Friends of Penn State Men's Hockey crossed-sticks logo Friends of Penn State Men's HockeyState College, Pennsylvania

Full Strength — newsletter archive

The club newsletter, published each fall and each spring.

Full Strength newsletter masthead

Full Strength is the newsletter of Friends of Penn State Men's Hockey, Inc.. It carries season previews and reviews, news of the club's own events, member profiles, and the record of what the organisation did in a given year. It has been produced by volunteers throughout, and the archive below is the club's most complete continuous account of itself.

The rhythm has been the same for years: a preview issue in the fall, before the first home weekend, and a review issue in the spring once the season has ended. The fall issue tells members what is planned — socials, the raffle, any road trip the club intends to charter — and the spring issue reports what actually happened, which is not always the same thing. Between them they capture a season from a supporter's side of the glass rather than from the press box.

The issues are worth reading in order if you have the patience. Taken together they track the program's move from club hockey into the Big Ten, the opening of Pegula Ice Arena, the seasons that followed, and the slow change in what a supporters' organisation had to do as the audience around it grew. They also preserve a good deal that exists nowhere else: the names of volunteers, the results of raffles, the details of trips that thirty people took ten years ago.

The most recent issue is a membership benefit and is not posted here. Everything else is public and free to read. Files are PDFs and some of the older issues are large scans, so a fast connection helps.

Issues (PDF)

Other archived documents