By now, Pollreisz has pulled on his Spartan hockey jersey and taken the bus from his Chandler Crossings apartment to the International Center, where he stopped in the men’s bathroom to paint a green and white design on his face.

If his white paint hadn’t run out, the MSU senior would have been here earlier, wearing a pair of shorts and standing toward the back of the bleachers of the Slapshots student section. By the time his friends arrive 10 or 15 minutes before game time, he might already have eaten three hot dogs.

It would be no different from the last three and a half years at the arena, where Pollreisz has become a fixture.

Event staffers wave when he walks in. Some of the players recognize him in the stands. The rest of the Slapshots members, who in most cases know Pollreisz only as Alaska, fill the empty stands around him.

The puck drops.

He starts yelling.

The hockey guy

Pollreisz remembers his first game as a freshman at MSU, not long after he’d flown here from his home state of Alaska and started getting used to sunlight after 4 p.m. He was miles and miles from home: the sleepy but “strikingly beautiful” city of Soldotna, Alaska.

He had spent that whole day looking forward to his first game at a major university’s ice arena.

But in the stands, students sat talking to boyfriends or girlfriends. The building itself seemed to frown upon “acting up.”

“All of the complaints I heard about the building — you know, it’s a nice building but it’s an absolute desolate wasteland for in-game atmosphere — all of those complaints were validated,” said Pollreisz, now a journalism senior.

“And I really didn’t like that.”

It felt more like a social event than sporting event, geographic information science senior Jim Spiher said. You couldn’t hear the students from the other side of the arena and saw students chatting with friends, cheering only when the team scored, said Spiher, a friend of Pollreisz’s who has been attending games since his freshman year.

“I learned very quickly the winter sport is basketball, so all the crazy lunatics went to the basketball games,” Spiher said.

Since that first game, Alaska has tried to change that. It began with yelling, then a dance, until he became the extreme fan — “bat crap crazy” enough to break the building’s atmosphere, he said.

“It’s kind of developed into this crazy character type thing that I attempt to unveil at every hockey game, and it’s just I’m doing my darndest to get everyone in that section as loose as possible because the rest of that building, that building culture, is just so difficult to work with,” he said.

Students know him as the loud guy who leads chants and always wears shorts, even when it’s 10 degrees outside. Spiher has never seen him in a pair of pants. He’s pretty sure it’s because where Alaska is from, it gets to be 20 degrees below zero. But Pollreisz says it’s only 10 to 12 degrees colder in Alaska compared to East Lansing.

“This is like spring break for him,” Spiher said.

Maybe his dedication has worked: The section has doubled, Spiher said. It now has its own chants. Students follow Alaska’s leads. They buy tickets their freshman year and then buy them again the next year.

“When you have people like him yelling and screaming, that’s when other people join in,” Spiher said.

“When he’s loud, other people get loud. He sets an example.”

Leading the crowd

Tonight’s home game against Ferris State is the most important of the year, Pollreisz says. Wearing a pair of beige plaid shorts, he stands to scream at the goalie and lead the rest of the section in chants.

“You better make this loud!” he yells to the rest of the students.

Seconds later, everyone yells with him and “SIEVE, SIEVE, SIEVE!” echoes through the rink.

“He’s been starting most of the chants since game three freshman year, once he realized no one else was doing it,” Spiher said.

“It took me like half the season, but he felt comfortable within a game or two.”

Alaska is on his feet constantly, his voice rising above the rest of the noise in the arena. He yells the team sucks. He yells the goalie is ugly. He yells that the students aren’t loud enough.

“Everybody!” he yells. “Go green on three!”

When he counts off, the students all yell and throw their arms out to the other side of the arena, waiting for a response. The other side follows with a “Go white.”

“I’m always surprised when I go down over there (to the other side of the arena) to hear how loud we really are,” said international relations and comparative cultures and politics junior Jaclyn Murphy, who has been attending games for the last three years.

