New Whitehall rink already serving the Central Ohio hockey community

Clinton White was the first one to discover it was ready.

He's become a constant presence in rinks around Central Ohio as he's picked up the sport of hockey over the past year-plus, and a few months ago, he headed to John Bishop Park in Whitehall to get some work in.

As part of a quarter-million dollar partnership between the Columbus Blue Jackets Foundation and the City of Whitehall, a new street hockey rink was built in the eastern suburb, and White was one of the first to realize the project was ready to go.

"I live like four minutes away from here," he said. "I came out here to roll one night, just shoot around on skates, and I was like, 'Man, it's done.' So I posted it in the group, and they were here."

That group is the Columbus Dek Hockey Association's Facebook page, and soon enough, this band of welcoming and dedicated hockey players had a new home. There's been a small core of dek hockey players in the capital city for close to three decades, and the new rink has become the perfect place to hone their craft.

It didn't take long for the group to establish a weekly drop-in for dek hockey games on Sunday mornings, just one way the rink is now serving the Columbus hockey community.

Since its official dedication in April, the rink with its consistent sport-court surface has already proved to be a popular destination. The City of Whitehall hosts both an adult roller hockey league as well as youth roller hockey lessons, and the past few months provided plenty of opportunity for curious kids to check out the rink to help pass summer break.

But for the dek hockey community, the new rink is a true boon. The mid-1990s was the heyday of hockey in pop culture, with such cult classic movies as Clerks, The Mighty Ducks and Swingers making the sport cool in on the big screen, and the hockey community also took off in Columbus around the same time.

The debut of the ECHL's Columbus Chill in 1991 made hockey the fun, alternative sport for young people looking to burn some energy, and a street hockey rink in Dublin soon became the home of a regular game that often featured players like Chill defenseman Darwin McClelland.

Over the years, the games moved from Dublin to such locations as Tuttle Park near the Ohio State campus and the Thomas Knox Memorial Rink in Westerville. While the love of the game never wavered for the diehards, the group has always been looking for more hockey fans to come out and play.

"Visibility is our biggest factor right now," said Brian Le, who has been part of the group going back to the mid-1990s. "At Tuttle, you have people who would be on the trail, and if anybody would stop to talk to us early on a Sunday morning, we'd be like, come on out. You don't even need equipment. We have extra sticks and gloves."

The good news is the bar to play is low, as participants don't even need skates to take part. Goalies like Fazeel Kahn, a longtime member of the dek hockey group, do need full padding, but the jovial lawyer-by-day joined the chorus of those encouraging more players to come join.

"We actually enjoy when people come out here," Khan said. "Watching them progress and helping them along, it's great."

White agreed -- to a point.

"They'll yell at you, but it's just to make you better," White said with a laugh. "But no, talking to Brian, working with him has made me twice as good. There's a whole lot of talent here, and it's willing to help. If anybody wants to come out, they're more than welcome."

All joking aside, the sport seems to be in a good place in Columbus. Not only is there a regular group of participants coming out each week for the drop-in, the capital city is now home to a dek hockey squad known as the Columbus Counts that began play this season in the National Ball Hockey League's Indianapolis division.

The competition proved to be no match, as the Counts -- who practice each week at the Whitehall rink -- went 10-0 this year and swept their playoff games to advance to the national Mylec Cup in September. Standouts include captains Khan and Matt Street as well as division scoring leader Ryan Weiser, Kyle McKee, Alex Herron and Patrick McCall.

It just goes to show how hockey can thrive in all ways, in all forms, and in all locations in Central Ohio.

"It just makes it easy," White said of the location of the new rink on the east side of town. "There's quite a bit of interest growing in Reynoldsburg, Pickerington, of people that like the Blue Jackets, but they want to move out that way. I think it's going to draw a lot from those areas and even into Groveport and places like that."