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10 Questions With New Roar Zone President Chris Godissart

If you’ve ever been to a men’s hockey game in Pegula, you’ve certainly heard them. The young Roar Zone is already one of the most feared student sections in college hockey, and none of this would be possible without the folks behind the scenes.

Now that the Roar Zone’s first-ever president Kyle Hoke is graduating, he had to pass the torch to ensure the Roar Zone’s lasting energy. Next up to the position is Chris Godissart, a rising senior majoring in biology. Although he ran unopposed, Godissart said he appreciates everyone’s support in the election process.

We sat down with him and experienced his first time in Irving’s as he answered our incredibly hard-hitting questions:

Onward State: First off, does Michigan still suck?
Chris Godissart: Yes. Michigan does, indeed, still suck.

OS: Tell us about yourself in ten words.
CD:
Hockey fan. Sports addict. Biology major. Gonna be a senior.

OS: How did you get involved with the Roar Zone?
CD: 
The first time I ever got involved with it, really, was the Pegula Palooza against Minnesota when I was a freshman. I just showed up to the game early. Honestly, I was supposed to go ice skating with my friends but I kinda blew them off to get good seats. So I got in line by myself and there was a group of guys there who I recognized from going to the games, but I didn’t know them at all. They took me in, starting talking to me, and I became really good friends with them — that sort of was how I got introduced to group. They were trying to make a new student section group at the time, and we eventually dropped that to merge with the Roar Zone. So it just started out as me going to a game early and getting to know people I really didn’t know at all.

OS: What does your new job as president entail?
CD:
For me, it’s going to be organizing, and making sure we’re doing certain things like fundraising. Interacting with groups on campus is something we want to more of, just putting ourselves out there more in general is something I really want to focus on. Honestly, just growing the group is the most important thing right now. We came into this year having eight or nine people as the group. It was just the original guys I met in line that day and a few other people. There’s the Roar Zone obviously with a thousand people who show up to the games and sit in the student section. But the actual people who participated in making the signs, coming up with chants, stuff like that, was really small. So now we’ve grown close to 20-30 students now, but we want to get more and more people involved.

OS: Speaking of chants, what’s your favorite?
CD:
 My favorite has to be our post-goal celebration. The whole ‘It’s all your fault’ (directed at the goalie), ‘hey goalie’ (you suck, to the tune of ‘hey baby’ by Bruce Channel), just all of that. I love it. Every single time.

OS: What do you think hockey’s chances are for an NCAA tournament run in the next five years?
CD: I think they’re great. We would’ve made the tournament had we not had so many injuries this year. The team is just looking so good and then they had so many good players go down down the stretch

Here, we paused the interview to exchange some mild-to-hot takes.

[Iinjuries] just really disrupted the teams chemistry, I mean, they were playing without a full lineup with so many different teams and still winning. So I definitely think they have a really good chance to make it. It’s gonna be hard to replace some of the guys leaving but I really think they have a good chance. There’s a lot of good freshmen coming in.

OS: Do you plan on doing anything differently than Kyle (Hoke, the former Roar Zone president)?
CD: 
Not a whole lot. Maybe some things will come up, but Kyle did an excellent job of laying the foundation for the Roar Zone. He and Luke Smith as well, all the stuff that they did…I just want to build on it.

OS: How can people get involved with the Roar Zone?
CD:
We’ll have a booth at the involvement fair again next year, so that’s a great place to start. But honestly, just come and talk to us before games. A lot of people have told us they were nervous about doing that because we seem intimidating [Editor’s note: they’re not]. That’s how I got involved, like I said. But come to meetings, we’ll do a better job at broadcasting those and having more of them. We also try to maintain a good social media presence (@theroarzone) so that’s a good place to start too.

OS: If you could be any dinosaur, which would you be and why?
CD: 
Ok, hold on. I knew this was coming. So I asked the people from our group, and they gave me a name. Utahraptor. Apparently it’s a really, really aggressive raptor, and I like that it’s a raptor because it’s friends with Chris Pratt.

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About the Author

Sara Civian

Sara Civian is one of Onward State's three ridiculously good looking managing editors, a hockey writer at heart, and an Oxford comma Stan. She's a senior majoring in journalism, minoring in history, and living at Bill Pickle's Tap Room. Her favorite pastimes are telling people she's from Boston, watching the Bruins, and meticulously dissecting the My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy album. She's seen Third Eye Blind live 14 times. If you really hate yourself, you can follow her at @SaraCivian or email her at [email protected].

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