Welcome to our new website! My name’s Chris Sugar and I’m the proud founder of DIIIHockeyNews, est. 2016.
Currently, I’m in Graduate school at SUNY Oswego for Public Accounting:
Political Science BA ’23
Public Accounting BS ’24
MBA – Public Accounting May ’26
Check out Chris’ writing here!
Back in 2016, I was just a high school student whose weekend revolved around going to Oswego State Laker hockey games from the months of October – March. As a young child, seeing sold-out Plattsburgh vs Oswego whiteout games got me instantly hooked on Division III hockey.
One random December day in 2016, as a high-schooler with lots of time on his hands does, thought of the idea of starting a Twitter account for D-III hockey. I saw there were accounts and online sources such as USCHO.com, CollegeHockeyStats, & D3Hockey.com (retired 2019), but for whatever reason, DIIIHockeyNews was born.
I was never big on social media on personal levels, to me, every follower, viewer, and message meant something, that’s what made it work.
As I grew more and more, constantly tweeting every game’s start-time from homeroom and study hall, more and more teams began to follow and to my surprise, repost my content! This as I said, meant a lot to me as I wasn’t familiar with social media on the macro-level, only the micro-level with friends or my favorite sports team accounts.
I had been going pretty hard at this account for 2-3 seasons and it seemed as though I had hit a plateau, sitting around 900 followers. I left the account open, but didn’t go on it for about six months. When I returned, I had a few messages in my DM’s, some from parents saying how much they enjoyed the content and asked where I had gone, but one message stood out. It was from the account of the Wisconsin-Eau Claire Women’s hockey team, run by their head coach Erik Strand. Coach Strand reached out and said he loved what I was doing and wanted me to incorporate women’s hockey as well and to keep the account going as it had been idle for months.
Seeing that gave me a renewed motivation and joy for it all. If I hadn’t continued growing and building this account to what it is today, I don’t want to know what life I would be living. I’d know 99% fewer people, have 99% less of the relationships I do today (professionally or friends-wise), and my life would also be extremely boring compared to now. With that being said, I’ve told him this many times, but Coach Strand with that one message created a bigger positive impact on my life in the long-term than anyone else outside of my family. He knows it, but will never admit it. To that, I thank him once again.
Now here we are today, 11,400+ followers on Twitter/X, 5,600+ on Instagram, tens of thousands of YouTube & Podcast plays. This is all great, but as I was told early on in this whole process by longtime Wisconsin-Stevens Point broadcaster Shaun McMahon, the relationships I’ve gotten out of this will forever be the most-cherished aspect of it all. Whether it be the many Coaches, Players, Parents, Fans, SID’s, Broadcasters, Media Members, and rink managers, I’ll always be grateful.
It’s been a wild ride, getting to travel all across the Northeast and to the Midwest. During the 2023-2024 season, I managed to attend 33 games at 15 schools, see 34 programs, totaling just over 6,400 miles. This included trips to UW-Stevens Point & Adrian, MI. I don’t believe anyone will ever beat those personal numbers, if they do, hats-off to them.
Last thing I will mention, I’m beyond grateful to have goalies and skaters, sometimes entire teams wearing my logo on their helmets in the form of a sticker. Seeing the photos and in-person is wild to me and incredible to see the support first-hand.
As I said after the 2023 Frozen Four in Endicott: Thank you all for allowing me to experience in my early 20s what some never get to experience in their entire lives, true fulfillment.