From Ajoie to the A-Rotor: How a Corner of the Jura Became Switzerland’s Most Unlikely Hockey Hotbed

Drive east from Porrentruy on a winter evening and the first thing you notice is the light. A single, low-slung building glows above the flat farmland like a stranded spaceship. Inside, 6,800 people are already on their feet, cowbells in one hand, beers in the other, shouting in French, German, and the lilting local dialect that sounds like neither. The second thing you notice is the smell—hot waffles, wet wool, and something metallic that only rinks have. This is the Raiffeisen Arena, and the team on the ice is Hockey Club Ajoie—HC Ajoie to the rest of Switzerland, “le HCA” to the neighbours who’ve watched it rise from the village pond to the National League in barely two decades.
Ajoie itself is a cartographic afterthought: the district of Porrentruy, population 25,000, wedged between the French border and the first fold of the Jura hills. Until 2008, the club’s biggest claim to fame was a photograph from 1973 showing the entire roster packed into a single Citroën 2CV for the trip to an away game. Today that same club plays in the top flight against Zürich, Bern, and Davos—cities whose arenas alone hold more people than Ajoie’s entire district. How does a place like this compete—and, more bafflingly, keep winning?
The short answer is stubbornness. The longer answer involves an electrician, a butcher, and the only off-rink bar in Switzerland where the bouncer doubles as the assistant coach.
When the pond froze, they played
In the early 1960s, Porrentruy’s outdoor rink was nothing more than a flooded rectangle next to the railway line. Kids skated before school; fathers shovelled snow between periods; someone’s grandmother sold hot chocolate from a folding table. The club existed on paper, but mostly it existed because refusing to play hockey was unthinkable—like refusing Christmas. Equipment came second-hand from Basel; sticks were taped together from broken ones found in arena bins. The team’s first import was a French goalie who arrived with a single suitcase and stayed for fifteen years because no one told him he could leave.
Indoor ice arrived in 1973, a corrugated shed locals still call “la grange.” The arena seated 2,400, which seemed absurd at the time—until 2,800 people crammed in for a playoff game and the fire marshal pretended not to notice. The team bounced between the second and third divisions for decades. Relegation was met with a shrug; promotion, with a street parade that ended at the butcher shop because the butcher was the president and the sausages were on him.
The electrician’s blueprint
In 2005, the Swiss league announced licensing rules that would have killed Ajoie on the spot: minimum arena size, minimum budget, minimum youth program. Enter Didace Lambercy, a former defenseman who had retired to wire houses and coach kids on weekends. Lambercy convinced the town council that a hockey club was cheaper than an unemployment office—every franc invested came back in restaurants, hotels, and taxes. He also persuaded the league to visit in person. The inspectors arrived expecting a village rink and found a barn packed with singing fans. “It’s not the seats that matter,” one inspector told the press later. “It’s the sound when the puck drops.”
The council issued bonds; farmers bought them. A new arena rose beside the old one in 2009—bigger, louder, and deliberately rustic. The beams are local pine; the bar serves absinthe from the valley distillery. Season tickets sold out in six days, even though no one knew if the team would stay up. That uncertainty turned out to be the point. When you come from a place the train barely stops at, survival feels like triumph.
Moneyball on ice
Financially, HC Ajoie should have capsized years ago. Its annual budget (CHF 9 million) is roughly what Bern spends on video coaching. The trick is to spend on what matters: scouting, conditioning, and the one thing big clubs overlook—continuity. Head coach Kevin Schlaepfer has been on the bench since 2012. The starting goalie, Luca Boltshauser, grew up twenty minutes away and once painted the arena walls as a summer job. When the club imports talent, it looks for players other teams gave up on: the Latvian center deemed too small, the Canadian winger recovering from a broken jaw. They arrive in Ajoie and discover the rink has no corporate boxes—just one long standing terrace where fans lean over the glass like neighbours at a garden fence.
The numbers back the romance. Since 2016, Ajoie’s youth academy has produced more National League players per capita than any organization outside Zürich. Six of last year’s roster were local enough to bike to practice. The club’s analytics department is two guys with laptops, one of whom still drives the Zamboni between periods. They track “puck support” instead of Corsi, because in a town where everyone knows everyone, you don’t abandon your wingman on the boards.
Game night in the A-Rotor
By 7 p.m. the parking lot is full of tractors next to Teslas. Inside, the PA announcer switches languages every sentence. When the team scores, the goal horn blasts the opening chords of “Smoke on the Water,” a tradition that began when the sound engineer forgot his playlist and grabbed the first CD in his car. Visiting players describe the noise as “Swiss thunder”—half cowbell, half roar, impossible to replicate in a city arena where fans check their phones between whistles.
Last season, Ajoie beat Bern in overtime on a goal by 19-year-old Elia Riva, who had been sitting in those same stands ten years earlier. The celebration spilled onto the ice, then onto the street, and finally into the butcher shop—still the president, still the sausages. The next morning, the local paper’s headline read simply: “Riva, enfant du pays.” Child of the country.
What the rise proves
National League purists argue Ajoie’s model can’t last—budgets only go up, and sooner or later a billionaire owner will poach Schlaepfer or Boltshauser will chase a Swiss league title in Geneva. Maybe. But walk through the Saturday market and you’ll see toddlers in oversized HCA jerseys, grandfathers debating line changes over espresso, and teenage girls asking for selfies with the backup goalie who doubles as their chemistry tutor. The club survives because it isn’t separate from the town; it is the town’s loudest conversation with itself.
Late in the third period, the arena lights dim for a stoppage, and the chant begins: “Qui ne saute pas n’est pas Ajoulôt!”—“Whoever doesn’t jump isn’t from Ajoie!” Six thousand people bounce in unison, the wooden floor flexing like a trampoline. Somewhere in the stands, the electrician-turned-president smiles at the scoreboard and the mortgage he still owes on the rink. For now, the numbers add up. For now, the train still stops.
And if it ever stops stopping? The pond is still there, just outside of town, waiting for the first cold snap.
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