Near the end of this year’s high school hockey season, Bob Carow passed along a great article, The Kids That Started It All, which had come to him from Jim Reach. It tells the story behind a phenomenal effort by a handful of tenacious and talented players to make ice hockey an official sport at AAHS. And that idea did, in fact, start with kids. In the 1950’s, dozens of boys from across Ann Arbor were coming to play pickup games on the outdoor ice rink at Burns Park. Starting in 5th grade, they were eligible to play in the Ann Arbor Hockey League at the UM Colosseum. But once in high school, they were out of luck. There was no hockey team at AAHS and no interest in getting one from anyone who counted.
Five players took up the challenge. It took them three years and some ingenious tactics but they finally got an official AAHS team on the ice for the 1962-63 season (and even then,their first coach, Tim Ryan, was borrowed from the track and cross-country program). After reading the article on the class Facebook page, Nancy Evaldson Mirshah described it as a “great story of passion, determination, and male bonding”, and it is.
In the 1962-63 team photo you'll see some familiar faces from our class, including Bob Koebnick, Henry Peet, and the late Rick Miller. When Mark Gilson, one of the original five who got the team officially on the ice, died in 2017 from cancer, his former teammates from the early days wanted to do something in his memory. They came up with an idea as inspired as their playing. They donated new jerseys to the Pioneer Men’s and Women’s hockey teams for the 2018-2019 season, each bearing an embroidered path on the left shoulder with the words, “Col. Gilson 1961”.
A great companion piece you’ll want to read is “Reflections on the First Ann Arbor High School Hockey Team, 1962-63”. Written by Roger Dick, the Captain, it offers extra details, including some funny ones.
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