We regretted missing The Wallflowers at the Marquis in June so made a point to go see Spoon, another favorite band that has stayed active since my salad days introduction half a lifetime ago.

Concert on the Slopes, in its second summer season at Canyons Village Forum, hosted the Austin, Texas-based rockers last Sunday evening at the outdoor amphitheater. Spoon’s first Park City performance marked their 11th visit to Utah and the fourth date on their current tour in support of 2022’s Lucifer on the Sofa, which earned the band’s 10th album its first Grammy nomination. Seated tickets were sold out by the time I secured a pair of lawn spots for my girlfriend, Claire, and myself for $258.11. 

Canyons allowed fans to bring low-backed chairs, plus our coolerful of non-alcoholic beverages and snacks. A shirtless man holding a pink inflatable guitar spread good vibes around the entrance, where we received a red stamp illustration of this same ski-bum character on our right wrists to give us re-entry. Past the merch booth, signs on the inclined turf alerted general admission fans that these were steep slopes. We carefully mounted up and around the control tent to stake our claim on the far side incline, stage right.

The sun had not yet set on our backs as we sunscreened and settled in on the grassy bank between Orange Bubble Express and Red Pine Gondola lifts.

At 7 o’clock, Dr. Ember Conley took the sunny stage in green gingham to introduce opening act A Giant Dog. The four men in this Texan quintet played a rousing instrumental to summon their lead singer, Sabrina Ellis, who strutted onstage in cowboy boots, black bikini bottom, and an unbuttoned leopard print shirt over a sheer black tank and big pearl necklace.

A dozen years deep as a band, A Giant Dog was touring in support of their freshly minted Raw EP. Ellis immediately delivered a peacocking, windmilling, fist-pumping, head-banging, Johnny Thunders-style stage presence, theatrically singing heartfelt lines like “Acne-scarred and shiner-marked and dripping Mountain Dew / Your car is up on cinder blocks and I’m obsessed with you,” on “Watch it Burn.”

All the band wore sunglasses as they played facing the setting sun while the crowd began to receive shade on our necks. 

I heard traces of The Exploding Hearts through these bawdy, heartfelt songs such as “Photograph,” which included the lyrics, “I want to see you with your sagging tits.” In a bit of post-song banter, Ellis remarked, “There’s a spectrum of ages” in the crowd, and proposed that their lyrics could be an entry point for conversations about changing bodies between generations. 

“And what do you have planned for the lawn? Cartwheeling down to the stage?” Ellis referred to fans up top on the steep slope in front of them. Ellis brought their 40-minute set to a close with a fond impression of Spoon’s lead singer Britt Daniel, “Life can be so fair. Let it go on and on.”

In the half-hour before the headliner appeared, a father returned to his family blanket with a handful of tees for everyone. His wife donned hers immediately as the evening was cooling down. Free listeners gathered along the upper crest beyond the grounds. Kona Beer’s stand offered loaded sweet potatoes with a meat topping for $20, which looked so good when we saw someone carrying it that we had to find our own.

Heading back to our seats, we saw my friend Joel and his girlfriend, Gretchen, capping off her birthday celebration. At 8:15, recorded Spanish voices began calling a bullfight to attention in a nod to Matador Records, Spoon’s first and current label, as the group strode out.

The first track from their 2007 album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, “Don’t Make Me a Target,” began with blinking red lights as frontman Britt Daniel played in his uniform of black shirt, brown pants and boots, working his white and black electric guitar, a custom Fender Tele Thinline. Fellow founding member Jim Eno drummed from an elevated block with a handprint turkey trace on his bass face. Two keyboards and bass guitar added pizzazz to the wall of sound as the band performed fronting a black stage curtain sliced by an ascending red strip. Daniel, 53, was on his knees singing under strobe lights before the song finished.

“My Mathematical Mind” arrived with Daniel’s vocals sounding clear and precise in the mountain air, then “I’m looking “th-h-h-h-rough you” hit with a cutting trill as green lights twinkled. Viewers in the lower section began leaving their assigned seats to stand in front of the band reaching great sonic heights before drawing to an abrupt silence.

Working back through their catalog to 1998’s A Series of Sneaks, “Metal Detektor” arrived as an understated heist manifesto where Daniel’s fast enunciation contrasted with his soft choral “ooohs” in the jade stagelight.

