Grown-up kids take up sticks for pond hockey

MARQUETTE — He skated by himself at the far end of the ice while everyone else played hockey.

Chip Truscon came out to this frozen pond in the cold, dark night of another Upper Peninsula winter because he heard there was pond hockey played here — for many people the fondly remembered game of their childhood.

There were no refs, no whistles and almost no protective equipment. Just grown men playing like kids.

Every so often, the 68-year-old would stop skating and look over at players, most in their 20s or 30s. The sight of the game held an almost poetic fascination for him.

"There's something about a pond that is the ultimate expression of how hockey should be played," he said. "When you're playing in an arena, it's way too confining, and outside there's this primitive connection to the winter night, or the winter's day. I just find it irresistible."

Truscon wanted nothing more than to join them. But he was too nervous to ask.

This wasn't the first time he was here, watching from the edge. A few weeks earlier, he'd heard people talking at the downtown library, of all places, about some new pond hockey league in the city, which was holding games just behind the parks and rec center. He found the pond, showed up one night with his stick and skates, but the speed and skill of the players intimidated him.

"I thought, 'Oh, my God, they're incredible. I feel like I've got lead boots on.' So I watched them and kind of skated in circles."

Now he was back, working up his nerve, skating in small arcs outside the game. As the players took a break and gathered by the snowbank for a beer intermission, he glided over to them and shyly introduced himself.

"Do you guys think it would be OK if I could skate with you?"

From a wish to a goal

In cold-weather places like the Upper Peninsula, where winters are long and ice grows thick, playing hockey on a pond is a rite of winter, a touchstone of childhood.

"The whole neighborhood went there," said 35-year-old Ryan Campbell, a Marquette native. "We'd play till your feet froze, till the moms yelled to come home, eat some food. Same routine every day."

A few decades and a lifetime of indoor hockey later, Campbell wanted to find a way to bring back that simpler, purer form of the game for players his age.

Although there are dozens of pond hockey tournaments held every year across the state, there's no place that holds organized pond hockey games on a recurring basis. Most hockey options for adults are usually limited to beer leagues or drop-in hockey at the city's ice arena.

Last winter, Campbell and a few friends started something they called Pond Hockey Marquette, which was little more than a concept, and set about holding regularly scheduled games at a pond maintained by the city for the public. A streetlight in the neighboring parking lot faintly lights the ice at night, and public works employees plow the heavy snows from the ice after storms.

A little word-of-mouth, a Facebook post or two here and there, and the idea started spreading around town. Not long after, hockey players started showing up at the pond twice a week, right on time, no matter how bad the weather got.

"Literally the wind will blow you from one end of the ice to another, and people will still come out," Campbell said.

Now they hope to make it a real league, one with schedules, scores and standings. They just need a lot more players and a better way to get the word out. In the meantime, pond hockey is an option again for people who haven't played it in years.

"As soon as you grow up, you kind of grow out of that," Campbell said. "So it's kind of nice to get this back again to where people can actually enjoy something like this."

'Everybody has fun'

The goalie is short and wide, and once he's down he never gets up.

But it's tougher to score on that goalie than it sounds. Out on the pond, the goalie's a squat wooden box with a 12-inch opening on either end of it. And that foot of space seems real small in the dark.

"It's fast-paced, but then you've got to shoot it in a little tiny hole," Campbell said. His dad helped him make the wooden goals for the new league. "It adds a little more intensity when you're playing. It's like a 180 from playing normal hockey."

For example, there are no boards, so players have to make soft passes so the puck doesn't go shooting off into the distance.

There are no stops in play, other than to fish a puck out of the snowbank border, so the game is a steady, sweeping flow of players from one end of the ice to the other.

And players usually wear little protective equipment outside of hockey gloves, so by necessity pond hockey has somewhat of a gentlemanly code of conduct — no slap shots, no wild stickwork, no checking, no rough play.

"There's guys of all different abilities, different ages, guys and women, and the last thing you want to do if someone shows up is wipe them out if they're off on a breakaway," said Jay Parent, 38, one of the organizers. "You just back off, let 'em score and everybody has fun."

Their only real rule is that everyone has to be at least 21, since there's beer here most nights. Otherwise, it's just a good time enjoying simple things, said Jeremy Symons, a 35-year-old from Marquette.

"Being outside, enjoying the fresh air, enjoying the U.P., having fun with people who enjoy hockey," he explained. "It's a small community. Everybody knows everybody."

Let shyness melt away

The constant flurries that blow in from Lake Superior left a thin blanket of snow on the ice. And in pond hockey, the Zamboni is two guys with shovels. It took a lot of work for them to clear away the powder.

They never know how many skaters will show up, but Campbell was optimistic about the turnout for tonight's game. "If it can be calm like this, like this kind of warm out, we get a lot of people come out," he said, as the temperatures hovered in the teens.

He was right. By the time the ice was cleared, almost two dozen skaters had arrived. They opened the beers, laced up their skates, put the wooden goals down and dropped the puck. Teams were split between light and dark jerseys. Every half-hour or so they'd stop to take a short beer break, then get back at it again.

Once again, off at the end of the ice, Truscon skated alone.

He absolutely loves hockey. He grew up in Dearborn and skated on ponds down there as a child, even played hockey on the Rouge River, whose thin ice he and his friends fell through once or twice while skating. He moved up here 25 years ago with his wife and retired from a career in health care.

He wore a thin coat, thick glasses and a stocking cap. His stick poked out of a snowbank, unused. Again, he wrangled with the idea of trying to join them.

"The teams playing, it seems too organized for just a pickup game," he said. "I don't know any of those guys, and I'm two or three times older than some of them. I don't know if I want to."

The next time they took a break, though, he found the will to approach them. He skated up to the group, waited for a pause in the conversation and summoned the nerve to ask.

"I'm Chip. Do you guys think it would be OK if I could skate with you?" he said to everyone.

They'd stopped talking and looked him over. He was much older than they were, and they didn't know if he could skate at all.

"Absolutely," everyone said back.

Everybody welcome

Truscon blended in well as he jumped into the game. He kept pace with the flow, chased the puck, got open for passes.

"It's great to see somebody come in like him," Campbell said. "We just welcome anybody of any age, any skill level, doesn't matter. We want to make it open to the community and make it more inviting to everyone."

Truscon even got right back up after taking a hard fall or two onto his unpadded knees. But the players stopped the game, anyway, to check on him, make sure he was OK.

"Who is that?" one player asked another as they stood off to the side, waiting their turn to sub in.

"That's Chip," was the reply. Neither knew anything but that about him, other than he was the latest in a growing number of people to join them in bringing back their childhood game, and that he was welcome to play.

"It's not about, 'I'm going to score all these goals and try to beat you,' " Campbell said. "It's a matter of having friends coming out, enjoying the time, ending the game with a bunch of handshakes. It's fun. That's what it's all about."

Columnist John Carlisle writes about interesting people and places in Michigan. His stories can be found at freep.com/carlisle. Follow him on Twitter @_johncarlisle. Contact him: jcarlisle@freepress.com.

Get in the game

For more information, see Pond Hockey Marquette on Facebook.