CHICAGO — So much for shuffleboard, bridge and Ping-Pong.

On a frigid, echoing ice rink here, a sport more frequently learned in childhood is being taken up by a group that long ago had its last gym class — those in their middle years, a demographic that once tended to adopt gentler pastimes for quieter years ahead.

For at least some, this is what their first day of Hockey 101 looks like: skate, teeter, fall down, slide like a lump across the ice. Repeat. And that is all before pucks are brought out.

“Everybody’s got the fever,” Ken Rzepecki, known here as Coach Ken, said not long ago as some 30 novices, including two women, stepped (wobbled, in some cases) onto the ice at a private indoor facility near downtown Chicago. A beginners’ adult hockey class has grown so popular among bankers, traders, engineers, you name it, that an extra class had to be created a few weeks ago. Even so, a waiting list stretches on and on.