Roller Derby : The Popularity of Roller Hockey Surges As Players Use Everything From Parking Lots to Tennis Courts for Rinks

Seven-year-old Tommy Simpson flails his arms like a speed skater on bad ice as he whizzes around a portable roller hockey rink on in-line skates.

The Manhattan Beach resident and a dozen other pint-size players engulfed from head to toe in protective pads are skating around the rink in Hermosa Beach to learn the ropes of roller hockey, one of the South Bay’s fastest-growing sports.

“Can you picture yourself at the Forum after scoring a goal?” coach John O’Rourke, 28, bellows as his cassette player blasts Van Halen’s rollicking “Jump.” “Can you hear the roar of the crowd?”

Simpson can. He leaps into the air and screams victoriously as he rushes over the asphalt, then trips violently over his skates.

“Sometimes it hurts,” Simpson says as he sprays cool water over his face during a break in the class. “But football is stupid, and baseball is stupid, and I like this a lot.”

Even the nastiest spills don’t check the enthusiasm of Simpson and other fans.

From blacktop parking lots in Gardena to the beachside bicycle path in Manhattan Beach, scores of in-line skaters clutching aluminum and wooden hockey sticks are knocking the sport’s colorful plastic pucks everywhere.

In Torrance, nearly 1,800 players converge every week on a $120,000 roller hockey rink to compete in games that sometime run until midnight. A league in Redondo Beach, which uses portable foam boards to construct a makeshift rink on school playgrounds, doubled in size in only four months.

“It’s just exploding,” said Heath Mazenauer, 27, manager of the Golden Bear Skate Shop in Lomita, where sales of roller hockey equipment have risen almost 40% in the last two years. The shop recently sold out of one style of in-line skates and is struggling to keep others in stock. Manufacturers say they can’t keep up with orders.

Enthusiasts say they are drawn to the fast pace of the sport, a combination of ice hockey and roller skating that dates back to the 1930s, when skaters on the roads of New York fashioned street-worthy pucks from electrical tape.

Nationwide, the number of roller hockey players has doubled each year for the last five years, according to Shawn Jones, executive director of the Miami-based National In-Line Hockey Assn. Of the country’s 12 million in-line skaters, Jones estimates that 1 million play roller hockey.

Many credit ice hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky with the sport’s explosive growth in the South Bay. Ever since Gretzky signed with the Los Angeles Kings in 1988, increasing numbers of fans donning replicas of his black-and-silver jersey have taken to area playgrounds on skates. And not all are young males.

At the rink in Torrance, girls practice slap shots next to boys during youth-league games and helmet-clad men, some of them pushing 50, bounce off the rink’s boards chasing the puck in adult games. Even Torrance police and Carson sheriff’s deputies have roller hockey teams.** But while the number of roller hockey players has surged in the South Bay in recent years, the number of rinks has not. Except for the rink in Torrance and another in Redondo Beach, the South Bay has little to offer competitors.

Compounding the problems for area roller hockey devotees are laws in many South Bay cities banning skating in city parks. City officials say skaters pose safety problems in parks and raise liability concerns.

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But in the last year, officials in many communities have begun to recognize the need for rinks, and some South Bay cities are scrambling to provide residents with places to play.

El Segundo approved plans recently for a $10,000 portable rink that is due in the city by the end of August. Avalon plans to construct a rink over several old tennis courts later this year, and Carson and Gardena are studying whether to purchase rinks.

Meanwhile, inventive enthusiasts find ways to make do. In El Segundo, Jean-Louis Boudreau, 34, and a few friends transformed a couple of high school tennis courts into a roller hockey rink by constructing foot-high borders around one end of the courts to keep pucks in play.

The boards make tennis play nearly impossible, but school officials say they have agreed to keep the jerry-built rink because they recognize the sport’s popularity in the city. Tennis players head for other courts on the school campus.

“We made some tennis people real upset, but there are better courts at (Recreation Park),” says Boudreau, who played ice hockey on frozen baseball fields while growing up in Montreal.

In Manhattan Beach, where skaters are banned from city parks, die-hards sometimes set up goals in the middle of city streets. When cars approach, players grab the goals and scramble to the sidewalks.

Officials say they are considering putting a portable rink in the city.

Until such plans come to fruition, the $120,000 roller hockey rink built last year at Wilson Park in Torrance has shouldered much of the burden. The city-owned rink is operated by the Torrance Skate Assn., a nonprofit group founded in 1992 that pays all insurance costs under a three-year contract with the city signed last year.

The full-size rink, complete with an electronic scoreboard, four-foot boards and smooth concrete, attracts enthusiasts from throughout the South Bay.

Since the 2-year-old skate association opened the rink in October, the number of league players has risen from 850 to 1,800. For the first time recently, the organizers were forced to turn players away.

“It’s really tough,” says Craig Hama, 34, who helped organize the league with several others. “We need to do something very quickly so people have places to play.”

Hama, who is so devoted to the sport that his wife, Lori, often refers to him as “Puckhead,” says the organization is considering ways to build another rink in the city.

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Meanwhile, players between ages 6 and 48 pay $60 to $90 each to join teams organized into age groups and playing abilities. They flock to the rink on weeknights and weekends to play games under the watchful eye of a referee.

The games are much like ice hockey, in which six-player teams compete to knock a rubber puck into the opposing team’s goal. But roller hockey has a few key differences. Players are not allowed to block opponents using their bodies--known in ice hockey as checking--which cuts down on fighting and violence, particularly in youth leagues.

