DISCOVERIES: Neighborhood Ice Lot

Text and Photography by Dee Goerge

Art teacher Jim Formanek has a new canvas to create on—ice. On this thirteen-degree January afternoon, it’s filled with giggling, screaming young girls in pink jackets and snow pants, wearing new skates with price tags still stuck to the heels. Later this week, it might be neighborhood boys banging the puck against the pond’s kick plates, or a group of adult friends in a late night pick-up hockey game under floodlights

Formanek Pond has become Wadena’s winter version of a neighborhood sandlot.

“Grandma would like this,” says Formanek, as he watches his daughters skate with their friends. It was an inheritance gift from her that inspired him to build the rink, despite the fact that neither he nor his wife, Traci—native Iowans—skated or played hockey.

But Jim loves winter—snowmobiling with friends, ice-fishing, and watching hockey. Most of all, he loves doing things with family, something that was important to his grandmother, whose husband died when he was in his forties.

Family time can be a scarce commodity for Jim, a Wadena-Deer Creek High School art teacher, part-time chef, and website designer, and Traci, a registered nurse. The ice draws the family together.

It’s hard for Jim to believe that his daughters, Mikena and Josie (now ten and seven) had never skated when the family first slid folding chairs in front of them on the ice on December 2, 2006.

“They put the chairs away within an hour,” laughs Jim. “Now they are trying to teach me to skate backwards.”

The girls switched from dance to try girl’s hockey for a year, Traci adds, as she watches them slam into the rink’s kick plates in a race with their friends. Traci records her family’s ice time with photos and videos. She helps children tie skates and reminds them they can warm up inside Jim’s workshop, where a hockey game flashes on TV and snacks fill a table. Guests can gear up from a rack of used skates, and even goalie pads, that Jim picked up at auctions and going-out-of business sales. His best buy was the original scoreboard from Wadena’s Community Center. With some rewiring, Jim got it to work again.

The scoreboard is the final touch to a perfect scene under floodlights: kids skating and laughing; the Formaneks’ dog, Molly, racing them for the puck; and flickering flames in the fire pit.<

Formanek can’t help but believe that Grandma is enjoying the show.

(Jim’s website, www.formanekpond.com, is filled with photos, videos, and detailed journal entries about setting up and maintaining the rink, as well as events and games held at Formanek Pond.)

Stanley Cup winner Bobby Hull visited Formanek Pond on February 23, 2008, in honor of the rink winning the Nice Rink.com backyard rink contest. The legendary hockey player offered pointers and spent time with friends and family who celebrated with the Formaneks.

“Bobby Hull is one of the most genuine persons I have ever met in my life,” says Jim Formanek. “He was gracious, thankful, energetic, patient, a teacher, and most of all loving, to our rink, hockey, and my family.”

Setting up a Rink

Jim Formanek’s rink is the same type as those used in pond-hockey tournaments. He found NiceRink on the Internet and ordered materials for a forty-five-by-sixty-foot rink.

Set up: When the ground is still thawed, Jim connects the two-foot-tall by four-foot-long thermoformed plastic sideboards and stakes them into the ground with brackets at every seam.

Freeze-up: When a meteorologist friend tells Jim that nighttime temperatures are likely to stay below twenty-five degrees, he spreads out the high-strength polyester reinforced liner and immediately fills it, using two garden hoses from his house and a two-inch, fire-size hose from a sandpoint well. Formanek Pond takes 8,000 to 9,000 gallons of water and ranges in depth from 5 to 15 inches, due to uneven ground. It takes 61⁄2 hours to fill.

Human Zamboni: Jim says he relaxes and unwinds shoveling snow off the ice or smoothing it with a chisel and ice resurfacer (a device that looks like a mop, but hooks up to a hose to add water and eliminate the air for a smooth surface).

• Safety/Maintenance: Jim fenced in the yard around the rink and installs a backstop net on the street side so no pucks leave the yard. After chipping the goal out of the ice one time, Jim learned to remove pucks and the goal at the end of the day. The rink holds up well, he adds, and stores easily in his fish house between seasons. Also, there is no damage to his lawn underneath the liner.

• Cost: The Formaneks spent about $2,500 for the basic rink set-up, including floodlights. Another $2,500 provided used skates and hockey gear, scoreboard, etc.