Butte Jr Hockey Alumni Update: Robby Arver's Tale of Grit and Goals
By Merrick Parnell
Robby Arver is well known to hockey fans in Butte, Montana, and around the Frontier Division of the North American 3 Hockey League (NA3HL). The 6’4” Forward debuted for the Butte Cobras (now Butte Irish) in the 2019 season. In Butte, Arver won the hearts of fans with his hustle, hits, and the occasional fight.
Early on, Arver had committed and played briefly at Niagara University in the College Hockey Federation but elected to return to Montana to play out his Junior Hockey Career in Butte. Arver’s size and physical style of play got him some attention from college scouts at the annual NA3HL Showcase in Blaine, Minnesota. His play in the showcase and throughout the season for Butte helped propel him to an opportunity with Waldorf University (Forest City, Iowa) an American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) Division I team. Waldorf often plays some of the top teams in ACHA in games against Minot State, The University of Jamestown, and the University of Mary. (Arver often gets to play against Nick Bradshaw, who suits up for the University of Mary).
Arver skates with Waldorf University in an ACHA game (Yost Photography)
Arver went from shorter bus rides from an hour to Helena to the longer ones, around 7 to 8 hours to Wyoming and South Dakota in the NA3HL Frontier Division, to the average bus trip being around eight hours for Waldorf’s ACHA DI games.
With the high skill level, Arver has to bring his “A” game night in and night out.
Arver with the NA3HL's Butte Cobras in a Frontier Division game (Contributed Photo)
“You get the feeling of competing every night and working hard,” Arver said about the level of play in ACHA DI.
He added that his goals for the season are:
“To regularly stay in the lineup and contribute to the team and its success, the program here at Waldorf has a good foundation, and now we have to build on it.”
Arver also enjoys the academic side of his experience at Waldorf, where he is a history major.
