The Compton Family Ice Arena (CFIA) opened its doors to the public on Oct. 18, 2011 and just three nights later (Oct. 21), hosted its first Notre Dame hockey game with the Irish handing the Rensselaer Engineers a 5-2 loss in front of a capacity crowd of 5,022.

Since then, the new state-of-the-art facility has been in constant use, serving both the Notre Dame and South Bend communities, hosting a wide-range of activities, including: Notre Dame hockey games and camps; local high school and youth hockey; sled hockey; figure skating; public skating; physical education skating classes; learn-to-skate, learn-to-curl, and other Compton Classroom instructional programs; Notre Dame intramural ice hockey and broomball; the Notre Dame women’s club hockey and precision skating teams, and commencement ceremonies. It also serves as a local meeting place.

Other patrons of the CFIA in it’s inaugural season have been youth hockey tournaments with participating teams from around the country, managed by Hockey Time Productions (It’s Hockey Time); showcase tournaments hosted by the High Performance Hockey League; Bauer Select camps; Chicago Mission games; the United States Hockey League (USHL), and the Brian Boitano Skating Spectacular.