BAINBRIDGE ISLAND — On summer Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon, Bainbridge kids play hockey in the park.
Wander through Battle Point Park and you’ll see them right away: a horde of athletes ages 7 to 17, wearing jerseys and full hockey pads, skating back and forth across the outdoor roller rink just north of the park’s observatory.
The skaters are part of the Bainbridge Roller Hockey League, which gives youth of all abilities the chance to play warm-weather hockey.
BRHL has a unique draw for on-island families. It’s a more accessible option than the closest ice hockey league, at an indoor ice arena in Bremerton. And despite the competitiveness of individual games — which take place on select weekday afternoons in addition to Saturdays — BRHL as a whole has a relaxed atmosphere unusual in this age of high-powered youth sports.
“The best thing about roller hockey is no one’s going pro in roller hockey,” said BRHL board president Marshall Tappen.
As one of the few youth roller hockey leagues in western Washington, BRHL is large enough to encompass three divisions roughly divided along elementary, middle, and high school lines. While some players come from off island, all league practices and games take place at the Battle Point rink.
“We’re like the anti-travel league,” Tappen said.
The BRHL season runs from early May to late June every year, finishing with a championship. This year’s championship will take place on Saturday, June 29. Buoy, the Seattle Kraken’s mascot, will make an appearance at the rink, Tappen said, and community members are encouraged to take part in the festivities.
“Roller hockey” is actually an umbrella term for a few different kinds of warm-weather hockey. The version favored by BRHL is inline hockey, played on skates with wheels set in a straight line rather than in two parallel lines like roller skates. There are four players and one goalie to a side, and no body checking is allowed.
Although various forms of roller hockey have been around since the late 1800s, inline hockey emerged as its own game in the early 1980s, shortly after the invention of Rollerblades ignited widespread interest in inline skating. Inline hockey’s popularity surged in the 1990s, leading to the creation of a professional league called Roller Hockey International (RHI).
Americans’ interest in the sport has been inconsistent, and RHI collapsed not long after its initial founding. But from the beginning, BRHL’s intensely local focus has helped it weather the storm.
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