Skating through life

<p>The skates take a bit longer to tie than in years past. The bruises come easier, and the fatigue is a bit harder to shake from their bones.</p><p>But for the hundreds of hockey players in the Snoopy’s Senior World Hockey Tournament, quitting hockey would be tantamount to quitting a way of life.</p><p>“I played ever since I was 6,” said Terry White, 66, who travelled from his home near Calgary to skate in the annual competition.</p><p>The week-long tournament that kicked off Sunday in Santa Rosa includes a division for skaters as young as 40, but it is the octogenarians who inspire the most awe.</p><p>“We’ve got a guy playing who is 87,” said Steve Kostichuk, an 80-year-old who travels up from Los Angeles to officiate the games. “He’s awesome.”</p><p>By the time a hockey player is seasoned enough to qualify for entry into the annual Snoopy’s Senior tournament, any aspirations of playing hockey professionally left the ice long ago.</p><p>Instead, the tournament is full of doctors, lawyers and engineers who continued to play hockey to blow off steam from a long work week, and to stay in shape while enjoying a simple camaraderie on the ice.</p><p>Many are now retired from their jobs, but playing hockey has become a way of life.</p><p>Ed Reynolds, a 72-year-old retired trial judge from Massachusetts, described his former occupation like this: “A lot of pressure.”</p><p>He turned to hockey for stress relief.</p><p>“It was a wonderful outlet,” Reynolds said. “And lots of fun.”</p><p>After retiring, Reynolds and his teammates saw no reason to put up the skates.</p><p>“At this age, you can’t stop. You’ll never get going again,” said Yves Patenaude, a 72-year-old from Ottawa who plays with the Ottawa Silver Foxes. “You have to keep playing until you croak.”</p><p>The younger players in the 40-year-old division see it the same way.</p><p>“In 30 years, I’ll still be playing,” said Jim Rogers, an engineer for Enphase, a solar energy company in Petaluma. “If I can make it to 70, I certainly will.”</p><p>Many of those still playing in their golden years credit hockey for sustaining their health.</p><p>“Our minds and bodies are connected,” said White, who retired as the president of the University of Calgary. “If we keep our bodies in shape, our minds stay sharp.”</p><p>White dealt with plenty of stress as the top administrator for a university with 38,000 students, and playing goalie for an adult hockey team gave him a place to blow off steam and deal directly with challenges.</p><p>“At least on the ice, I know people won’t take shots at me from behind my back,” he said.</p><p>The parking lot outside the ice rink looks a bit like a Florida retirement community. Silver hair dominates the scene. And senior citizens sit around kvetching about their aches and pains.</p><p>But these guys have battle wounds that would make a 20-something proud.</p><p>Bud McAdam, 75, joined in a conversation about how to stay limber in his golden years.</p><p>“I’ve got some problems with my knees,” he told another player, who responded with some advice on daily exercises.</p><p>Tournament organizer Mike Kovanis looks at these old-timers with awe.</p><p>“There was a 60-year-old division game that was flying,” Kovanis said.</p><p>The 34th annual tournament, which for three decades was sponsored by the late Santa Rosa cartoonist and hockey player Charles Schulz, provides a place for older players to gather. It also provides an example of how a young man’s game becomes an old man’s healthy entertainment.</p><p>Kovanis coaches teenagers in the Santa Rosa Junior Hockey Club, and helped start a team last year for Cardinal Newman High School. He knows he is teaching kids more than a game, he is showing them a way to stay fit, release stress, and meet new people for decades to come.</p><p>“It’s a sport you can play for the rest of your life,” he said. “Even though it’s physically demanding, you can keep going.”</p>