READING, Pa. \u2013 Inside the Santander Arena, jerseys were on, tickets were in hand and playoff excitement was in the air.<\/p>\n
The Reading Royals hosted their first home playoff game of this postseason Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
For Eric Martin and his wife, it was a first.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is actually my first-ever hockey game attending in general,\u201d Martin said. \u201cDefinitely excited for my wife and I to come out and experience it and get some playoff action.\u201d<\/p>\n
Martin recently moved into the Reading community through his work at Albright College.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe started the women’s flag football program at Albright College,\u201d Martin said. \u201cIt’s great to support other athletic programs professionally, collegiately, etc., in the area.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Mathew Reichl of West Lawn, the game doubled as a birthday celebration with his daughters.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s my 41st birthday, and we’re coming to see the first week of the playoffs for the Reading Royals,\u201d Reichl said.<\/p>\n
Across town at Trooper Thorns, owner Jacqueline Trapp said sports nights usually mean more customers walking through the door.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnytime there’s sports here, it’s a good thing,\u201d Trapp said.<\/p>\n
She said when local teams are playing well, the place fills up early.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes down to seeing your sports team doing well, there’s going to be a crowd,\u201d Trapp said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"READING, Pa. \u2013 Inside the Santander Arena, jerseys were on, tickets were in hand and playoff excitement was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[22240,40555,128,130,129,23405,12565,80347,80348],"class_list":["post-179951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-ice-hockey","tag-playoff-game","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-reading-royals","tag-santander-arena","tag-sports-fans","tag-trooper-thorns"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}