At the Sharks Ice in San Jose, a hodgepodge group of men
sporting full hockey pads, carrying sticks and wearing face masks
emerges from the rink-side locker room, laughing and cajoling one
another.
JODI ENGLE – Special to the Free Lance
SAN JOSE
At the Sharks Ice in San Jose, a hodgepodge group of men sporting full hockey pads, carrying sticks and wearing face masks emerges from the rink-side locker room, laughing and cajoling one another. Some of the more established players wear the team’s colors – blue, gold and gray – while others have scrapped together black jerseys with numbers formed from tape.
“You have to watch in fast forward,” advises Rob Oneto of Gilroy, proving that they don’t take themselves too seriously. “Then it will all make sense. Imagine we’re skating a lot faster.”
Before you know it, they’re shaking hands with the opposing team and gliding off the ice sweaty. The game was tied, and the players aren’t happy with the outcome, but no one is keeping score. “We’re just out here to have a good time,” Steve Ynzunza of Gilroy said. “It’s more of a time to get together and have a beer after.”
Off the ice, the players rip on themselves and joke with each other all in good fun. They continue to exchange light-hearted barbs in e-mails during the week and over drinks following each game.
They do it for the camaraderie and the good workout. The sport is tiring, blending strength and endurance, explosive speed, agility, and grace. Although players are on the ice for only 45 to 60 seconds at a time, those shifts require short bursts of energy. “It’s a great workout. Afterward, you’re so relaxed. You’re coming off an adrenaline rush,” Ynzunza said.
The San Jose arena is home to 130 adult hockey teams, with as many as 2,000 players making the league the largest in the country. Most teams started out like the Ice Dogs did shortly after the San Jose Sharks began playing games at the HP Pavilion. Ynzunza had barely laced up a pair of skates before taking beginner skating lessons, and that’s how many players get hooked.
“The better the Sharks play, the more interest we have in people playing,” Adult Hockey Manager Tyler Shaffar said.
The adult hockey program is running at full capacity in San Jose, which means the Ice Dogs often wait until after 11 p.m. or later on Thursday, Friday or Saturday nights to get on the ice. With several of the players driving from Gilroy, Watsonville, Gustine and Discovery Bay, it makes for a late night. “You get home, and you’re all jacked up on adrenaline, so you’re really not going to sleep,” Ynzunza said.
The team’s members include Oneto, a principal with a civil engineering and planning firm, an insurance agent, the owner of a door and window business, the owner of a startup company, and the team captain, Rick Rabello, who owns a custom cabinet making business in San Jose.
Ynzunza, 44, manages the 911 call center at the Gilroy Police Department. “I have to be totally focused on the game,” Ynzunza said. “It takes me away from work. On the way to the game, on the way home, I’m just focused on the game. It’s pretty hard to page you when you’re on the ice.”
Rabello formed the team more than 11 seasons ago, and nearly half of the team has played together since the beginning. “There are guys that come and go. The core players have been there forever,” Rabello said. “You don’t want to leave the team because it’s a bunch of good guys.”
Rabello began bashing the puck with his brother-in-law Dave Inouye 14 years ago, except they were on roller hockey blades.
“We ended up loving it,” he said. “We talked about making the move to go play ice hockey. We took some lessons. We definitely never played ice hockey before. We had barely even ice skated before.”
Roller hockey is also how Oneto got his start. “When we moved down here, I bought him a pair of Rollerblades because we lived by the levee,” his wife Karen said. “He started Rollerblading at night with a headlight on.”
Then Oneto, 50, started playing roller hockey. Every Tuesday night, he would meet a group of at least a dozen people at the roller rink in Gilroy and “toss sticks.” Afterward, they would go out for pizza or barbecue in the parking lot. Next, he discovered ice hockey.
“He loved ice hockey. It was no turning back from there,” his wife said.
The sport has bred such strong devotion that most of the players say they’ll play until they physically aren’t able to continue.
“My hero is a guy who would show up for noon-time pickups at the ice center,” Oneto said. “He is 72. He is still lacing them up and going out there.”
Though the sport is strenuous, skating is easy on the joints. “Ice is a little bit easier on the body as you get older,” Oneto said. “You hit and slide. It’s a little more forgiving. It’s easy on the knees.”
The youngest players on the team are 18, and they skate fast and push the puck into the goal. “We call them our oxygen bottles,” Oneto said. “They’re out there doing three-minute shifts, while we do 45 seconds. We recruit the young bloods, so we don’t get killed every night.”
Several of the players have been skating for so long that their sons are now old enough to join the team. “My brother-in-law Dave, his son just started playing. He’s one of the best roller hockey players in the country,” Rabello said. “Gary Keeth, his son is playing. Both are named Michael. Both are really good players.”
Some, such as Rabello have returned to the ice despite serious injuries. “I’ve had two surgeries in my life – both from hockey,” he said. “I had to have my shoulder redone, and I broke two bones in my ankle and tore ligaments. It took me two years to recover. The wife didn’t want me to play. After a while she let me go back and play.”
Players are required to wear shin guards, a face mask and elbow and shoulder pads. “There’s always a risk of getting hurt, but the gear they wear does a pretty good job of keeping people safe,” Shaffar said.
The league doesn’t allow checking, but there’s still a lot of physical play. Players can hit along the boards, and fights do break out occasionally. “I’m fairly big, so they go after me,” Oneto said. “At the end of the game, you shake hands.”
Oneto has escaped injury except for the occasional bruise from a puck or a stick striking him. It’ll take much more than that to deter him from playing the sport he loves. “I never get hurt playing hockey,” Oneto said. “When you’re on the ice, your head is up. All in all it’s a pretty safe sport. It’s one of the most fun sports you can play.”
