How a Yukon pharmacist turned UCO hockey into a national power

raig McAlister coached his team to a national championship on a Tuesday, took the day offon Wednesday, then went right back to work on Thursday.

Not back to work scouting and scheming to win another title, but rather back to work filling prescriptions and dispensing advice from behind his pharmacy counter.

“I was back here at 7 a.m. Thursday,” the coach/pharmacist said sitting in a small back officeat Conrad Marr Drug in Yukon. He chuckled. “Right back at it.” It’s fitting that McAlister is the front man for Central Oklahoma’s club hockey team. Pharmacist by day, coach by night might be the team’s most quirky story, butit certainly isn’t the only one.

Unconventionally is how UCO has risen in the hockey world. Our fair state isn’t exactly a hockey hotbed, and UCO isn’t really teeming with hockey players. But there UCO hockey was last weekbeating Ohio University and winning its second American Collegiate Hockey Association national title in three years.

“It’s really unreal,” said goalie Alex Henry, who scored a 3-0 shutout in the finals. “It took probably about 12 hours to sink in that we won.”

The hockey world may need some time to come to grips with UCO’s emergence, too.

McAlister, the only coach the team has even known, has built it into an unlikely juggernaut. Then again, everything about hispath in hockey is unlikely.

Growing up in the Oklahoma City area in the 60s and 70s, McAlister was introduced to hockey by his dad who’d firstfallen in love with it while stationed in Denver.The McAlisters went to a few Oklahoma City Blazers games, and Craig was hooked.

He started playing youth hockey, then eventually played junior hockey in Canada and college hockey in Ohio. A couple minorleague teams offered contracts after he graduated.

But McAlister had promised his dad, who was a pharmacist, that he would attend OU’s pharmacy school if he was accepted.

“Lo and behold,” McAlister said, “I got in, dadgumit.”

After he graduated in 1984, being a pharmacist became his work, but his passion for hockey remained. He started coaching, youth leagues at first, older and better teams as time went on. He helped start the club team at OUin 2003, then three years later moved to UCO to launch the program there.

In only its third season, UCO made the national tournament and McAlister won national coach of the year honors. The next year, the team made its first final four.

McAlister built the program primarily on the backs of players from the western half of Canada. Provinces like British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Cities like Victoria, Edmonton, Calgary and Saskatoon. There simply weren’t enough players from the city or even the region to fill a roster, so McAlister built a network with coaches in those areas.

He wantedguys aging out of Canada’s junior hockey system —players are eligible until they are 20 —and he hoped to entice them with the promise of a college education and a chance to keep playing hockey a little longer.

Henry, the goalie, fell into that mold.Even though he’s from the eastern half of Canada —Pembroke, Ontario, to be precise —he was playing his last seasonof junior hockey when he got an email from McAlister. Henry started researching UCO hockey on the internet, following the team’s progress, and talking to some of the players past and present.

Henry liked what he saw and committed to UCO, even if it led to some raised eyebrows back home. Hockey in Oklahoma? Then again, he hears similar questions in Oklahoma.

“We have a hockey team?” professors at UCO sometimes ask him. “Really?”

But Henry has never regretted his decision. The team’s successis a big reason why, but so is McAlister.

“He doesn’t really yell that much,” Henry said. “He’s more of a laid-back coach. He’ll let you know if you’re not doing something right, but he lets us play.

“He’s very dedicated to us and very dedicated to his work.”

Most of McAlister’s players are aware that he has a full-time job to do and a family-owned business to run, working at the pharmacy from 7 a.m. until 5 p.m., then recruiting and scouting for the hockey program for two or three hours before starting practice at 8:45 p.m.

It makes for a lot of long days.

“He makes it happen,” winger Taylor Herndon said.

But Herndon, an Oklahoma City native who went to Putnam City High School, stressed that McAlister’s strengths as a coach go well beyond his work ethic. McAlister adaptsand adjusts as well as any coach Herndon has played for, including in the Canadian junior hockey leagues and with Team USA at the World University Games earlier this year.

“Who’s playing well? Who’s struggling?” Herndon said. “He knows the game well.

“Craig’s a helluva coach.”

And he’s builtquite the program.

But with the exception of the navy blue UCO hockey jacket that he wears to work, McAlister doesn’t tout the hockey part of his life at the pharmacy. A few customers have asked about nationals, but most have been more likely to ask about the best topical cream for their itchy rash or the possible side effects for their new meds. McAlister shrugged. “Life,” he said. He smiled. Life is good.