The crowd stirred at the recognizable intro to “Wild,” a Jack Antonoff-produced single from Lucifer on the Sofa. On the lawn, a man drummed along tapping the shoulders of his partner leaning in his lap. Smoke blew across the stage as Daniel referenced buried treasure and “The world, still so wild, called to me” certainly hit in this western outdoor setting. Before red and white lights, a couple of older hippies who had been standing up since the beginning twisted their hands. 

In the applause after “Me and the Bean,” Daniel told the crowd, “That’s my dad’s favorite Spoon song. And it is a brilliant song. I can say that because my friend John Clayton from Austin wrote it. I’m not sure if my dad knows that.”

“The Hardest Cut” explored how hero worship can “turn you off of religion” over slicing lighting and crisp riffs, with Daniel shaking his shaggy haircut against a lucid blue spotlight.

They Want My Soul’s “Inside Out” spangled red and blue, while the standing crowd up front had grown to three deep and joined Daniel in saluting the front keyboarder Gerardo Larios tinkling keys. A high energy instrumental heralded Transferance’s “Got Nuffin.” A man walking back to his seat in a newly-purchased Spoon sweatshirt saw some mates across the crowd and threw up the horns to them as he nodded his head.

Fluffy clouds spanned over to cirrus in the raspberry and purple sky while klieg bright stage lights flashed back at the last shot of the sunset. A slower song let the crowd catch its breath while the two old-timers took their seats then spotted a buddy walking past, who stopped to chat while they all shot a selfie. This unreleased new track “Love Right To Your Door” featured lyrics, “I’ve been working on a reservoir,” that resonated to the Jordanelle just over the range behind us.

Keyboardist Larios appeared in solo light for a “Crazy-Train”-esque intro to “The Underdog,” then couples stood up to dance in time to Daniel singing his ode to overlooked oracles. A man tilted back the last of his empty cup and the lime slice hit his nose, then he returned to applauding while Daniel yelled along to the song’s firework-loud ending. 

“I Summon You” arrived as darkness hit with coolness. Four stacks of vertical lights pulsed while the crowd clapped along and Daniel held his guitar aloft in salute. “Don’t You Evah” brought blue lights and sonic zings, with Daniel’s singing counterbalanced by bassist Ben Trokan echoing back and forth. The older hippie stretched and raised his arms wide during the transition straight into “Do You,” and I held Claire’s hand as shifting spotlights flickered silhouettes.

“I Turn My Camera On” strutted with the steely veins of deliberate culture production while the man to my left contributed air-drumming. “Rent I Pay,” “Just like my brother would say,” continued mentions of familial associations and again brought Daniel to his knees, with his guitar tucked in a sweet spot on his bent thigh, strumming to shred the strings. The standing crowd had formed an orb six deep surrounding the stage, in darkness lit up blue like the Las Vegas Sphere before the band stepped off to loud applause. 

Spoon didn’t keep the cheering crowd waiting long before Daniel returned with an acoustic guitar to cover Tom Petty’s “A Face in the Crowd.” “You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb” began when Daniel sang the first line refrain, “Life can be so fair,” as A Giant Dog had hinted that he would. A standing fan waved his fedora as his buddy filmed horizontal. A family with children stood up dancing as Daniel sang, “Brush your teeth for bed,” hinting at the borrowed time of an encore while guitars noodled under turquoise lights. “Blow out your ….. ooh.”

“The Fitted Shirt” is 23-year-old live classic that preceded the closing anthem “The Way We Get By.” Drums thumped and the piano jumped as Daniel lumped favored coping mechanisms into sharp vignettes as the weekend drew to a close. “Thank you so much, Utah. See you next time.”

At 9:36 the crowd began exiting to The Beatles’ “Good Night.” Many fans moved to the Cabriolet for a ride down the mountain, while we made our way to the parking garage with another couple. The man mentioned we’d have to pay for the parking at the machine before we left, until another man came into the portal and told us that someone had driven through the garage gate and broke it off, so we were free to leave without paying for parking. Rock ‘n’ roll.

As we headed up the mountain to Park City, Spoon traveled east with 13 further dates in their tour. Concerts on the Slopes will continue hosting events through the end of August.

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While a wildfire burned near Kamas to the east, Heber’s Southfield Skatepark was decidedly smoke-free last Thursday evening for the 12th annual Fair Days skate competition. A sprouting of signs warned that cigarettes and vaping were prohibited, and MC Mitch Nelson provided the crowd with facts and figures in support of healthy decisions.

