Good Old Fashioned Amish Rink Raising

As a young boy growing up, I often dreamed of how awesome it would be to have my very own backyard hockey rink. I’d heard plenty of stories of NHLer’s who honed their skills as youngsters playing into the wee hours of the prairie evening on the farmyard dugout, or backyard rink. My youth is long gone, but I can finally say that my childhood dream has materialized. A few of the neighbourhood dads, all of whom are Amish Mennonite, got together and put up a community hockey rink in the backyard that backs up to our house. So once the snow flies and ice is ready, I can lace up the skates in our breezeway and just walk the 50 metres to the rink and start shooting. Awesome. Don’t get me wrong, I did it all for the kids…;-)  The beauty part is that our workload is cut in half since city has offered to flood it for us, seeing as it’s a community rink. Steinbach rules.

Build it and they will come...

Putting the side boards into position.

It's about 30X60 feet. Not a bad little rink, eh? I can almost hear strains of Van Halen's JUMP with "Here come your Winnipeg Jets" echoing in my mind.