USA Hockey Adult Hockey

Entering the fall season in 2011, 16 free-agent hockey players were looking for a team to play on in the Pineville Ice House Adult Hockey League in Pineville, North Carolina.

Instead of being drafted and added to existing teams, the free agents decided to form their own squad. Four and a half years later, the Hawks are still flying high.

When the team was thrown together, a couple of the players knew one another from participating in adult skills sessions. However, the majority of the players didn’t know a soul.

“It was like most hockey teams, we had some growing pains,” captain Matthew Clark said. “We run the gamut on personalities. Some of the guys stayed, some of the guys left. Over time we morph and became what we are now.”

The Hawks certainly had a tough first couple of years on the ice, struggling to win a game. In the first season, the team lost its games on average by 6 ½ goals. That turned around. Two seasons ago the team was division champions, and last season it lost in the championship round.

“It’s a great team; we’ve come a long way,” Hawks team member Tony Dobson said. “We started out and couldn’t win a game, now the last couple of seasons we’ve been in the championship round. It’s just kind of cool to see everybody grow and develop and support each other even in times where we were getting blown out 10-0 and not winning a game. Everybody kept their head up and supports each other; there’s no finger-pointing.”

After a successful run last season, the Hawks decided to move up a division from C2 to C1. Without missing a beat, the Hawks advanced to the championship game in the fall season in late January and placed runner-up.

Along with a jump in divisions in 2015, the Hawks added a second team at the C2 level to act as a feeder system.

“We did this to kind of create this vertical movement opportunity for the guys that progressed from C2 to C1,” Clark said. “And the reality is in time, we’ll get older and some of us might want to move down to C2 when they’re getting in our 50s and 60s.”

Most of the players on the Hawks C1 team are a ways from reaching upwards of 50 years old. The team’s average age is 34, and the ages range from 21 to 50.

“We actually have a lot of ebb and flow to our roster,” said the 47-year-old Clark. “We have guys that will come in and skate a couple seasons and then they’ll take off a season. In reality, we still roster a 16-man team and we still have eight original Hawks, maybe nine original Hawks that come and go on the team.”

There are about five original team members who skate on a regular basis. Clark is one of those guys, as are his two alternate captains.

“That core group has played together for a while, which is cool,” said Dobson, 40, who joined the team in its second season. “We kind of just can feel where that person’s going to be or how their skill level is and that stuff. The other thing is, we know we’re going to mess up, it’s beer league hockey. We all have our competitive drive, we all want to win. But at the end of the day, there’s no NHL scouts there, there’s nothing from ESPN, we’re not going to be on the Top 10 plays. We know that, so we’re just out there having a fun time.”

The Hawks — who play in all three of the league’s seasons — have a good mix of talent on the team. A number of the players grew up in hockey-rich regions of the country such as Boston, Detroit and Buffalo.

The guys are always on the ice having a great time and boast a solid dynamic.

“We have the best guys in all honesty,” Clark said. “And probably the best way that I can describe it is the same way that I introduced the team to the new guys coming on. I told them really we’re a team that’s built on vibe. Performance is important, but really vibe is kind of what makes us move in the right direction. This is a really cool and groovy bunch of guys that I honestly believe in my mind if it weren’t for hockey, this group of guys would have found some way to connect outside of hockey and have relationships.”

Dobson, who grew up in the Detroit area and has played hockey since he was a little kid, wouldn’t want to skate with any other team.

“As much as I love hockey, it’s tough to lace up at 11:30 at night and get up at 6 and go to work the next day,” Dobson said. “But the reason I do it is because of this team.”

Story from Red Line Editorial, Inc.