Ice Rink in Daylight Calculations?

If the arena is solely used for ice skating you might be able to make an argument. If its not, then its just like a gym and must be included. If its solely used for ice skating you will have a hard time arguing glare and heat gain issues because thats what you should be looking at for every space. There are outdoors ice skating rings and you need to provide glare control devices to handle high glare conditions. With heat gain, diffuse glazing, glazing with good SHGC and fixed shading device are methods to handle any heat gain in the space. It would take a very detailed analysis and proof to show that daylighting for your arena just will not work. 

I can't agree more with Todd. I did few daylight analyses for ice rink with skylight although I never did for LEED application. There are many ways to control heat gain and glare.

I disagree with the outdoor ice rink analogy. Having windows in a room is not the same as being open to the sky. 1. Eyes adjust to ambient light level. The reason you don't need to wear sunglasses inside is the light coming through windows is a much smaller portion of your view and it also filters the light with Tvis values and/or by being translucent. 2. Heat is trapped in a building where it is no on an exterior ice rink. That all being said, you CAN daylight an ice rink quite nicely without glare and heat issues by minimizing your wall-to-window ratio and using translucent glazing (ideally with high clerestory windows). It takes a surprisingly small amount of glazing to provide usable light this way.