Jayden Rodriguez wasn’t afraid to start the conversation at Oklahoma State University.

“Do you know that we have a hockey team?” she asked her peers.

Last year, the Spears School of Business student from Highlands Ranch, Colorado, didn’t expect many people to be aware of a niche club sport on campus. Still, her icebreaker doubled as a marketing campaign.

“Now, I walk around campus, and I wear all things hockey,” Rodriguez said. “I’ve made those connections outside the classroom, so people now know me and know I’m so involved with hockey and invested in it. Spears really pushed me to grow those connections.”

Rodriguez, a hospitality and tourism management senior with a sports management minor, doesn’t play hockey, but she has played a vital role in cultivating OSU’s dedicated fanbase. Over the 2025-26 school year, she served as OSU Hockey’s student president, leading a student executive board in charge of game day operations, marketing, fundraising and more.

Rich Kuzmeski, an assistant professor of professional practice in the School of Marketing and International Business, serves as OSU Hockey’s faculty advisor, and the Spears Business connections don’t stop there.

OSU Hockey executive board members Belle Breitenreiter, Sydney Martens, Aidan Kelly and Rodriguez are graduating from Spears Business this May. Evan Schreyer, director of game day operations, is a senior on the Master’s in Business Analytics and Data Science (MS BAnDS) 4+1 pathway, finishing his undergraduate degree and staying at OSU next year to complete his graduate degree.

OSU Hockey players Jadin Caldwell and Zach Jones are also graduating from Spears Business.

The students carried lessons from Business Building classrooms into Tulsa’s WeStreet Ice Center, where OSU Hockey plays all home games except for Bedlam on Ice, a special event in Tulsa’s BOK Center.

About 15,000 tickets were sold for Bedlam, which resulted in OSU’s 13-2 victory over the University of Oklahoma. OSU Hockey ended its breakout season with a 29-2 record and a runner-up finish in the American Collegiate Hockey Association Men’s Division 2 Championship.

Four seniors – Rodriguez, Breitenreiter, Martens and Schreyer – reflected on the unique experience of running a club sport’s business operations as students.

Meet the students 

• Jayden Rodriguez – HTM major, sports management minor – outgoing student president of OSU Hockey
  
• Belle Breitenreiter – MBA – outgoing vice president/secretary
  
• Sydney Martens – marketing communications management major, English minor – outgoing director of social media
  
• Evan Schreyer – sports management major, marketing minor, MS BAnDS student – outgoing director of game day operations, incoming student president
  

Q: What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned about the business of sports?

Rodriguez: You always have to plan for the worst-case scenario, but also the best-case scenario. You have to plan for those wins and those losses. Maybe you have a timing issue with the Zamboni (ice resurfacer). You always just have to be prepared, and you have to run through every scenario. It takes time, and it takes commitment. You have to dedicate your time and give 110% effort regardless of what you’re doing or what you’re planning for.

Martens: Success on the ice doesn’t automatically mean success on social media, but when you capitalize on it, it will. We did a lot of planning before the season started of what we would post when we won and when we lost, and how we would continue to post regardless of how the season went – the personality of the players, behind the scenes, and why we love the program so much and why our fans and OSU students should love the program as well. Throughout the season, obviously, we were incredibly successful, which was so much fun to be able to capture.

Q: What has been the most rewarding part of building a unique fan base around a club sport?

Martens: I grew up in rural Oklahoma. Fairview is a football, basketball and baseball town. Before I came to college, I didn’t know about hockey, but somehow I made friends with all of these people who love hockey and introduced me to the sport. I had so many people come up to me after Bedlam and say they came to Bedlam because they saw the excitement and social media posts, and they thought it seemed like so much fun – and they didn’t understand anything that was happening. A lot of them were confused but loved it nonetheless. It’s so cool that we’re getting this opportunity to bring a sport that’s not popular here to this area, and bring new fans to not only OSU Hockey, but the sport in general.

Breitenreiter: To piggyback off that, coming from Chicago, where hockey is really big, and coming here, I missed it quite a bit. So, when I heard that my friend (OSU alumnus Jacob Thompson) wanted to start OSU Hockey, I was really excited. Now, when it is this big and people are becoming more aware of the fact that we have a good team and people are excited to watch us, it’s just good to see. I’ve been working for this team for four years now, and it’s a completely new team at this point.

Q: What will you always remember about Bedlam on Ice?

Rodriguez: The comeback that we had, for sure, from losing to OU by a significant amount last year and then beating them by more than what they beat us, was really huge. The atmosphere in the stadium was something that I could have never imagined in my life. Last year, when I stepped into game day operations (before serving as president), I was struggling to get 10 fans at a game. Selling over 15,000 tickets is something that was unimaginable.

Schreyer: Bedlam has always been our magnum opus. It always will be. It is our main event of the season, and it’s what we push to market and to grow all season long. Hockey is very much a regional sport, and trying to grow it in Oklahoma is a challenge. But, we’ve shown that the growth is possible, and the numbers are there, and the interest of the fans is there. It’s something that’s bigger than us, than this program. I’m really interested to see how the youth hockey programs in Oklahoma City and Tulsa continue to blossom, as we hope to make hockey a bigger and bigger sport.

Rodriguez: The student involvement was really cool, too. Last year, Evan and I were like, “We have to play the OSU Fight Song every time that we score.” Last year, it wasn’t that much. This year, it was on Evan’s top 10 on Spotify. Bringing that into Bedlam, and how many times we played it at Bedlam – 13 – brought that atmosphere, and all the students participated. The environment that you feel at a football game, we felt. It gives me goosebumps thinking about it because it was so much work going into it, and the outcome was better than we could have ever imagined.

Q: How did it feel to end the season as an ACHA championship runner-up?

Schreyer: As much as the loss hurt in the moment, I can’t help but be proud that in our first year of being a seriously competitive team, we’ve increased our social media viewership, our attendance, and our sales and revenue by a three-digit percentile. This is no longer the question of, “Hey, do you know we have a hockey team on campus?” It’s now, “Hey, you know about our hockey team. We’d love to get you out to a game.” As much as I’d like to be putting the puck in the net, I’m 5-foot-9 and would get rag-dolled around out there. So, the fact that we all love this game and we still get to remain so close and play so much of a part in something that’s only going to get bigger and get the OSU name out there is such an amazing feeling.

Q: We know Evan will be here next year as a graduate student, but for those of you leaving OSU, what are your plans and goals?

Rodriguez: I’m hoping to go into corporate events. I’m moving back home and am going to grow my love for events and operations, but also get my fix of sports. I’m really hoping to take that hospitality degree and then also take my operations knowledge that I’ve learned from hockey and combine those two together.

Martens: I’m currently hoping/planning to work in professional sports, preferably the social media and marketing area. I know I definitely don’t want a job where I’m sitting at a desk all day. So, whether that looks like working somewhere in the professional or collegiate sports industry, or it looks like advertising or marketing, I want to do something like that.

Breitenreiter: I’m looking for something in sports. I don’t know what that will end up being, but I’m going to go back to Chicago for now and see what opportunities come my way.