The World Pond Hockey Championships returned to Plaster Rock, N.B., this week with fanfare for the 86 teams on Roulston Lake following last year’s cancellation caused by unseasonably warm weather.
“It’s the best ice I’ve ever seen,” said Kevin Tirschett, a player with the Texas Vikings marking his 14th year at the event. “It’s great hockey, it’s a childhood dream.”
“We don’t get to do this in Texas.”
Teams from all across Canada were on the Thursday-to-Sunday schedule, along with teams from the United States, France, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and the United Arab Emirates.
On Saturday morning, 30 teams played simultaneously on 15 ice surfaces with each game lasting a half hour.
“The best pond I’ve ever skated on is here in Plaster Rock,” said Zach McDonald, playing for the Cape Cod Whalers out of Massachusetts. “It’s unbelievable, I’m glad to be here.”
Weather put this year’s event on thin ice again until just a few weeks ago.
“Winter just seems to start later,” said Danny Braun, the event’s co-founder and organizer. “Here on New Year’s Day, there was no snow and maybe an inch and a half of ice on the lake. It looked really good from a distance but there wasn’t the thickness that you could go out on at that point.”
Braun said volunteers were only able to start clearing snow off the lake’s surface in early February.
“Fortunately, we got a few weeks of the winter we’re used to leading into the event,” said Braun.
The ice on Roulston Lake was close to 14 inches thick this weekend, said tournament officials.
“The group of volunteers we have are just tremendous and the commitment they have,” said Braun. “They were out here this morning at 5:30 a.m. shaving the rinks and at 7 a.m. they put a flood on all the rinks.”
The first World Pond Hockey Championships event was held in 2002.
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