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The NHL has its Winter Classics attracting mega crowds. The Canadian pond hockey championships have been played for a decade in an Ontario resort community. And backyard rinks are a fashionable part of our sporting culture.

But the kids in the co-ed Outdoor Hockey Program in Carp go one better than the pros, pick-ups and backyarders.

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They play their entire season — one game a week on a Saturday morning and one week-night practice for nine weeks — in the great outdoors, fighting the wicked wind chill and blowing snow, taking encouragement from their board-banging parents, and putting on their equipment in tiny dressing rooms or spilling into a lobby.

Their “competitive hockey,” which bends many traditional rules for the sake of flow and fun, is on a rink hosed down with well water by a group of three dedicated volunteers. Warren Lathem, who at 75 heads the consortium and has been making ice for 13 years, starts his daily shifts at 6:30 a.m, but on hockey Saturdays his crew is out there at 4:30 a.m.