Stories For A Century

Jay Schnackel '55

The first two days after Christmas Vacation there was good skating on the pond. Saturday, as we finished a day's practice, disaster started to strike in the form of snow. That meant that we would have to spend a day or two shoveling off the pond. This I did not look forward to and I don't think anyone else did either.

Sunday morning we cleared off half the pond. That afternoon it hailed and that ruined the skating. Then, on Monday, we again cleaned off the rink for the team. Monday night snowed again. Ugh! Tuesday afternoon we are hard at work again.

Wednesday, which was our first real day of practice, the nurse put her foot down and said we could only stay out one hour. This ”really did it,” because for the next four days there was nothing but warm weather—a general thaw.

Monday we were supposed to have a game with Pomfret School, but there was no ice.

On Monday night came the cold snap which we needed. But it did not improve the pond much because the combination of snow and melted ice had made the surface too rough for good skating.

We had rescheduled the game with Pomfret for Thursday. When that day came along, we went over to Pomfret, only to find that they hadn't cleared their ice off yet. When we got back here, Mr. Bacon, our coach, said that we should go over and look at our pond. We did, but we found it hopeless.

There had been talk of having the all-weather court finished, but the odds were against us again. The men couldn't lay the asphalt because of the weather. However, we decided to try flooding it anyway. We had completely flooded it and it had frozen, when another warm spell struck and the ice disappeared. We again called it quits and hoped for a cold spell so that we could use the pond once more.

Our team had had no games and about 2 hours of practice the whole time.

If we don't get letters for hockey, we should surely get them for shoveling!