Stan Halliwell, along with the late Reg Morrison, a fellow co-founder, were honoured Wednesday afternoon as recent dressing room expansion was named after them
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Surprised?
You bet Stan Halliwell was.
His old-timer hockey colleagues, family and friends filled the parking lot at Schroh Arena and filed into the rink for the festivities. They rolled out the red carpet. They brought out the birthday cake — well, numerous birthday cakes — to mark the occasion. They even sang ‘happy birthday’ for the now 90-year-old co-founder of the Saskatoon 60-plus old-timers hockey league.
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“He was great at (age) 80 and even greater at 90,” league president Ken Crump said of Halliwell while speaking from center ice.
“He’s a special guy.”
Halliwell, along with the late Reg Morrison, a fellow co-founder, were honoured Wednesday afternoon as a recent dressing room expansion was named after them; it’s now known officially as the Stan Halliwell Wing and Reg Morrison Room.
“It’s just mind-boggling,” admitted Halliwell. “I had no idea it was going to happen.”
Indeed, all this hockey hoopla caught him totally by surprise.
“Oh, tremendously,” said Halliwell, who, at age 90, had just finished playing one of his two weekly games at Schroh Arena.
“I was sitting on the bench when people started soldiering in. I was wondering what was going on. I gradually caught on that it was something special, but nothing like this. This is tremendous.
“Totally unexpected. I’m speechless.”
Dignitaries, of course, had plenty to say. Grasswoods MP Kevin Waugh and provincial MLA Kevin Cheveldayoff spoke, as did current old-timers player Ernie Epp, who praised Halliwell for his “resilience” and “endurance.”
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Cheveldayoff, who is Halliwell’s Saskatoon neighbour, admitted he’s “always trying to keep up with Stan.”
On this day, Halliwell’s greatest fear may have been the thought of trying to blow out 90 birthday candles.
(“It would have melted the ice in here,” he quipped.)
Special guests included league referees also in the 60-plus age category (who, players might suggest, may or may not have passed their most recent eye exams).
It was all in good fun, of course.
That’s always been the aim of the league since it was formed in 1993. Halliwell and Morrison were instrumental in starting a league for senior-aged hockey players, first with a group of 26 players picking jerseys and eventually growing to more than 300 members; 180 of them, between the ages of 60 and 90, play in the league weekly.
“If you build it, they will come,” said Waugh, echoing the well-known movie line. “Who would think that it would become the most successful old-timers hockey league in the nation?”
Halliwell is the only remaining original member of the league from 1993 still playing.
“He’s meant everything to us, not only as a player but certainly as a founder, a co-founder of the league,” said Crump. “It started with 26 players and now it’s grew to 350 members and about 90 alumni and we’ve lost about 90 to 100 players who have passed away.
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“He’s meant so much, building this league. He’s a leader on the executive. He’s in the Canadian 80-plus Hockey Hall of Fame. We owe everything to Stan and Reg.”
Halliwell said the league grew gradually, from four teams to six and then eight and 12, and now “of course we’re going five days a week with up to six games a day.”
He estimates he’s played more than 1,800 games in the league since it was formed. At the time, he and Morrison were turning 60 and the league was getting a little faster; the 50-plus league was playing its games during the evening, Sundays and late at night.
“The ice was available in the mornings and our guys are all retired — let’s play hockey during the day,” explained Halliwell. “It just grew from that. What we have here now, nobody else has. Nobody has their own dressing rooms like we do. Guys in other cities are lugging their equipment in the trunk of their car for every game.”
Over the years, that hockey passion has been rekindled for many of them.
“We have a lot of members who had given up on the game who have started up again,” noted Halliwell, whose thoughts also turned to all the teammates who have either passed away or can’t physically play anymore.
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“We have a plaque on the wall for all the guys who have passed on and there are over 60 names on that list alone now. We’ve gone through a lot of people, a lot of good people, and there are a lot of them here today. I never thought this would ever happen like this.”
Morrison was known for finding “new and unusual ways to have fun, spread cheer and ensure a good laugh,” wrote league organizers. “Reg is sorely missed in the league dressing room.”
For the old-timers, it’s as much about the friendship and camaraderie as it is about the exercise.
“That’s half the game,” agreed Halliwell. “Half is on the ice; the other half is in the dressing room. Over the years, I have met people that I wouldn’t have met otherwise, of all walks of life.”
At age 90, Halliwell vows to keep going. The referees aren’t about to blow the whistle and call ‘icing’ on his hockey career.
“I still feel good, so hopefully I can play for a few more years yet,” he said. “I’ve been very fortunate. A lot of the guys had to quit because of health problems and so on. I just like to keep busy. I still ride my bike and keep busy and don’t sit around …
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Don’t sit down. Keep going. Keep doing something. Keep your interest. I just keep showing up and keep playing. One of these days I won’t make it, but I feel good, don’t take any pills, nothing like that. I’m very fortunate. A lot of the guys I played with would love to still be out here, but things happen.”
Even surprise big birthday bashes happen.
In Saskatoon, Halliwell is an old-timers hockey legend — the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time).
“Ninety years and still skating like Connor McDavid,” quipped Waugh.
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