Dozens of middle aged men descended on Bates on Martin Luther King weekend for what is fast becoming a January tradition of bringing back alumni from the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s for a hockey game in the Underhill Arena.
The third and latest game to feature the “Old Pucks” was also held to commemorate the pending retirement of French professor Dick Williamson who arrived at Bates in 1975 when many of the now-middle aged men were freshmen eager to meet their futures.
Those futures are now pretty much decided, but what brought them back was their love of hockey, Bates, Dick and what the combination meant to their years in Lewiston.
To a degree, the novelty of playing a hockey game with friends from a quarter century ago has worn off - the run up to the weekend wasn’t marked by the sometimes- hilarious e-mail repartee that preceded the two previous Old Pucks weekends. And over the weekend the story was only told about 12 times of beating the University of Maine at the Central Maine Youth Center in January 1978 and then playing the first game in the brand-new Alfond Arena three weeks later and losing by at least a dozen. But that meant the people who made the trip back to Bates, some from the other side of the continent, were the most committed to the game and the idea of getting together once again.
“The first couple alumni events were great reunions. The most recent was even better,” said former Captain Chris Callahan, ’78, and a driving force behind the Old Pucks Weekends. “It's no longer a reunion but another MLK weekend with our Bates hockey brethren. We have come back to where we were those many years ago. We are older and grayer but it feels the same. Having this group back together regularly is an incredible rejuvenation of a part of our lives that is now very much back in play. Quite a thing.”
It also meant the rink wasn’t overflowing with players. There were two goalies, each team had three lines, and Marianne Nolan Cowan had blocked us out enough time to thoroughly exhaust everyone with more than an hour, including about 10 minutes of eat-up-the clock, end-to-end hockey. Once again the White Team displayed its dominance of the down on its heels Red Team with its superior conditioning, even if Callahan made the jump from White to Red.
But the best part of the weekend came on Saturday night in the Muskie Archives (Was there really a women’s gymnasium in there once?) when the exhausted hockey players got together to mark the establishment of the Dick Williamson Award for the Bates College hockey club. The first award went posthumously to Bill Quigley, ’79, whose devotion to the club helped establish it as a part of the Bates club athletics community and ensure it survived until the construction of the Underhill Arena in 1995 guaranteed hockey a place at Bates.
(Read tributes to Dick by some of his players here; Read certificate honoring Bill here.)
“The game, as always, is a blast and something special to still be able to do,” Callahan said. “The Muskie room was fabulous for this kind of dinner and honoring Dick and Bill with that trophy for future players wraps this group, the past players, the school and the present and future men's and women's hockey programs together. A great thing to be part of. We are lucky people to have this special gift.”
After the dinner, it was on to Chez Williamson in Auburn for some of Dick’s famous “vin chaud” on a cold winter’s night. In theory the Old Pucks won’t be invited back until 2007, but soon-to-be professor emeritus Williamson assured everyone that if he’s in town he will join the crowd for another game.
- Wilson Ring ’79
