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18 Sports Oakville Beaver SPORTS EDITOR: JON KUIPERIJ Phone 905-845-3824 (ext. 432) Fax 905-337-5571 email sports@oakvillebeaver.com · SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2009 MICHAEL IVANIN / OAKVILLE BEAVER CLASSIC CANADIANA: Pictured left to right, Shane Randall, Morgan Farley, Jack Creighton and Adam Farley enjoy a skate on Max Farley's back-yard rink. Outdoor rinks provide lasting memories for all ages As the country celebrates Hockey Day in Canada today, an unofficial holiday introduced nine years ago by CBC's Hockey Night in Canada, it's an opportune time to embrace the game at the grassroots level. There seems no simpler place to start playing hockey than on an outdoor rink, as many Canadians did as youngsters. Oakville resident Max Farley, who has built a rink each of the past four winters, shares his experiences and expertise on how to turn your back yard into a frozen paradise for young and old. By Max Farley SPECIAL TO THE BEAVER builders fall into that strange subset of humanity (which also includes skiers and snowmobilers) which gets excited when the forecast calls for extended periods of sub-zero temperatures, often to the amazement of friends, family and co-workers. So why build a rink? It can provide young players a heck of a lot of extra ice time. Consider that a typical MOHA house league player will probably be on the ice with his or her team for about 50 or 60 hours over the course of a season. Depending on the weather, it is quite possible to double your child's ice time in a year by providing them with a backyard rink. For young hockey players and skaters, it also gives them the freedom to try things they normally don't have the chance to try in the structured forum of a game or practice. My son will play tag, mini-sticks or soccer on the ice with his buddies, and I'm always happy to let them do that, as it gets him trying new moves and improving his balance. There really isn't such a thing as `bad ice time' in my view. And many a big-league player has cited their time experimenting on a backyard rink as being a formative part of their growth as a player. Just don't presume that building a rink implies that you are also building the next big thing to hit the NHL. I believe the odds of a kid making the NHL are something like one in 40,000 so, rink or no rink, that's an extreme long shot. The best reason for building a rink is to have some fun. Builder can take pride While a rink does take some effort to build and maintain, it can also be a lot of fun for the builder of the rink too. It does give the perfect opportunity to invite other families over and for parents to be able to share a beverage and a laugh while keeping an eye on the kids. And while working a hose in the dark in minus-12 degree temperatures isn't everyone's cup of tea, many rink builders find flooding the rink under the stars after an evening of skating to be a quiet, therapeutic winddown to a busy day. And, of course, nothing quite compares to the feeling of having your kid ask if you can join him on the rink to practice his shot. Rink can be community builder An outdoor rink can be a great community builder as well. A group of residents around the Riverside area have built a rink in Forster Park for the past few years, and have bonded together in constructing and maintaining their outdoor arena. Steve McCulloch, Dan Williams and Chris Kowalchuck got the Forster Park rink started last winter. Said McCulloch, "The Town of Oakville agreed to pay the costs associated with winterizing the water source in Forster Park and we agreed to cover all the other costs as well as build and maintain the two rinks. Our set-up costs were over $1,500 for the first year. Fortunately, we live in a small neighborhood with a fabulous ratepayers association called the WRRA (West River Residents Association). They agreed to cover the costs to get the rink up and running. We built two outdoor rinks, one for small kids learning to skate and one for shinny hockey, complete with boards, lines, nets as well as tables and benches for changing. The rinks have brought the whole community together. We had a big neighborhood skating party two weeks ago and more than 100 people How to build a rink The current convention is to build a wooden frame and use a tarp as a liner. You then watch the weather forecast like a hawk for a week of subzero temperatures, and simply fill the rink with water to a minimum of 5 or 6 inches. I highly recommends a white tarp. Blue tarps absorb too much heat from the sun, and a clear tarp can act like a magnifying glass and burn your lawn. The white tarp, on the other hand, seems to be good for your lawn -- in the spring, the lawn under my rink usually is greener than the surrounding grass. The old-school method of tramping down snow in your yard and flooding the depression with water (as Walter Gretzky used to do in Brantford for his boys years ago) is just too unreliable in these warming times for most rink builders, as your efforts can literally melt away in a single warm spell. But by effectively building a shallow pool in your yard with boards and a tarp, even in a meltdown the water stays put and will refreeze in the next cold snap. -- Max Farley Every winter, a few brave souls embark on an arduous journey and attempt to build a skating rink in their yard. A classically Canadian act, it requires patience, hard work, perseverance, and a tolerance (if not fondness) of cold weather. The goal is to build a place to skate, learn and have fun, and those who have successfully built rinks in Oakville will tell you it is a fantastic, rewarding experience. But the journey is often fraught with obstacles, most of which are completely out of the control of the faithful rink builder. You have to go into the building process with the assumption that you may go to all the trouble of making the rink and never get a chance to skate on it if the weather doesn't cooperate, but it still typically gets cold enough for long enough here in Oakville to make it worthwhile. I started with a 16-by-24-foot slab of ice, and have grown my backyard project in size and complexity each year into a 24-by-44-foot surface with wraparound boards and puck screens. Rink See Teamwork page 20