How The League Began
After surviving ten seasons, the league continues to build a rich history that now dates back a full decade. The following is the story of how our league began.
For many years we played pick up hockey on Sundays, which originated from Rick Bartlett during late 1981. Rick is a statistics enthusiast and has kept stats from the start. He felt 60 games would be a long enough season and soon the games evolved into 23 minutes. It would vary between 20 and 25 minutes over the years.
During May and June of 2005, our pick up hockey entered into the York Arena for what we called the summer season. There were two separate groups that played and some players played in both. Around early June Rick first got the idea of a potential league. Anticipating the return to the gym in the fall, he started looking at how many players there would be. Assessing that there would be easily enough for three teams and almost four, he was intrigued. He knew there was a lot of planning to do so he began without letting anyone else know. Doug Taylor and Mike Correy were key organizers with our pick up hockey at the time and Rick knew he needed a clear presentation of the potential league along with being able to field any questions or concerns. So he went to work.
The draft really came from Rick’s desire to mimac the N.H.L. draft, athough the idea came from something Rick Haines told him a few years prior about a softball tournament he played in. Whoever showed up to play wrote their name down on a piece of paper, threw it in a hat, and the teams were drawn up ramdomly. As he thought this wouldn’t necessarily be the best process for pursuing parity in the league, Rick thought a draft may work better. So the league needed captains to draft the players. Rick felt Doug, Mike, and himself could be three of the captains, then added Shawn Merrithew, who had similar leadership experience.
As we played many years with the 20 plus minutes and 60 games season format, Rick wanted to continue that way. It took awhile but he eventually came up with a schedule allowing the four teams to play everyone each week for 20 weeks, while fitting it into less than three hours by continuing the 23 minute games.
Rick was finally ready for his presentation. It was now early August and he talked to Doug and Mike separately first. After a few concerns and questions Rick was able to quickly resolve, they were on board. When they got together to discuss the upcoming league, it was decided that Rick would take care of stats, of course, Doug would take care of booking the gym, Mike would be in charge of discipline, and Shawn would be the treasurer. We contacted who we could and drafted 30 players on September 5th. Our first game was played on Sunday, September 18, 2005 at Leo Hayes High School.