Carnival rides spun in the background on the Wasatch County Fair midway’s opening night as riders of all ages registered to compete in scooter, BMX and skateboard categories, with fair queens in their sashes greeting participants at the entrance to the park.

Nelson noticed a youngster rubbing wax on the edge of an obstacle to assist in his trickery, then voiced words of caution through his megaphone so no one was caught unaware by a surprisingly slippery surface.

“The little homie’s waxing the ledge. Make sure you recognize,” Nelson said.

Event sponsor Wasatch Behavioral Health provided a free tie-dye T-shirt station with anti-tobacco messaging beside the Wasatch County Health Department’s tent, which offered complimentary stickers, bottled water and granola bars along with giving the contestants brat-green rubber wristbands reading “Live Addiction Free.”

As temperatures began to dip below 90 degrees, Midway skater Walker Nelson was trying kickflip body varials in the shade under the picnic pavilion before his turn in the intermediate skate division. He described his planned run as “pretty risky,” but he had been practicing with his older brother earlier in the day. Safe Kids Wasatch provided helmets, which were required, to anyone in need.

The contest kicked off at 5 p.m. with five participants in the scooter contest zooming through the bowl sections and flying out above the coping while tail-whipping and tweaking their devices. Volunteer judges, including former sponsored skater Edward Latus, graded the competitors using an Olympic-style scoring system with points awarded for tricks landed, creativity and full use of the Wally Hollyday-designed concrete skatepark.

Brothers Emmett and Jacob Jones earned the top two places in the scooter division, with Mason Brown taking third place. Midway’s Gravity Coalition, in their sixth year supporting this competition, contributed prize bags delivered to the winners on the ad-hoc podium atop the hip ramp.

The three Weaver brothers from South Jordan were the only contestants in the BMX category. Eleven-year-old middle sibling Bridger is a national freestyle champ, sponsored by Champion Electric. He secured first place even though his finale trick, a backflip out of a bowl, came just after the first of his two 45-second run times expired. Porter and Carter joined him on the podium to receive their accolades and pose for photos.

The skateboarding contest featured the highest participant count, with riders of all genders separated into self-designated beginner, intermediate and expert levels. Girls outnumbered the boys 5-2 in the seven-rider beginner group, and the supportive crowd lining the skatepark fence cheered on their ollies, carves and drop-ins, and then when Lachlan Latus summoned the courage to ride down the five-stair.

Intermediate skaters came next, upping the skill level to include handplants, early grabs, backside 180s and fly-outs around the transition elements. Riders complimented each other as they congregated around the tombstone obstacle between runs, bumping fists and saying, “That’s sick,” in a spirit of camaraderie.

Suddenly, out in the space between the carnival and skatepark, dozens of teens ran to where a fight had broken out. A shirtless, bloody male had been hit by another boy using brass knuckles who was handcuffed and taken away by Heber police.

Inside the skatepark, the stage was set for the expert level competition. Noah Dane Sutton from Kamas was attending with his wife, Dominique, on the fifth anniversary of their wedding. Wearing a bicycle helmet, with his right arm wrapped in an ACE bandage and his left hand in a support brace, Sutton skated fearlessly around the street and bowl sections with a stronger second run that still wasn’t quite enough for him to place. 

Park City 15-year-old Callie Carman, sponsored by Dang Shades, 187 Killer Pads and Triple 8, secured her third-place position in the expert division with numerous spine stalls and transfers. Matthew Muir, wearing a blue T-shirt supporting the Salt Lake City skateshop Time Machine, took second place.

“Buff” Jake Tayler from Eagle Mountain has made a name for himself with footage in recent local videos and was mentoring a younger skater, Kalil Mishalanie, on some flat concrete by the bathrooms while waiting for the expert level call time.

During a free skate between contest runs, Taylor entered the course without the required helmet and promptly took a slam in one of the deep bowls.

Nelson, the announcer, proposed that such a fall was “karma” for riding without a helmet, then sourced a helmet for Taylor to wear.

Taylor secured his expert-level victory with a flawless first run that included a crooked grind, a kickflip into frontside boardslide and a backside lipslide down the street section’s handrails. 

After the last prize bags were distributed, tents were broken down, spectators drifted toward the carnival and skaters continued riding for pleasure in the cooler temperatures preceding sunset. An older local who didn’t place in the expert division posited that perhaps if he had more successfully heeded the event’s anti-smoking message throughout his life, he would have performed better. 

The post Fearless skaters compete, cheer each other on at Wasatch Fair contest appeared first on Park Record.

