Cardigan Mountain School A boarding and day school for boys in grades 6 through 9
Pond Hockey
 

Pond Hockey

By Emily Magnus, Assistant Director of Communications

To play hockey during Cardigan’s inaugural year, students made the trek to Canaan Street Lake, just a short walk from the Lodge. It wasn’t long before the boys started asking for competitive games and organized practices, requesting a coach who could help them develop their newfound skills. With all the male members of the faculty otherwise occupied, they looked to 22-year-old teacher Dolly Peach, who in hindsight turned out to be an excellent choice. 


In their first game against the faculty, students fared far better than anyone expected. That January, founder Hap Hinman reported to fellow trustees and incorporators: “The seven-boy school team, outweighed almost 2-1 in more than one spot, threw off their wraps, played circles around their elders, and led 7-3 at one time. The faculty could skate faster, had more weight and hockey savvy––but those little devils fought, clung like leeches, body-checked, and dumped their opponents bottom side up more than once, including their personable coach––who had done a better job than anyone knew.”

For the next decade and a half, the students and coaches played on the natural ice of the lake, battling the elements and practicing in whatever conditions Mother Nature provided––from warm, slushy puddles to punishing winter winds, from subzero temperatures to still, blue-sky days. The ice required constant maintenance––between snow removal and regular flooding––but everyone in the community pitched in from November through March, bonding together during late-night resurfacing sessions as well as during spirited weekend games. 

Cardigan pond hockey throughout the years


Although the School has had the convenience of an indoor rink since the 1960s, outdoor rinks continue to be an important part of the Cardigan experience. In fact, this past winter when the pandemic required strict safety precautions, Head Alpine Ski Coach Travis Nevins and the boys in Franklin House, as well as many others, worked together to keep clear five separate hockey rinks on the lake. Pond hockey was, and continues to be, an opportunity for all levels of players to experience all the best that hockey has to offer—the new skills, the comradery, the chance to be outdoors, the chance to fall in love with a game regardless of any score that may or may not be kept.

“The spirit of the hockey tradition at Cardigan is hard to quantify,” says Associate Director of Admissions John Bayreuther P’09,’15,’17, whose sons all played hockey at Cardigan. “We have over 100 kids each year that are playing hockey either on a team or as part of a club. They’re not all going to play in the NHL, but that doesn’t matter. I often joke that we have more hockey players than the big-boys schools like Avon and Salisbury.”

For many, hockey becomes a life-long avocation. It’s why the alumni hockey game has been so successful: players want to return and play on the rink where they first fell in love with the sport. The enthusiasm that goes into these gatherings is apparent in this description of the first game in 1988: “Regulation officials had been engaged for this occasion; the school nurse and a crew of stretcher-bearers were on hand to cope with emergencies, and at 7:00 the starting whistle blew. Those who expected to see a leisurely exercise by the ‘old boys’ were amazed at their speed and endurance. At the end of three full periods, the final score stood about 43-37, although there was some question about the integrity of the scorekeepers.”

There is no doubt that Cardigan has an exceptional hockey program from which student-athletes regularly go on to play on varsity high school and Division I college teams. At least 30 alumni have even gone on to play professionally. But the heart and soul of hockey at Cardigan remains rooted in the winter afternoons when the boys meet down on the pond––the sun is shining, the temperature hovers just below freezing, and the score of the game matters far less than the number of newcomers taking their first awkward steps on the ice.

 

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Early morning view of Cardigan's campus

FROM THE EDITOR: When I look back over the many months it takes to produce an issue of the Chronicle, and I think about the countless conversations I have with the people in this community, there are always details that overlap unexpectedly, adding surprising nuances and subtleties to the stories within each magazine; history repeats itself, characters long forgotten resurface, faces in archival photographs look eerily similar to faces in the present.

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