In addition, many roller hockey leagues eliminate off-sides rules, which in ice hockey limit how far a puck can be passed. As a result, the game is faster because passes can travel the length of the rink and more goals can be scored.

The sounds are different too. Unlike ice hockey, where cool rinks echo with the slicing of sharpened blades against ice, Torrance’s outdoor rink reverberates with the clattering and squeaking of tiny wheels.

Quieter moments are punctuated by shouts of “Ice it!” and “Go after the puck!” from encouraging friends and family members who follow the action from the bleachers.

Elizabeth Allen, 35, of Carson, sat quietly on a recent Sunday afternoon as she watched her son, Eric, 11, skate up and down the rink with his team, the Lightnings.

“I really like the sport,” she says. “It builds self-confidence and keeps the kids off the street, and I’ve never seen a fight break out.”

Many parents who were concerned that violence in professional ice hockey would be replicated in roller hockey say they have been pleased with the way organizers in Torrance and Redondo have kept the rough-and-tumble to a minimum.

“I was really hesitant at first,” says Lisi Masoni, whose 10-year-old son, Matthew, told her he wanted to play roller hockey last April. “But I find the kids don’t get too aggressive, and he loves it.”

Masoni, of Manhattan Beach, doesn’t plan to take to the rink herself.

“I tried Rollerblading and it hurt my back,” she says.

But some parents have followed in the skating steps of their children. Darren Allison, 32, of Torrance, signed up for the city’s adult league after watching his son, Johnnie, wheel up and down the Wilson Park rink in action-packed games.

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As a spectator, Allison quickly moved from the bleachers to the fence abutting the rink. Then, when he could move no closer, he headed for a local shop and bought a pair of skates. He now plays on the Blues.

“It’s just great,” says Allison, who works at a wholesale fish brokerage in Los Angeles. “If you’ve got any aggressions to get out, this is the place to do it.”

Allison waited for his son’s team to play on a recent weekend after his team was shut out 4-0 by the Chuds. “Whether you win or lose you always come off with a real good attitude,” he says.

Hockey coach O’Rourke started the South Bay Tides Roller Hockey Club in Redondo Beach in January, emphasiZing fun over competition.

“Some coaches put the emphasis in the wrong area,” he says. “But this is about boosting self-confidence and having a good time. We make sure they shake hands at the end of every game.”

Like Torrance organizers, O’Rourke has seen his league of 7- to 16-year-olds explode in the last six months--from 80 players in January to 160 in April. He expects 300 sign-ups this fall.

“It’s just an electrifying game,” he says. “It’s quick and every body’s always in the action.”

Dick Oglesby has been a fan of hockey’s thrill-a-minute games for more than 25 years. The El Segundo resident pushed city officials to purchase a roller hockey rink recently after he saw young residents playing the game on high school tennis courts and later learned such activity was banned in city parks.

“I got a little upset,” he says. “I thought we ought to do better for the kids.”

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Oglesby, 54, persuaded city officials to purchase a temporary rink to be set up behind El Segundo Middle School which arrived last week. He and a newly created roller hockey board plan to organize a league to begin play in October.

It’s not the first time Oglesby has organized competitive teams. After he saw children playing ice hockey on a frozen lagoon in Illinois 25 years ago, Oglesby organized a 20-player league that quickly grew To 70 players.

He says he hopes the El Segundo league will follow suit so he can one day persuade city officials to install a permanent rink.

To generate enthusiasm, he plans to invite professional players from the Los Angeles Kings to conduct an educational clinic for El Segundo youths. Kings’ Coach Barry Melrose, an El Segundo resident, sits on the city’s newly established seven-member roller hockey board which represents the El Segundo Roller Blade Assn.

But while some South Bay residents gear up to play roller hockey, others prefer to watch the sport at the Great Western Forum in Inglewood, where the Los Angeles Blades professional roller hockey team competes against 22 other teams from throughout the U.S. and Canada.

“It’s better than baseball,” says Gary Van Zandt, 37, of Redondo Beach, one of 5,000 fans who watched the Blades battle the Anaheim Bullfrogs recently. “I gave up a date to be here tonight.”

Van Zandt and Ron Carcich, also of Redondo Beach, have attended many of the Blades’ games since the team began playing at the Forum last year. Struggling to make his voice heard over the Forum’s blaring sound system, Carcich says he appreciates the players’ enthusiasm for the sport.

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Enthusiasm is one characteristic that few South Bay roller hockey players lack, whether they play in front of thousands of fans at the Forum or on dilapidated tennis courts in El Segundo.

And with their skates tightened, many players are readying for the sport’s growth.

Juan Del Valle, one of 15 Torrance Police officers who play on the department’s team, says he hopes the sport will soon be added to the California Police Olympics, an annual competition in which officers compete in sports from golf to surfing.

And Allison, the 32-year-old father who joined the Torrance league after watching his son play, says his family will be equipped for the action. He recently cut down a hockey stick for his 2-year-old daughter, Kelsey.

“She’s already hitting the puck around the yard,” he says.

Finding Roller Hockey Teams

For more information on the Torrance Skate Assn., call (310) 320-9529. Games are played weekends and weeknights at Wilson Park, 2200 Crenshaw Blvd., Torrance.

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For more information on the South Bay Tides Roller Hockey Club, call (310) 373-9003. Games are played at Lincoln School, 2223 Plant Ave., Redondo Beach.