Sports
Ice, Blades and Clash: Seekonk Team Wins at New England Pond Hockey Championship
The "Rhode Island Rangers" who are made up almost entirely of Seekonk men, won the 40-plus division of the tournament in Meredith, N.H., last weekend.
Veteran Seekonk hockey players aren't afraid of packing down road miles for the sake of a good ice match, especially when winning is a tangible feat. Just ask Tom Fecteau, Chris Lambert, Mike Mulvey, Scott Cronin, and Tosh Warren, old friends from Seekonk who have been playing together since they were mites.
The group grabbed their friend Mike Dunne from Cranston and headed north last weekend to Meredith, N.H. There, sticks and slapshots awaited the Rhode Island Rangers in the second-annual New England Pond Hockey Championships in Meredith, N.H.
Over 150 teams, spread across seven divisions, took part. This time around, the Seekonk players won the 40-and-over division.
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"We heard about it last year but it was too late to get in. So we said, 'Let's try to enter it next year.'" We got put on the waiting list," said Fecteau, whose team was taken off the waiting list and put into the tournament just two weeks before the puck dropped.
Players skated in teams of four, so the Rhode Island Rangers had two substitutes at a time. It was just like regular hockey, with changes on the fly and everything. There were no goalies and players shot at a pair of small nets held together by a post. The nets were the same ones National Hockey League fans saw in the skills competition held at last month's All-Star game in Raleigh, N.C.
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The Rangers went on an impressive run, making the playoffs out of a group of six teams. Their 36 team division was separated into six groups of six teams. The top two teams in each group moved on to a playoff on Sunday that would involve 12 teams, four of which received first round byes.
"We played four games from 9 a.m. to 2:30," said Fecteau of his team's wild run on Sunday. The Rangers won all four of their games on Sunday, including the final at 2 p.m. "It was a little tiring, but we were able to do it."
According to Fecteau, the pain was worth it.
"It was a lot of fun," he said. "It's something that we haven't done in a long time. It was great."
