Ordinarily, fall would not be considered a time for ice hockey, but East End kids are playing the sport pretty much the year round now, primarily in rinks up the Island, though there’s hope, Chris Minardi said at The Star the other day, that a regulation-size rink under a bubble may be put up in Calverton soon.
The Peconic Hockey Foundation, on whose under-12, U-10, and U-8 teams a number of East Hampton, Sag Harbor, and Southampton youngsters play, had intended that the bubble be put up at Riverhead’s Stotzky Park, “but the town board there said no,” Minardi said. “Now I hear they’re trying for Calverton.”
While Nassau County “has plenty of ice,” the Rinx in Hauppauge still remains for the moment the easternmost indoor one. There is an indoor rink nearby, the Southampton Ice Rink, at which Peconic Hockey Wildcat teams practice, but, because it is not regulation-size, no Long Island Amateur Hockey League games can be played there, said Minardi, who reported that in season-opening games over the Sept. 17 and 18 weekend the foundation’s U-8, U-10, and the U-12 A Wildcat teams won, while the U-12 B team and the U-14 and U-16 teams lost.
“Thank God for Doug De Groot — he’s been very generous,” said Minardi, whose son, Cam, is on the U-10’s first line with Luca Pisano and Grady Craig. The Wildcats are to play games on the regulation-size outdoor rink at the Buckskill Tennis and Winter Club here beginning Dec. 3. “By then,” said Minardi, “the under-10s will have played 11 games and in one tournament, in Hershey, Pa., over the Halloween weekend. . . . Games are played every weekend through March.”
“Ice hockey has become a big deal for these local kids in the past three years,” he added. “It’s become a viable sport. And it represents a huge commitment because it’s year round — not just one season.” Cam, a John Marshall Elementary School fifth grader, “likes soccer, but he had to choose. He is playing some tennis, though, on Tuesdays, which is good: U.S.A. Hockey encourages kids to play multiple sports.”
While it would be good to have an indoor rink in Calverton, “getting there would be tough. It’s an hour and a half just to get to Southampton College when the traffic’s heavy, which it is most of the time,” said Minardi, who would much prefer that a publicly supported indoor rink be built out here. “The demand is growing . . . for adult leagues, for figure skating, for curling. . . . There’s a big demand. I hope the local boards can see that there is. We shouldn’t have to rely on private enterprises to do it.”
At the moment, of the Peconic Hockey Foundation teams that are practicing on rinks up the Island there are more than 30 on the U-8 team coached by Dave Friedman, 12 or so on the U-10s coached by Jason Craig, “though despite the numbers they’re a special team,” and more than 30 on the two U-12 teams coached by Brendan Goldstein.
“The good news,” said Minardi, “is that the Southampton Ice Rink opens in November.”
In opening-week games, Minardi said as he consulted his iPhone, “the U-8s won decisively over the Long Island Sound Tigers, with multiple goals by Zach Friedman and great goaltending by Alex Kessler. . . the U-10s beat the Freeport Enforcers 15-4, and the U-12 A team won. The U-12 B team, however, didn’t fare as well. They played the Freeport Arrows, a very well-run organization that’s been around for a long time — the Freeport Arrows know hockey.”
While East Enders made up a great part of the foundation’s younger teams’ rosters, “the U-14s and the U-16s are not East End-based,” said Minardi, who listed East Hampton, Sag Harbor, Center Moriches, Southampton, and Amagansett as among the players’ hometowns.
Asked if ice hockey is a sport that everyone here could play, he said, “As with travel baseball and travel soccer, it’s all the same. There are expenses — for equipment, for travel, and ice time isn’t cheap. But the Peconic Hockey Foundation has resources for kids who might not otherwise be able to afford it. No kids go without — we make sure of that.”