Ritten

Ethan Szypula was named MVP of the Alps Hockey League for 2024/25, the latest in a line of imports who have carried Rittner Buam through its most successful decade. The club plays under the name Ritten Sport, but in Collalbo, the South Tyrolean village that gave it its nickname, it has never been called anything else. Its shape today dates to 1984, when SC Ritten merged with HC Unterinn and WSV Rittnerhorn, though the roots go back further, to 1928 and the founding of Sport Club Renon. The current name arrived in 2004.

What followed the merger took decades to show. Serie B titles in 1986 and 1999 marked a club still finding its level; the breakthrough came between 2014 and 2019, when Rittner Buam won the Italian championship five times in six seasons, adding two Coppa Italia wins and a run of Supercoppa Italiana titles along the way. A sixth Serie A title followed in 2024, alongside a second Alps Hockey League crown, confirming that the earlier run was not a single golden generation but something closer to a house style.

Patrick Rissmiller and MacGregor Sharp both wore the jersey during that period, part of a squad built each year around a small core of imports and local players from South Tyrol. The Arena Ritten in Collalbo holds only 2,000, which keeps the atmosphere close even against the club's biggest opponent.

That opponent is HC Bolzano, based twelve kilometres down the road in the provincial capital. The Derby dell'Alto Adige between them carries the weight of two South Tyrolean clubs chasing the same trophies from towns that share little else, and it remains the fixture Ritten's supporters mark on the calendar before any other.