Local boys of winter
Brendan Hess, left, lunges to take the puck away from Scott Eckels while playing hockey on the pond in Eighty Four Friday night.
Eric Feldbouer and Brendan Hess go down while battling for the puck in front of goalie Gary Hess as Cody Brounce skates at right.
Eric Feldbouer brings up the puck against Scott Eckel, Brendan Hess and John Kiss while playing pond hockey Friday night in Eighty Four.
Gathered by the fire to keep warm while the hockey players play on the iced pond are, from left, Scott Moehring, David Herman, Beverly Obringer, Will Obringer, Alyssa Klemmer and Patty Hess.
For most of the winter, the pond on Will and Beverly Obringer’s Somerset Township farm sits unused.
But on two or three days every season, when the pond freezes over, the Obringers’ hockey-loving family and their friends lace up their skates, grab their hockey sticks and make their way onto the ice.
It’s their version of the Winter Classic, played by the local boys of winter.
On Friday, they played for the first time under lights, provided by Obringer’s cousin and permanent goalie, Gary Hess.
At 56, Hess is the Gordie Howe of the bunch.
He’s joined by his sons, Jesse, 22, and Brendan, 29, who play in adult hockey leagues, and their buddies, who are in their 20s and 30s.
“I have a great time. I get to play with my two sons; what could be better?” said Hess, who made some athletic, acrobatic saves throughout the night and claimed he wasn’t sore the following day.
The hockey games started about six years ago, when Jesse asked the Obringers if he could play hockey on the ice after he noticed it froze over.
The couple, whose farmhouse is a regular gathering spot for family and friends, was happy to let them turn the pond into an ice rink.
Hess is the only goalie, so the players place two pucks at the opposite end of the net and whenever the puck changes hands, the players skate back to the other end of the pond where the pucks rest to start their possession. The first team to score five goals wins.
At the end of the night, the men hold a “mustache shoot-out.” The loser has to grow and wear a mustache until the next time the group plays.
Friday night’s loser: John Kiss of McKeesport.
The players dropped the puck – spray-painted orange – shortly after 8 p.m. Friday, with the temperature hovering around 29 degrees, and played until after 11.
Spectators including the Obringers, Hess’s wife, Patty, and friends and neighbors who stood around a bonfire and cheered from the shoreline. Inside a nearby cabin, Patty prepared meatball sandwiches and chicken legs for everyone, and the Penguins game played on the radio on the porch.
Afterward, the players peeled off sweaty uniforms (Hess sported a Team USA jersey), thawed out near the fire and talked about the night while eating sandwiches and drinking a beer or two.
There’s something appealing, they said, about playing on a frozen pond, under a winter sky and outside in the bone-chilling cold.
Interest in outdoor hockey has been spurred in part by the success of the NHL’s Winter Classic, which turned into a New Year’s Day spectacle played in front of tens of thousands of fans. Outdoor hockey is hockey in its purest form.
“It’s a lot of fun playing outside. I like playing there with my friends, instead of inside with a bunch of guys I don’t know,” said Jesse, whose group has dubbed their games the Winter Classic. “It’s pretty cool.”
Hours before Friday’s game, Hess and Jesse headed over to the rink and pumped water onto the ice, then squeegeed it to make the surface level and smooth.
“When it’s snowing like crazy, they come and shovel it off and they don’t leave any snow on the ice,” said Will Obringer. “They’ve got it down to a science how to do it. They groom the ice. The only thing they don’t have is a mini Zamboni, and if they could figure out how to get one over here, they would.”
And, said Beverly, the hockey buddies are a nice bunch of guys.
“Everybody loves to see the kids enjoy themselves,” said Beverly. “They’re well-mannered, I’ve never heard them say a swear word, and every one of them comes up after they’re done, shakes Will’s hand and says thank you.”