A thatched roof shack with rustic barn doors stands in an idyllic field in Midway. If neighbors are concerned the house looks shabby and out-of-place abutting their new-build cul-de-sacs where farmland once was, don’t worry — it’s temporary. High Valley Arts Foundation erected this set at their Outdoor Summer Theatre, founded in 2011, for its nightly 8 p.m. “Fiddler on the Roof” performance, through July 20.

Based on stories by Sholem Aleichem in the book by Joseph Stein, with music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, “Fiddler on the Roof” debuted to Broadway audiences in 1964, garnered nine Tony awards and played for over 3,000 performances in its initial run while spawning a 1971 feature film adaptation. The 1905 setting is in Anatevka, Russia, outside Kyiv, which is currently a refugee village in Ukraine under Russian attack.

Most of the musical’s local Jewish population is determined to remain entrenched in traditions isolated from the outside world, yet early rumblings of what will become the 1917 Russian Revolution against the Tsars already have the Russian soldiers stationed in the village conducting pogroms against the residents.

Starting at 7:10, live pre-show music and dance greet theatergoers as they take their “assigned seats” delineated by spray-painted boxes on sloped grass in camping chairs from home (or rented on-site for $2). As the sun prepares to set above Mount Timpanogos past stage left, Director David Thorpe steps out at the stroke of 8 to address the crowd.

In production notes, Thorpe writes that “home is a central motif, symbolizing the anchor of tradition amidst changing times,” topics certainly resonant in Midway, the growing city of 6,200 tucked into the base of the Wasatch back known for its Swiss Days celebration and traditional Alpine architecture. Thorpe gauges the crowd’s hometowns by “rips, snorts, hoots and hollers,” with plenty of locals in the audience that also includes visitors from Ecuador, Qatar, Hong Kong and states across the American West, then turns our attention to the production.

Daniel Clegg stands on the roof in his eponymous role of Fiddler, framed against the skyline, pulling at his bow. With grazing cows a pasture away, Heber Valley makes a good stand-in for protagonist Tevye’s rural Russian village at the turn of the last century as he enters pulling his dairy cart. A poor milkman patriarch played by Todd Beagley, Tevye is raising five daughters with wife Golde, played by Kara Charlesworth. Charlesworth’s own daughter, Lara, plays her character’s youngest daughter, Bielke, while Charlesworth’s mother Vicky Higley’s role as a villager makes for three generations of a family sharing the stage. Beagley’s two daughters, Sadie and Leah, also play villager roles in the 46-member cast, most of which appear on stage in gendered groups for the intricate, well-known first number “Tradition.” Costume Director Kristen Hughes has draped and layered the actors in culturally specific and era-appropriate clothing: women wear bonnets and aprons over floor length dresses in a variety of earth toned patterns, while the village men keep beards and wear hats, with tzitzit knots hanging beneath their dark suits.

Actors pull open the front of the shack to reveal a fully appointed domestic set that serves as a tavern in later scenes. Tevya and Golde’s three oldest daughters are of marrying age and their marriage plots, in which “love” as “the new style” will assert its power over matchmaker-arranged marriages, begin to stew. Primary to the plot is Tevya’s eldest daughter, Tzeitel (Elayna Knowles), who prefers the love of her companion since childhood, the poor tailor, Motel (Michael Clegg, who starred in 2023’s “The Music Man”) to the matchmaker Yente’s proposition of Lazar Wolf, a wealthier widower (Dave Sullivan). 

Tevye shares a Mormon’s conversational relationship to God as he weighs his conflicted feelings aloud to the Almighty, not afraid to joke or be sarcastic with divinity (or misquote the Good Book with confidence) to the audience’s laughter as he see-saws on his dairy cart while singing. Tevye’s affable grump energy, Yente’s comi-tragic complaints, and two love triangles keep Act I zipping along like the motor of the much-anticipated sewing machine Motel is saving up for to impress Tevye and prove he can provide for his eldest daughter.

The dancing is terrific, especially considering the circumstances. You see, in the olden days, men and women weren’t allowed to groove together in the shtetl, until the young Communist tutor Perchik (Sam Neal) falls in love with Hodel, the second oldest daughter (Emersen Lyman), and takes her stepping to music in defiant breach of decorum. In spite of himself, Tevye is inspired to take his wife Golde in his arms as they get with the times. These dance numbers, choreographed by Christie Moulton, are lively and acrobatic as cast members jump upon set pieces, toss objects, balance glasses on their heads, hold each other aloft in chairs, and perform a trust fall that must have taken as much practice as learning lines.

