After more than a year, Joan Feinstein of Homewood finally admitted she needed a specialist. Feinstein, a 45-year-old mother of eight and a nurse practitioner by trade, tried curing herself. She begged friends for help. All failed. Feinstein broke down and called Brandon Spike.
“Joan basically has some bad habits she needs to break,” was the diagnosis of Feinstein’s hired expert. “She’s got to extend herself more and trust her edges.”
Spike, 22, of South Holland isn’t a doctor, psychiatrist or high-powered corporate consultant. He isn’t even a college graduate. Spike is a certified hockey instructor at Homewood-Flossmoor Ice Arena, and Feinstein is one of thousands of southwest suburbanites who swarm local ice rinks 24 hours a day to play one of America’s fastest growing team sports.
“I must be nuts,” Feinstein admitted. “A year ago, I watched TV and went to bed at 10. Now, I’ve got a personal hockey instructor and I’m (at the rink) all the time. There’s just something addicting about this game. You come off the ice, look up at the clock and it’s 2:15 in the morning, but you don’t care. It’s just that much of a rush.”
Feinstein got interested in hockey two years ago when her youngest son picked up the sport. Her first seven children played soccer. Seven-year-old Sam, Feinstein’s youngest, has arthritis, and running hurts his knees. Hockey was the perfect solution.
“(For Sam), hockey’s therapeutic and great for his confidence. The only problem was I didn’t know squat about the game,” admitted Feinstein, who is the only woman playing in her league. “So I thought I better go out and try it. It all started out for Sam. But now I’m out here at all hours of the night playing for me.”
And what does Feinstein’s husband, Joel, think of her late-night hobby?
“I’m thrilled for her, the 42-year-old pediatrician said. “Hockey is the best thing she ever got involved with. It makes her happy and she’s in the best shape of her life. To outsiders it must seem crazy, but for her it’s exhilarating no matter what time she plays.”
Feinstein isn’t alone in her late-night lunacy. More than 1.7 million Americans played hockey at least once last year, the National Sporting Goods Association reports. That’s up more than 100,000 from 1993. The demand on the few southwest suburban rinks has forced diehard players to lace up their skates at unbelievable hours of the night.
Rev. Mark Pavlina, a Roman Catholic priest (and pretty decent goalie, he says), used to get up at 3:30 a.m. Sundays to play hockey before saying 8 o’clock mass. Nicknamed “the holy goalie” by parishioners, the 45-year-old pastor of St. Joseph Church in Dyer, Ind., drove 35 minutes to Homewood-Flossmoor Ice Arena to let opposing players rocket frozen pucks at him.
As a goalie, Pavlina represented his team’s last line of defense. Hidden behind a cage mask and encapsulated in a mountain of foam padding, the priest-turned-backstop deflected slapshots fired at him in excess of 70 miles per hour.
“It’s just such a great game. Jesus would have probably played hockey, or he would have at least made a pretty darned good coach,” he joked. “I always tell people I was called to save souls but I’m also pretty good at saving pucks.”
Those early morning saves did take their toll on the middle-aged priest. Pavlina limped gingerly into church on more than one occasion. “But I never missed a mass. I’ve been really, really sore and struggled to make it around the altar. But I always made it,” he said.
Pavlina recently was forced to take a sabbatical from the ice. The time-strapped pastor isn’t tiring of the game or injuries. But it’s getting almost impossible for his team to lock in the 4 a.m. Sunday morning ice time.
“No matter if it’s June and 95 degrees outside or January and freezing, our ice is packed,” said Frank DiCristina Jr., the director of operations for Southwest Ice Arena in Crestwood. “We’re open about 20 hours a day, 363 days a year. We’re not unique. Every rink is pretty much as packed as ours. A bunch of guys have already scheduled a tournament here for next Thanksgiving Day. People are just that nuts about the sport.”
To skate prime-time (between 5 and 9 p.m.) in the winter, DiCristina said, a team must sign a contract for the ice time in June. “We’ve got available ice time every day, even Saturdays,” DiCristina contended. “You’ve just got to be willing to wait until 2 or 3 a.m.”
