The ice hockey season just wrapped up, it’s time for ball hockey to come to the fore. A four-team Elmira league kicked off its fourth season this week.
“Instead of playing in the leagues in Kitchener we started our own. This is year-four,” said goalie Chris Esseltine.
![League play got underway this week, with memories of last season’s wins and losses serving to fuel rivalries right from the start.[elena maystruk / the observer]](https://observerxtra.com/2/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/feature-ballhockey-post.jpg)
Sixty players, aged approximately 19 to 35, are spread over four teams in the league, each carrying a favourite National Hockey League emblem: Toronto Maple Leafs, Tampa Bay Lightning, Chicago Blackhawks and Calgary Flames. The captains for each team – Brock Zinken (Leafs), Patrick Shantz (Lightning), Richard Shantz (Blackhawks) and Mike Bauman (Flames) – also double as coaches for their respective teams. Bauman is also the league’s commissioner.
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“We wanted to feel like we were in the NHL,” said player Adam Snider.
The league was formed as an alternative to outside leagues in the region from a tight knit group of players who hold games in the Jim McLeod Arena at the Woolwich Memorial Centre.
“Everyone pretty much knows everyone, so it’s still competitive but it doesn’t get stupid; there’s no fighting and slashing,” Patrick Shantz said of the league.
The league does have expansion plans to include games against other leagues in the future.
The Tampa Bay Lightning finished first last year, earning the Elmira Ball Hockey League championship trophy. This season, the captains had full rosters and the popularity of the league caused some prospective players to be turned away to try their luck elsewhere.
“This is the envy: everyone wants to be in this league,” Esseltine said.
But why ball hockey as opposed to joining an ice hockey team? What is the appeal?
“You kind of grow up playing a lot of ball hockey, I think, and some guys can’t really skate but they can run and hack,” Snider said.
“Something to do in the summertime: we love hockey in the winter,” Esseltine added.
And it’s a good workout, to boot, they say. There’s no gliding on skates in this sport, no “coasting” they joked.
With a new season underway, there’s more than a little friendly rivalry going on, as players draw on last season’s bragging rights.
“I think every one of us can say that we want to win this [season] … the six months that you’re not playing ball hockey there’s a lot of chirping from your friends going on towards you that you lost the year before,” Esseltine said.
All four teams play on the same days against each other in 45-minute games, with league playing getting underway April 23.
