Costa Mesa-Based Phantoms Have Last Laugh in Ice Hockey
Two seasons ago, they were the laugh of the league. Today, they are national champions.
They are the Orange County Phantoms, a Costa Mesa-based amateur ice hockey team.
Competitive ice hockey? In Orange County?
It’s true. Actually, Orange County is the home of 12 teams of Hockey America, a national amateur hockey league for experienced players age 21 and up.
Hockey America was created two years ago as an advanced-level division of the National Novice Hockey Assn. Based in Washington, D.C., Hockey America fields 85 teams totaling 1,300 players throughout the United States.
The Phantoms, who finished 2-15-3 and last in the league’s Orange County division in 1986-87, dominated Hockey America this past season, going 29-0-0.
After they won the Orange County division title, the Phantoms won the Western Regional championship in May to advance to the national championship at Boston.
On June 11, the Phantoms won the national title, beating the Long Island Braves by scores of 6-2 and 7-2 in the best-of-three series.
For many, the victory by a Southern California team was a shock.
“I think we surprised people all the way through the (playoffs),” forward Scott Jarvis of Long Beach said. “Everyone expected the (Eastern) teams to kill us, but then we’d just smear them. Especially Long Island.
“A lot of people back there think we just sit on the beach all day and play volleyball. But they found out real quick they’d better take us seriously.”
Let it be known that only two of the team’s 17 members--Pat McGee of Costa Mesa and Gerry O’Hagan of Redondo Beach--are actually native to Southern California.
Of the others, nine were born in Canada. And six originated from the hockey-happy East and Great Lakes region.
Most, though, have lived in Southern California for many years.
“We’re pretty much all die-hard Californians now,” said team captain Gary Cunningham, a native of Pittsburgh, Pa., and a resident of Los Alamitos.
“That’s what made (the national championship) so great. We were the California team taking on the East. Believe me, going back there and having California on your sleeve was a great incentive for us. No one thought we would win a game, and we won the whole thing.”
The Phantom roster includes:
--Rob, Ted and Les Dobson, three Toronto-born brothers who live in Irvine. Rob, 29, became the first player in Hockey America’s two-year history to score 100 points in a season.
--Joe Stasiuk, 29, of Coto de Caza. Also born in Toronto, Stasiuk played for Princeton University. He was the Phantoms’ most valuable player this season.
--Bill D’Amore, 24, of Long Beach. D’Amore, a Rhode Island native, has been asked to play for the Fresno Falcons, the premier team in the Pacific Southwest Hockey Assn.--California’s only semipro league.
Mike Shannon, vice president of Hockey America, said D’Amore is the first league player to be recruited by a semipro team.
“It’s never happened,” Shannon said. “Most of these players are too old or too small for the pro ranks.”
Which leads to why the players join Hockey America in the first place: Fun.
“Along with keeping in shape, it’s the only reason I play,” Jarvis, 23, said. “Most of those dreams you had of going pro are long gone by now.”
But the desire to win still runs high.
During the nine-month season, the Phantoms practice every Sunday, either at the Paramount Ice Rink in Paramount or at Ice Capades Chalet in Costa Mesa.
“Hockey’s one of the few sports you can play till you’re quite mature,” said Ted Dobson, 36. “It keeps you fit, and the competition in this league is really good.”
In the 1986-87 season, the Phantoms found out how good the competition was. Cunningham, who then acted as the team’s coach, captain and manager, vowed to do something about the team’s last-place finish.
“Basically, we recruited heavily and got a coach,” Cunningham said. “By the beginning of the season, I knew we were the most organized team in the league.”
Cunningham enlisted the coaching services of Wayne Sorensen, manager of the pro shop at the rink in Paramount. Cunningham, 40, played junior hockey while growing up in Winnipeg, Canada, and had coached adult and youth hockey teams for five years in Southern California. He had often watched the Phantoms practice and play games.
“It was really sad,” Sorensen said said of the ‘86-87 team. “They were worse than the Bad News Bears. Some of them couldn’t get out of their own shadow.”
The team held tryouts, and 12 newcomers were welcomed to the team. Only five players returned from the 1986-87 team.
After the Phantoms won the first five games against the county’s top five-ranked teams at the start of this past season, Sorensen said he knew they were title-bound.
“I thought if we could win a few, we’d be OK,” Sorensen said. “But when we went 5-0, I knew we were on to something.”