Day 3(b): Bridgeport Sound
Our final stop on this Ultimate Sports Road Trip adventure is here in Bridgeport, home of the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, and they are facing off against the Wilkes Barre/Scranton Penguins.
We had gotten a lot of negative reviews about the Arena at Harbor Yard, both from road trip buds as well as fellow media folk who were here to cover the MAAC basketball tournament last year. So our expectations were really low walking into the place.
So weren’t we pleasantly surprised!
Here’s the skinny… the good and the bad: From an aesthetic standpoint, this is a very nice place to visit. The seating bowl is sparkling bright, with seating rails in one end zone, fresh looking carpeted concourses throughout the facility, nicely appointed concession stands, and a couple little nooks with seating areas and a play area for the youngsters. Such a contrast from Wilkes Barre, where the concourses looked so dated and drab.
Food items here cover all the typical ballpark dreck, although we did see a roast beef and pastrami stand where the stuff was hand carved, and the Mexican stand was very colorful and placed adjacent to a nice dining area.
Another interesting feature here is that there is no center ice four/eight sided scoreboard hanging from the ceiling. The main scoreboards stretch along the walls high above each sideline, with smaller dot matrix boards in each end zone. At first we thought the place looked naked but it works here just fine.
The arena is but six years old, and next door to a minor independent league ballpark which is also fairly new. Downtown Bridgeport isn’t exactly your cosmopolitan metropolis; from what we saw it looks like the sidewalks were rolled up for the evening.
Now the bad - unlike the fans in WBS which we saw last night, the fans here aren’t exactly large in number nor does the team enjoy much community support. They rank among the lower tier of AHL teams in attendance. Check out the photo above - our guess is a crowd of around 3000 in a 10,000 seat arena, and on a Saturday night no less!
Nonetheless, the tea and crumpets crowd that was in attendance on this night so a good one for the home team, as Bridgeport Sound put a three spot on the visiting Penguins after two periods, and cruised on to a 4-0 win.
And another Ultimate Sports Road Trip is in the books… we’re overnighting here in Connecticut and will be pointing the car back towards B-Lo in the morning.
