Spring Finds Ball Hockey On A Roll

They had been hard at it for more than three hours Sunday, and everybody was sweaty and tired.

But they were still having fun.

So there on a netless tennis court surrounded by graffiti-covered concrete directly beneath Interstate 90, the game went on. Four-on-four ball hockey played on in-line skates.

The quiet swoosh of the roller skates and the clicking sound of the players’ sticks on the rock-hard surface mingled with the drone of freeway traffic overhead.

“He kicked it in - no goal!”

This was no organized league. It was pure pick-up. Most of the guys were in their 20s. A few were in the Air Force, originally from places such as Alaska and New York. A few, judging from their haircuts and glasses, looked like they would put on a suit and tie when Monday morning rolled around. And a couple of the players were high school kids.

There were white portable goals, complete with mesh nets. And they played with a yellow ball just a bit bigger than a baseball. It was rubbery but hefty enough to make the goalies wince when a hard shot found an unprotected place.

The players wore a varied assortment of shin pads, elbow pads, helmets and hockey gloves. Two had San Jose Sharks jerseys. One wore an Anaheim Mighty Ducks shirt. And one wore a shirt that read “The Iceman Cometh.”

Sitting on a bench behind a fence, a young couple, both wearing black T-shirts, watched. He had skates on and held a stick. She held a baby.

Sometime after noon, a broken stream of Bloomsday finishers walked by the makeshift hockey rink at 4th and McClellan. But the players didn’t pay much attention. They knew they were about to call it quits. And there was still just enough time for one more perfect shot, one more amazing rush, one more great save.

Several of the players had grown up playing ice hockey, and it showed. Their stick-handling and anticipation wasn’t something learned in a single morning under the freeway.

An unspoken no-hitting etiquette was observed. And the twentysomething guys treated the teenagers like teammates, not pests.

One of the high school boys liked to touch gloves after goals, National Hockey League-style. And his older companions went along without condescension.

There hadn’t been much yelling or even talking. But then it came down to next-goal wins. And when a blond guy with a military haircut and a Wall Drug T-shirt swooped around the goal and stuffed in a wrap-around shot, he momentarily drowned out the I-90 noise.

“Yeahhhhhh!”

, DataTimes MEMO: Being There is a weekly feature that visits gatherings in the Inland Northwest.