Yesterday afternoon, The Gathering met at 12:15 to go ice skating at the Sunbury Ice Skating Rink. Once everyone had arrived, someone mentioned that Selinsgrove had a skating rink where everything was free. Having lived here almost ten years (four years in college, five years as an employee), I was surprised I’d never heard of it, but I figured it was worth a shot. After all, if it wasn’t very good, we could head up to Sunbury for the remainder of the afternoon.

When we got to the rink, I was pleasantly surprised; it was in great condition except for a few places where it was beginning to melt (the volunteers forgot to cover the surface with water the night before). The rink had five or six portable hockey goals and there was a small building right off the ice where visitors rent shoes and borrow hockey sticks (including ones for lefties!) and pucks, as well as purchase snacks and warm up by a fire.

The youth all got skates and we headed out to the rink to skate and play some hockey. I’m not very comfortable on ice skates, so I went out with my shoes on, which made it much easier for playing hockey. One of the girls wasn’t sure she wanted to skate, but I asked her to try it out for a bit so she did; 20 minutes and two sore ankles later, she brought her skates back to the building and returned to the ice with shoes, just like me. The two of us spent quite a bit of time practicing hockey passes and shots, primarily one timers right in front of the net. They weren’t high-speed one timers like the pros perform in the NHL, but after several times she got the hang of it!

After about an hour, the whole group decided to play hockey, so we spent the remainder of our time passing pucks and shooting them at (not necessarily in) the goals. We had a blast being outside playing a game few of us were very familiar with. When everyone was tired, we returned to the building to drop our stuff off and enjoy hot dogs and soda by the warm fire. Not long after, we piled into our cars and went back to church where we waited for parents to pick up their kids.

The afternoon was a blast and, from all signs, the youth really enjoyed it. Though we don’t have time set aside in our schedule to go back, I’d like to find an afternoon or evening when we can go back for round two!