Going Viral

Article reprinted courtesy of Fargo Forum and reporter Eric Peterson. 

MOORHEAD - Concordia Cobbers senior Zach Doerring was hoping to get a few favorites from friends after he posted a video on Twitter of him skating on the slick road outside his house on Wednesday morning, Dec. 13.

The men's hockey player got much more than that. The eight-second clip exploded getting more than a million views after garnering national attention from outlets like Barstool Sports, ESPN and NBC Sports.

"I'm not a big Twitter guy," Doerring said. "I don't really tweet a lot. I just thought this was funny. It just kind of blew up."

The video that he posted on his Twitter account had nearly 80,000 views as of Thursday afternoon, Dec. 14. On the official Instagram account for Barstool Sports, the video had racked up more than 1.5 million total views as of Thursday afternoon.

"Everyone gets 15 seconds of fame and this is it," Doerring said with a laugh.

Doerring was headed to the library Wednesday morning to study for finals, but his car was blocked in the driveway by one of his roommates, Dalton Mills. Doerring went inside to get Mills to move his car. That's when the conversation started about how icy it was from overnight freezing rain.

"This ice is better than our rink's ice. We can skate on this. Do we have any skates here?" said Doerring, quoting Mills.

"I was like 'Yeah, I've got my old pair in the garage,'" Doerring added.

That's when Mills filmed Doerring skating on the ice-coated driveway and road. Doerring said it took two takes before he posted the video to his Twitter account. The 6-foot-5, 205-pound forward said "Shoot, I'm late" in the video before he skated down the driveway with a textbook in hand and turned left onto the street.

Doerring said he didn't test the driveway or the street for dry spots that weren't covered with ice before he filmed the video.

"That was the first thing my dad (Kaj) said when I sent it to him," Doerring said. "You could have hit a patch of concrete and ended your season."

Doerring said the video started to take off on Wednesday afternoon after it was picked up by Barstool Sports. Thursday morning, he woke up to messages from ESPN and NBC Sports.

"All of a sudden they're asking if they can post it and stuff and I said 'Oh my gosh. What's going on?'" Doerring said.

"I thought it was a funny tweet," Cobbers head coach Chris Howe said.

The past week has been a remarkable one for Doerring and the Cobbers. Doerring scored three goals in the third period to help Concordia rally from a 7-2 deficit at Hamline last Saturday. The Cobbers won that game in a shootout after scoring three goals with a pulled goalie in the third period.

"That's probably the first hat trick that I've had since I was 10," Doerring said.

Cobbers junior forward Mario Bianchi earned a spot on the D3hockey.com National Team of the Week for his play in the team's five-point weekend against Hamline. Bianchi scored seven points in two games. It was also Mills' birthday on Wednesday.

"We had a lot of stuff going on," Doerring said. "It's kind of funny that this blew up, too, and I overshadowed that, I feel bad. And then also my roommate's birthday."

Despite the popularity of Doerring's skating clip, he doesn't foresee this changing his social media habits.

"I'll tweet when I feel like it, which isn't often," Doerring said. "This isn't going to inspire me to do it more. I'm not the biggest social media guy.