Some came with mullets. Some came with a typical male groom. Some even came with a shoulder-length “hockey flow.”
But no matter how members of the Ohio hockey team looked when they arrived on Monday at Aveda Spa & Salon on Court Street, they all left with bowl cuts.
“Normally for the national championship, guys do stuff like dye their hair blond or shave their heads,” said sophomore forward Michael Harris, who masterminded the idea. “And we just said, ‘well, no one’s really done bowl cuts’.”
Harris and several other Bobcats thought of the idea a month ago. Initially, it was a joke, but Harris took to Twitter for support, saying if he was retweeted 1,000 times, then everyone would get bowl cuts.
And it took just 35 hours to reach his goal.
“I thought it was going to happen,” Harris said. “Hockey guys know a lot of different people, so I knew it was going to spread like wildfire. … The only thing I was surprised about was how quickly it spread.”
With the bowl cuts completed, many players have embraced their new looks, but as hockey fanatics may know, signature hairstyles are a part of the game’s tradition. That is why some players took a little longer to warm up to the idea of ditching their “flow."
Sophomore forward Nick Hudeck had cut his hair into a mullet prior to last weekend’s fundraising series with the American Cancer Society Ice Ghosts at Bird Arena, but quickly ditched his new hairstyle and joined his teammates in getting bowl cuts.
“I recently embraced (the bowl cuts), but at first I was really unhappy,” Hudeck said. “I grew my flow since last season, so it is hard to see it go. Originally, (Matt Hartman) and I were going to get corn rows so we could save the flow, but we didn’t want to miss out on the bowl cuts.”
Freshman forward Joe Breslin is another Bobcat who lost his “flow” during Monday’s salon day.
“Everyone on the team agreed to get one, so I figured why not,” Breslin said. “Maybe they’ll bring us luck. I’m not too mad about cutting my hair because I was going to buzz it off after the season anyway.”
But depending on what happens at this weekend’s American Collegiate Hockey Association National Tournament, Breslin and his teammates may choose to wait slightly longer to rid of their new hairstyles.
“If we win—sorry, when we win—we might try to do a campus-wide thing where we incorporate a social media thing with the fans and our bowl cuts,” Hudeck said. “Something where we raise money and keep them for a certain period of time.”
Win or lose, Harris knows the team will be a source of attention around campus following this weekend’s tournament.
“Considering we’ll be back from nationals during the week, we’re not going to have time to cut them that night (we return),” Harris said. “People will probably see them around campus for at least a day, so it’ll be funny.”
Ohio, which earned the No. 7 seed in the 20-team ACHA Tournament, will hope the chemistry from their new hairstyles translates on the ice for their first game Saturday against No. 10 Iowa State at 4 p.m.
@kelsey_surmacz4
ks363012@ohiou.edu