The creepiest, most stunning scene of the production unfolds near the end of Act I as twilight wanes and the lighting crew casts a green and blue light sheen on a ghostly banquet. Tevye’s eagerness to please has left his eldest daughter engaged to two men, so he schemes up a dream that will sufficiently convince his superstitious wife to allow Tzeitzel to marry the poor young tailor she desires. The terrifying hallucination Tevye describes to Golde first features her ghastly grandmother (Lezlie Evans) urging a marriage to Motel before ushering in the butcher Lazar’s deceased first wife, Fruma-Sarah (Brooke Thatcher), who appears in an abrupt blaze of green smoke from above the right barn doors threatening retributions on anyone who would marry her still-living once betrothed, always betrothed. This scene, in which apparational women with shrouded heads are lit in vivid shifting colors surrounded by swirling ghosts moving a bed on wheels is wild and riveting enough to convince Golde that Motel should be Tzeitel’s husband. 

Moments later, her third daughter, Chava (Lexy Osborne) receives the attention of gentile Fyedka (Kai Haddock) in the form of a loaned Heinrich Heine book. “Sunrise, Sunset” is performed at Tzeitel and Motel’s wedding as darkness falls on the Heber Valley. The Russian Constable’s (Rick Kellogg) threatened pogrom interrupts the wedding, leaving the village to clean up the mess as Act 1 ends with a 15-minute intermission.

A waxing half moon rises stage right above Timpanogos as field lights blink the social crowd back to their camp chairs. Months have passed in these minutes and revolutionary duties are now taking Perchik to Kyiv, where Hodel wants to join him as wife. Bugs fly around the source of stage lights, resembling snow flurries, while the audience cheers for the lovers’ kiss. The couple asks Tevye’s blessing rather than permission, so persuasively that he ends up giving both. Reflectively, he asks Golde if he and she have found love in their arranged marriage of 25 years. Her affirmative conclusion comes in the spotlight duet “Do You Love Me?” as geese quack nearby.

Afterward, Hodel pledges to follow Perchik to his new Siberian exile for one sort of closure, while, for another, Motel finally buys a sewing machine to improve his and Tzeitel’s lives with greater tailoring profits. Yet, when middle child Chava commits to marry Fyedka outside the Jewish faith, Tevye cannot summon the same magnanimity he showed her older sisters. Tevye revives the “Tradition” refrain in his defense, then a child sitting to my left remarks on the tune’s now threatening air. Tevye disowns Chava, declaring her dead, while the constable appears to inform that he has been ordered to displace all the villagers within three days. Efficient stagework emphasizes the banality of evil as departure preparations begin in haste. America will be Tevye and Golde’s destination with their two youngest daughters, and the characters remark on the transient nature of Jewish existence as they exit the stage. Tevye beckons the precariously balanced fiddler to come along as well. 

The play finishes around 10:45 to standing applause while the cast returns for their bows. As Thorp said in his introduction to the show, “When we share our talents with you, it’s meaningful for you. When you share your appreciation, your attention and your energy with us, it’s this beautiful thing that ties us together.” Thoughts of husbandry, mutable boundaries, and the ways in which interior and exterior forces bring about changing times and territories occupied my mind heading home with my eye on Midway’s steep Alpine rooftops for any straddling musicians.

Tickets to remaining “Fiddler on the Roof” shows are available for purchase online at https://www.highvalleyarts.org/fiddler-tix/. High Valley Arts Foundation productions to round out the year will include October’s children’s performance of “The Jungle Book” and “A Christmas Story: The Musical “in December, both at the Midway Arts Center.

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East of Park City along Highway 248 toward Hideout, Black Rock Mountain Resort welcomed its first guests on Valentine’s Day 2021. On this June day we’re standing in the construction site on the hillside beneath the resort at what will be ice level of the new Black Rock Ice Rink with Kevin McCloskey, head of Hockey Operations for the Utah Outliers.

The rink is scheduled to open in December, with the Outliers playing the final dozen home games out of 53 during 2024-25 season in these new Heber City digs. 

Currently, sparks fly overhead and Deer Valley’s East Village peaks fill the vista through the arena’s unfinished western wall as we walk past wet concrete steps and workers in hardhats who acknowledge McCloskey in his Outliers jacket as a familiar presence.