And people are. “It doesn’t matter what time we play, 9 p.m., 11:30, 3 a.m.-I’m always ready,” said 24-year-old college student Mike Williams of Villa Park, who skates at rinks throughout the south suburbs. “I just love getting out there in front of the puck.”
Williams, a goalie like Pavlina, gets fanatical when describing the nuances of the position.
“When you’re in goal, you do whatever it takes to stop a shot. You use your stick, your glove, even the top of your head if you have to. That goal is my team’s fort, and I defend it with my life,” Williams explained.
Ask the accounting/finance double major why he loves repelling streaking pucks at 3:30 in the morning and Williams can respond only with a shake of the head. “At least I don’t have to get up and go to work the next morning like most guys. They go into the office on only a couple hours of sleep. I go home and sleep till noon,” the second-year college student admitted. “Ask anybody. The loss of a good night’s sleep is well worth it.”
To stay up until 3 a.m. to play is one thing, but part-time hockey referee Steve Relli, 29, of Homewood heads to the rink knowing he’s in for a graveyard shift of abuse. “I do have to admit there’s tons of grief in this job and peanuts for pay,” said Relli, who has been refereeing for seven years and makes $22 a game. “But I just love the game.”
Between refereeing, playing and carting his son off to hockey practice, Relli estimates he spends around 30 hours a week at the rink. Most are spent after 10 p.m. and before sunup.
“At least traffic ain’t bad,” Relli joked. “Half the time I am here (at the rink) I stop, look at the clock and think I must be out of my mind. But once you get on the ice, you forget about everything. Hockey’s just that great of a game, even at 3 in the morning.”
No matter what time a game is scheduled or what continent he went to bed on, Don Boroian, 60, of Orland Park wakes up looking forward to hitting the ice. Boroian, the founder and CEO of Francorp, an international franchising firm in Olympia Fields, schedules his extensive European and Asian business travel around his hockey.
A handful of nights during his 40-year league career, Boroian has arrived at the rink in a black stretch limousine straight from O’Hare International Airport. The driver retrieves Boroian’s hockey gear from his home before the CEO’s flight lands. Like Superman out of a phone booth, Boroian hops out of the limo in full uniform, ready for action.
“I’m not the only nut out there. People will do some crazy things to make a hockey game,” said Boroian. “There’s just such a diverse mix of people that love this game. We have a veterinarian, a lawyer, two psychiatrists and a pipe fitter in our league. Once you’re on the ice, your line of work means nothing. You’re judged on only one thing: how you play that night. That’s what’s great about this game-anybody can play it.”
No matter if a player takes a limo or Yugo to the rink, hockey is an expensive hobby, said Jerry Froneck, the pro-shop manager at Kenwood’s Slap Shot in Joliet. The average rink time goes for around $130 an hour (prime-time slots average about $50 more), and the necessary protective equipment can cost a player up to $1,500. Throw in $30 for new sticks and blade sharpening every two weeks or so and the price tag can border on outrageous, the 27-year-old from Joliet admits.
“It isn’t a cheap hobby,” said Froneck, a former college hockey player. “But all of the equipment, even the expensive stuff, flies off our shelves, most of the time before we can even get price tags on them.”
The expensive nature of the game forces some players to question their own sanity. “To pay that much to play a sport is nuts enough,” said Don Blocker, 40, of Homewood. “Throw in the price of rink time and the fact that we’re playing at all hours of the night and it’s really nuts.”
But for Blocker, who plays as many as five games a week, no sport compares. “There’s nothing more boring than jogging around the neighborhood. Hockey is a great workout, and the best part is it doesn’t keep me away from the time I can spend with my family. The kids go to bed and I head off to the rink,” the father of two said.
For Calumet City maintenance worker Phil Kekelik, the thrill of hockey lies in the release from the everyday world. “I can’t explain why I play,” the 55-year-old grandfather admitted. “All I know is that when I step off the ice I have a different outlook on life. It relaxes me. It releases me from the madness of why I am not a millionaire or why I have to get up and go to work in the morning.”
Kekelik knows that at 55, his hockey days might be numbered. “No matter if I’m playing a (pickup game of hockey) or subbing on someone’s team, I still get butterflies when I step on the ice. When those butterflies stop, I’ll know it’s time to hang up the skates, Until then, I’m just gonna keep on playing,” he said.
