USAF Retiree Sees Action with Ice Dawgs

     Another in a series of stories about club hockey players in the South who have served in the military in defense of our freedom.
     The last person HockeyYall.com expected to find when it began identifying collegiate club hockey players in the South who have served in the U.S. Armed Forces was a veteran of the Vietnam War. Yes, Vietnam. The war that ended 34 years ago with the evacuation of Americans and some Vietnamese by chopper from a rooftop in the U.S. embassy compound in Saigon. Permit us to introduce you to Mike Killian, whom you may have already run into – literally – on the ice.
     Killian is 55 years old, a grandfather three times over and a veteran of 24 years with the U.S. Air Force, beginning in 1972. An avionics technician, he maintained B-52s, KC-135 tankers, C-130s and F-4 fighters during two tours in Thailand during the Vietnam War’s waning days and numerous other tours around the globe, including Saudi Arabia during the first Persian Gulf War in the early 1990s.
     Now employed by the Boeing Corp. in Columbus, Miss., Killian’s also a part-time student at Mississippi State and a winger on the Ice Dawgs team, skating alongside young men who are contemporaries of his two grown children.
     He discovered hockey on a pond as a youngster in Grand Island, N.Y., but didn’t play organized hockey until he was 33 years old and stationed at Griffiss AFB in New York. There, he played on the base team and later in a local men’s league. While supporting air operations in the Persian Gulf, Bosnia and other hot spots, he didn’t play hockey again until after his discharge from the Air Force in 1996 as a master sergeant.
     With his family settled in Columbus, he played pickup hockey wherever he could find ice and later roller hockey. When he heard Mississippi State was starting a team, he enrolled in classes and tried out. His wife, whom he met in Thailand, wasn’t keen on him playing hockey anywhere, especially after he broke one of his legs in two places when sandwiched between two opposing skaters during a rec game. “We argued back and forth, and finally, I just wore her down,” he says.
     He joined the Ice Dawgs for last season’s second semester and played every game. During one, he was on a line with a 42-year-old veterinarian student and a 21-year-old. “They called us the Century Line. We didn’t score, but we didn’t get scored on either,” says Killian, who longs to someday play in one of those over-60 or over-70 tournaments.
     He’s played in all but two of his team’s games this season, but has not recorded a point. Not surprising, his teammates make fun of him. “The call me the old man,” says Killian, who stands 5-10 and weighs about 170, thanks to all the running and skating he does and the racquetball he plays. “I felt pretty good during tryouts, especially this year. Five guys puked, but I didn’t.
     “I’m having a good time. I probably don’t belong there but it’s the only ice time I can get. I probably should be in an over-50 league somewhere.”