A boom lift and excavator occupy center rink today while McCloskey points out the future location of a sliding glass door from which the players will enter the rink, Zamboni access and storage on the opposite end near the concessions and main entrance, along with the home team locker room and quarters for up to five more visiting squads, each with its own shower facility.

In the corridor between the hotel and rink, McCloskey notes the future location of the 9,000-square-foot athletic club, with exercise and training facilities to be available for use by Outliers players, Black Rock hotel guests, and the public. The arena roof will be used as parking, along with additional garage lots beyond the main arena entrance.

Black Rock will be Utah’s first private ice rink, with narrower dimensions lined to National Hockey League standards rather than Olympic measurements currently available at other local locations.

The arena building itself is 134 feet wide by 85 feet long, and seating rings the rink with a close spectator experience in mind. Black Rock stadium will seat over 2,000 hockey fans in surrounding bleachers and an upper deck with table seating. The multi-use stadium will also function as a 3,000-seat concert venue, with a stage ready to be assembled in a few hours on top of the ice.

McCloskey notes the rarity of a venue of this size in the area and enjoys musing about which artists could soon grace the stage, with an interest in partnering with the Park City Songwriters Festival in August and the Sundance Festival, should it remain in Park City.

The Outliers, who take their name from Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 book on exceptional success stories, are a tier 2 Junior A hockey team in the National Collegiate Development Conference, which is America’s highest level of North American amateur competition for 16- to 20-year-old male players.

Under general manager and coach Paul Taylor, the team has played its first seven seasons in West Valley’s 1,000-seat Acord Ice Center, a public community rink maintained by Salt Lake County.

Taylor’s former players who are active on NHL rosters include Chicago’s Seth Jones and his brother Caleb Jones on Colorado, Carolina’s Stefan Noesen and Blake Coleman in Calgary.

Last April, a championship game loss to Ogden ended the Outlier’s three-year run as Mountain Division champs. On May 13, the Outliers selected four birth year 2007 prospects in the NCDC draft, along with four older players born in 2006 and 2005.

Their Main Camp will take place at the Park City Ice Arena on July 19-21, when these draft picks and over 100 other invitees, including some local talent, will try out for 26 spots on the Outliers’ opening day roster.

“If you come out, you’re going to see one of our games going on and it’s fun, particularly for the youth hockey players to come out and get a look at something they can strive to be and something they can reach for,” McCloskey says.

Outliers players hail from across America, Canada and Europe and generally play for the Outliers for one to two seasons, competing for opportunities to advance to collegiate and professional hockey. High school-aged students take online courses, and many of the older students study for online college credits, too.

“We had seven kids off our team last year committed to NCAA D3,” McCloskey says.

The Outlier’s Mountain Division opponents include the Pueblo Bulls, Rock Springs Grizzlies, Ogden Mustangs, Provo Predators, Casper Warbirds and Idaho Falls Spud Kings. During the September-April season, players play two games a week, typically on Friday and Saturday evenings, while living with a billet family that hosts a player or two during their stay.

McCloskey equates the player/family experience to foreign exchange students visiting America. The billet program is a unique opportunity for families to experience hosting the visiting Outliers players during the hockey season for a monthly stipend, he says. Many billet families end up participating for multiple seasons.

The Outliers have spent eight years building a network in Salt Lake and are fielding interested billet family applicants in Summit and Wasatch counties, who are encouraged to contact Bill McCloud. 

The Outliers’ move up the mountain is not necessarily tied to the arrival of Salt Lake City’s new Utah Hockey Club. McCloskey says a rink has been in discussion on the Black Rock site since its inception, and Black Rock hotel and residential developer Rich Wolper is the Outliers’ managing partner.

McCloskey notes that many of the Outliers competitors do well in smaller markets closer to Heber and Park City’s size, compared to the exponentially larger Salt Lake City. The Outliers host youth clinics in West Valley and plan to provide similar outreach at Black Rock. 

McCloskey describes how an amateur team provides an accessible fandom for an area in which Park City High School’s Miner’s hockey team reigns as state champion: “You look at London, Ontario, or Kelowna, British Columbia and Kamloops and towns like that. They support those teams like they’re their own. That’s their NHL team, right? And while we’ll have NHL here, and we think that’s fantastic, the geographical divide of going up over Parley’s Summit, I think, separates us from them. And Park City will have their own team.”

Come mid-December, Park City hockey fans will have a chance to cheer on the Outliers as relocation to a higher elevation accompanies their quest to return to the top of the Mountain Division.

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