EVERETT — For most of us, Friday nights in high school meant going to games, hanging out with friends and having fun.
And for a large group of Snohomish County men, it’s still that way.
At the end of a demanding work week, when many of their co-workers are heading home to unwind in front of a television set, these guys are heading to Everett’s Comcast Community Ice Rink for an evening of ice hockey. And for stress relief, they say, an hour or two of vigorous skating in the company of friends generally does the trick.
“Not all games are good, especially when you’re not playing well,” said 43-year-old Mike Lingrey of Camano Island, a division chief of special operations for the Everett Fire Department. “And as a beginner, you’re going to have some pretty crappy days. But I’ve never been on the ice where I couldn’t say that even a bad day of hockey is still a good day.
“I’ve been a lifelong hockey fan and this is just a passion for me,” he said. “And as long as I can do this I’m going to keep doing it, even though my wife tells me my body is making a lot of noise it didn’t use to.”
Lingrey and others are members of the Everett Adult Hockey League, which includes 11 teams of 15 players each. Four of the teams are in the A Division, which is for the league’s most talented and experienced players, including some who have played professionally. There is also a B/C Division, which has good adult players along with others who are obviously still learning the game.
The EAHL is in the process of merging with the 14-team Cascade Hockey League, which is based at the Lynnwood Ice Center, with a schedule of interleague games this year.
Like a lot of the EAHL’s players, Lingrey was an athlete all through school. He was good enough, in fact, to play college football, but afterward found a sporting void in his life.
Recreational softball “was OK,” he said, “but there was something missing.” Hockey, on the other hand, “is completely different. And it’s been a lot of fun to get back into a physical sport.”
The same was true for 39-year-old Dana Posey, who lives on the Tulalip Reservation and is a director for the Tulalip Tribe. Posey also played college football, “and then I went from doing that to doing nothing (athletically),” he said. “Don’t get me wrong, being a father and starting a life was great, but for me as an athlete I yearned for that physical, competitive aspect.”
So Posey, who had never played hockey as a youngster, gave it a try and was immediately hooked, both by the game and by the new friendships.
“The biggest part of this for me,” he said, “is the camaraderie. When we’re playing we do a lot of joking around. There’s a lot of (verbal) sniping and having fun with each other. It’s not so much about winning as it is about having a good time.”
Like Lingrey, Posey also tried softball, but says that game does not compare to hockey, a sport he also now coaches.
“To get out on the ice and play against these guys at full speed and the pace of hockey, there’s just nothing like it,” he said.
“It’s a great bunch of guys here,” added Tom Deckers of Everett, a 48-year-old paramedic for the city of Everett who once played college rugby. “We have a good time and it’s a good workout.”
Hockey, said 42-year-old Laurence Tomsic of Everett, a field engineer at the University of Washington’s applied physics laboratory, “was very difficult to learn. And when I first started, I remember telling my wife that we’d never practiced jumping over the boards. I was wondering what was going to happen when I jumped over the boards (for the first time). Sure enough, we played a practice game and I jumped over the boards and promptly fell down.”
That early embarrassment aside, Tomsic has fallen in love with hockey. And even though he came to the game later in life, he has the same passion as those who have played since childhood.
“This is what kids know and adults forget,” he said, minutes before taking the ice for a Friday night game.
The EAHL is a diverse mix of ages and abilities. There are young men only a few years out of high school who have obviously played a good bit of hockey, and there are others with graying hair and paunches who are plainly on the downhill side of their sporting careers.
Likewise, these men represent a number of diverse professions. There are firefighters, aerospace engineers, doctors, businessmen, teachers and even a nuclear physicist.
The A Division allows checking, making it a more physical and sometimes violent game. There is no checking in the B/C Division, though “there are collisions because there are times when you can’t avoid running into each other.” Lingrey said.
“Where there’s contact, there’s going to be people who are emotionally into the game,” he went on. “And it gets a little chippy sometimes. But at the end of every game you do the handshake line. And I think for the most part guys don’t take it off the ice.”
The EAHL is in its sixth season, “and every year it gets bigger and bigger,” said Barry Sarles, a 53-year-old real estate developer from Lynnwood and the league’s director. There are players waiting to get into the league, which goes year-round — two six-month seasons, one beginning in October and the other in April — and the only thing slowing the growth is the availability of ice time, he said.
And the good news for aging hockey players, Sarles added, is that “when we have our helmets on, no one can tell how old we are.”
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