When you head over to White Park this weekend for the 1883 Black Ice Pond Hockey Championship, take a long look at all the list of teams.
With 91 teams playing in six pisions, there’s a lot of clever and unique names that make us quite proud of our pun heritage. Squads like Scared Hitless, Dogs on Linoleum, Pond Jovi and Babes of Glory are just a few from Concord that gave us a good chuckle. And what you might not realize is that a lot of these teams have a good story behind them.
Unfortunately, we couldn’t talk to members of all 91 teams, but the good news is we did talk to a couple heading into the fifth annual tournament.
We Walked to Whites
Playing in the 50+ mens pision, this group of guys spent their childhood going to White Park, considering they all lived within a stone’s throw of it.
“We grew up walking to the park 1,000 times to play hockey,” said Dennis White, who is not related to the park. “It’s just a great reunion for the neighborhood.”
So to pay homage to their roots, instead of having their names and favorite numbers on the back of their jerseys, each one will consist of their addresses growing up.
“Mine is 12 Academy (Street),” White said. “Just three blocks away.”
They used to skate on that ice all the time, from trips to the park with their parents to playing boot hockey – which requires no skates at all – after dinner.
“I used to skate on that pond, day after day, week after week, every winter,” White said.
The team didn’t play in the first year of the tournament, but has done so in every one since and has developed a nice rivalry with Cheers “FU” (short for Frenchie Unplugged), which dates back to the 1979 state championship game between Concord High and Bishop Brady.
“It’s exactly like being eight years old, nothing different,” White said.
White doesn’t skate as much as he used to, but still gets out there a few times before the tournament so, as he said, no hamstrings get pulled.
“You’re tired for the next couple days,” White said.
Against Medical Advice
Team organizer Jamey Walden says it’s a good weekend if no one ends up in the Concord Hospital emergency room, but if someone did, they’d probably see some familiar faces.
That’s because most of the team is made up of hospital personnel or works in some way with the hospital. Walden is an ER nurse, while there are two ER doctors, a member of the IT department and the Hopkinton fire chief.
“We try to keep it mostly hospital staff,” Walden said.
Four of the seven team members have been playing in the Black Ice tourney since it began in 2011 and finished as high as runner-up in the 35+ B Division.
“We’ve done all right,” Walden said. “I had never played any kind of pond hockey tournament.”
Walden says it can be competitive, like when they played a scrimmage last year against the Concord Fire Department squad.
“It’s as competitive as you want to make it. When you’re in the heat of the moment it draws you in,” Walden said. “We talked that one up around the ER.”
Some of the teams are full of skilled players, while others are newer to the sport. Usually they try to scope out the opposition before taking the ice.
“If we’re playing a team, we’ll watch to see how many beers we can have between games,” Walden said.
One year they played against a team from the law firm Orr & Reno and there was a running joke.
“We said it might be the highest paid game of the tournament,” Walden said.