From the ice, the players can hear the student section yelling, former MSU goaltender Jeff Lerg said. Enthusiasm from fans is something that makes Munn Ice Arena a little bit more difficult to play in for opposing teams.

“You can definitely hear them,” Lerg said.

“We have talked about it after the game: ‘Did you hear the building today? It was so great, it was so loud.’”

Alaska the unknown

He must have introduced himself to Spiher as Anthony. But for the last three years, Pollreisz has been just Alaska. Spiher pulls out his cell phone and Anthony’s number is saved under the name “Alaska.”

“It’s like, ‘Hi, I’m Anthony from Alaska’ and then Alaska’s what sticks out to you,” Spiher said.

To the student section, he’s also just Alaska.

“I think I technically know his name, but I can’t think of it off the top of my head,” said media arts and technology junior Sarah Deighan.

“I know it starts with an ‘A.’”

She leans over to her friend.

Is his name Andrew? Anthony! It’s Anthony.

The MSU hockey players might not know Alaska’s name, but some are pretty sure they know who he is.

“He’s always there in a jersey,” senior forward Nick Sucharski said.

“I’m almost positive he’s the guy who always starts the chants. I don’t know him personally, I don’t know his name, but I’m pretty sure I know who he is.”

It happens every once in a while: Pollreisz is walking to class and someone stops him.

“Hey, you’re that hockey guy.”

Pollreisz is taken off guard. He’s more reserved, maybe even bashful outside the rink. He gets a bit perplexed knowing someone recognized him from his “exploits” at the games.

“You know, to an extent, that whole thing I do at the rink is kind of like a character that I play,” Pollreisz said.

“It’s almost like some sort of strange performance act that I do. It’s me, but it’s not me 24 hours of the day.”

The dance

It’s the second intermission. MSU and Ferris State are tied, 2-2.

Suddenly, the bleachers around Alaska clear out. Students stand in the aisles. Alaska sits down and tucks his shoelaces into his sneakers. He rips up a newspaper, collecting the scraps.

Someone tells James Madison College freshman Dan Seguin, who is attending his first game, to move.

“They just told me there’d be a dance and to get out of the way,” he said.

As the band prepares to play, Alaska stands calmly in the middle of the empty rows, reading a newspaper. Shards of newspaper are scattered around him. The dance he’s been doing for three and a half years is about to start.

“It was the third or fourth game, it was a Friday game, and everyone else was just miming along with the band and I decided to completely go over the top and break out this absolutely ridiculous dance and it just kind of stuck from there,” he said.

When the music starts, he throws the newspaper down.

In a flurry of hip rolls, spins and jumps, he throws himself around. Other students, who are sitting in the bleachers around him, follow his arm motions. He throws his arms back until it looks like he might fall over.

People walking down the aisles turn around to watch. He thrashes about and then picks up newspaper scraps and tosses them around.

When the music ends and he sits back down, he’s panting and sweating.

“The end of the road”

The student who has become renowned for the way he acts at the rink is graduating this year, likely heading 3,000 miles back home to Alaska, where the nickname will fade away and he’ll hang up the jersey. The Spartans’ final regular season home game is Friday against Bowling Green.

“This is my second home, but that’s always going to be my first home,” Pollreisz said.

Some Slapshots members worry about filling Alaska’s void when he graduates. The section needs someone to lead cheers, accounting junior Craig Jaquette said. For the last three years, Alaska has been that person.

“I sort of think sometimes, ‘Who’s going to be the next Alaska?’” Jaquette said.

For his part, Alaska really hopes they’ll be able to keep it going. He imagines coming back as a 40-year-old, sitting across the ice and seeing a larger, louder student section.

He knows he’ll miss it. Miss it to death. But life moves on, he said.

“I’ve been vigorously fighting against growing up ever since I was an incredibly small child,” he said.

“At some point, I’ll have to hang up the hockey jersey and put away the face paint, stop screaming like a crazy person. So yeah, this likely will be it for me, after getting done here. It’s the end of the road.”