is not the man that does the physical work, however. That task falls on Dan Kidd, who is from Fayetteville, North Carolina, and he has been making ice for quite some time. He has even invented a machine to make the work go much faster.
“He invented that little thing eight or nine years ago cause he got tired of doing it the old-fashioned way which was about eight guys on a hose like they were firemen and just hosing down the rink. I’m planning on doing the same thing here,” Perez said.
That “little” thing Perez is talking about is a small motorized cart that has a large water tank on top of it. He drives the cart all around the rink while spraying it with water, evenly and efficiently.
“Twenty years ago, we just thought of a tank and a sprayer. It used to take like 12 guys holding this hose up, one guy on the end spraying it, so I took 12 guys and turned it into one guy,” Kidd said of his invention.
Kidd has worked in arenas all over the East Coast, for teams in the National Hockey League, all the way down through the minor leagues. However, he gor into the work by accident.
“ I was wanting to work for the entertainment business so I started working part time doing set-ups and stuff like that. And then they just asked me one time if I wanted to do a Zamboni, you know so I took it under my wings and done it, they sent me to school, and 20 years later (I’m) going from here to North Carolina to Virginia, doing ice,” Kidd said of his experiences.
