HUNTINGTON BEACH : Avid Hockey Players Roll Into Action

It wasn’t the Mighty Ducks, but it was plenty rough with a lot of collisions.

“Everything is the same, except we play in wheelchairs,” said John G. Box, 29, of Orange. “And there’s no sidestepping. People come flying in and there’s really heavy contact.”

Box and his teammates put on an exhibition game of wheelchair hockey at an asphalt parking lot in Huntington Beach on Thursday to raise money and to promote the sport.

Box and about 20 other men play organized wheelchair hockey games on Monday evenings at the Buena Park Boys and Girls Club, where there are only enough players for three teams.

But they have a goal of forming their own league.

Bob Eastland, chairman of the sports on wheels program for the Amateur Athletic Union, predicts that wheelchair hockey is about to explode in popularity. He said he believes it will become more popular than wheelchair tennis and basketball once players get a taste of it because it’s more active and exciting, he said.

Eastland has coached wheelchair hockey at the Boys and Girls Club since 1971. But it has only been recently that people who were athletes before their disabling injuries have taken up hockey on wheels, he said.

“They are competitive and they like to work out their anxieties,” Eastland said. “They’re just like everyone else, except that the wheels are their legs.”

Eastland said he views the adult hockey players as role models who will visit schools and spread the popularity of wheelchair hockey to disabled schoolchildren.

Wheelchair hockey is played in Anaheim at Lord Baden-Powell Elementary School and Dale Junior High School, Eastland said.

During intermission at Thursday’s exhibition, the players were presented a check for $5,000 from the Commercial Credit Corp., a firm that makes home and personal loans.

The money will go toward the formation of a league and to purchase equipment. “It’s fun and rough and you can really bang people,” said hockey player Enrique Garcia, 19, of Garden Grove, who said he was afflicted with polio at the age of 2.

Garcia, a student at Rancho Santiago College, also plays wheelchair tennis and basketball, but wheelchair hockey is special, he said. “It’s cool and totally exciting,” he said.

Wyatt Ware, 18, a student at Cypress Community College, said that wheelchair hockey provides just about his only physical activity. Ware, who said he has cerebral palsy, is regarded as one of the pioneers of the sport, playing since he was 6.

Calling himself a “defensive specialist,” he was the only player in the exhibition to use an electric wheelchair. The players in the manually powered chairs are more maneuverable, he acknowledged. “But I can keep up and stay ahead of them,” he said. “They’re slicker, but I’m faster.”

Players use plastic hockey sticks and plastic balls.

Men and women and boys and girls interested in playing wheelchair hockey may call (714) 522-7259 or (818) 955-7745.