Columbus, Georgia
🏒 Columbus River Dragons

The centerpiece of a multi-faceted entertainment complex, the Columbus Civic Center is a hub for shows and sports in Georgia’s second-largest city. The facility was built in 1996 and can hold up to 10,000 people for some events. When the ice is down for the River Dragons, the arena’s resident hockey team, capacity is just under 7,500.

While the venue has been home to a G-League team, some indoor football franchises and even a soccer club, hockey has been the steadfast staple that’s consistently filled the seats. The Civic Center hosted the beloved Cottonmouths for more than twenty years, a trio of franchises that competed in the Central Hockey League, ECHL and SPHL before ultimately folding in 2017. In 2021, the sport returned to the Fountain City in the form of the FPHL’s River Dragons.

The rink feels like – and, quite frankly, smells like – a solid throwback to an ’80s-era carnival, with a touch of modernity. The actual infrastructure is quite fresh, with clean interior brick and yellow catwalks above the ice that add a bit of pop and make the arena a colorful one.

The venue’s concessions are also of the exciting sort. The most popular offering is the “Freeze”, a large cup of blended ice mixed with a variety of flavors, namely cherry. It’s such a hot item that long lines will form well before the game begins.

Near the main lobby sits the Chattahoochee Valley Sports Hall of Fame, a small maze of memorabilia cases that highlight the athletic history of west-central Georgia. Everything from high school football to whitewater rafting is on full display, engrossing fans in the long sports tradition that has been built here in Columbus.

As for the River Dragons, their story is still in its infant stages. But despite the team’s overall youth, they’ve made quite the impact on the ice. In their pandemic-shortened inaugural season, the Dragons won the regular season title and battled their way into securing their first FPHL league championship. In 2024, they added another regular season crown to the trophy case, proving to the fans in Columbus that even more hardware is surely on the way.