Tupelo T-Rex
| Tupelo T-Rex | |
|---|---|
| City | Tupelo, Mississippi |
| League | WPHL |
| Division | Southeast Division |
| Operated | 1998–2001 |
| Home arena | BancorpSouth Arena |
| Colors | Green, white, yellow, purple |
| Owner(s) | Bill MacFarlane (1998–99) T-Rex 2000, Inc. (1999–2001) |
| Head coach | Peter Esdale David Latta George Dupont |
| Championships | |
| Regular season titles | 1 (2000–01) |
The Tupelo T-Rex was a professional ice hockey team in the Western Professional Hockey League and played their home games at BancorpSouth Center from 1998 to 2001. The owners of the T-Rex would also field a junior team in the America West Hockey League from 2001 to 2003 when they were unable to continue fielding a professional team.
The franchise was originally owned by Bill MacFarlane and was later taken over by a local ownership group in January 2000. During the 2000–01 season, the team brought in key play makers including Jason Firth, Brant Blackned, and Barry McKinley who helped lead the T-Rex to a regular season championship.
After the 2000–01 season, Tupelo was invited to be a part of the WPHL-Central Hockey League merger. It would have set up a local rivalry with CHL member,the Memphis Riverkings. However, the T-Rex ownership refused and decided not to join the merger. Their attempts to join two other pro leagues backfired when the CHL invoked a non-compete clause, claiming the territorial rights to Tupelo as part of the merger. With no other options, Tupelo folded as a pro franchise and began as a junior team in the America West Hockey League where they lasted two more seasons before folding again in 2003.
There were several failed attempts to restart the franchise, most notably as a team in the South East Hockey League, as it turned out that the Central Hockey League had a 5-year non-compete clause with the BancorpSouth Center. Thus, no professional hockey team could enter the venue in Tupelo. In addition to problems surrounding the facility's legal issues with the team, the T-Rex had attempted membership with the Atlantic Coast Hockey League and attempted the move to the SEHL, but were barred from this move due to the non-compete clause the CHL held over the arena.
Currently there are no plans to bring the T-Rex back in Tupelo. The legal issues the team faced from its efforts to merge to either the SEHL or CHL blocked occupied too much time for the team to recover. Since then, the only ice hockey to have been played at the Bancorpsouth Arena has been the Ole Miss Rebels and Mississippi State Bulldogs DIII men's ice hockey clubs.
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