A pair of local Canadian retirees and seven Mexican skaters took advantage of the ice rink set up at Chapala’s Carnaval fairgrounds to brush up on their hockey skills.
The hour-long encounter on Friday, February 8 may not rate even a minor footnote in the annals of local history, but it was certainly a first for a place where few people have been exposed to ice skating, far less the fast-paced sport that is vastly popular in northern climes.
The practice session was set up by Chapala resident Pedro Kertesz, who has developed friendly ties with Guadalajara’s Los Padrinos hockey club during occasional outings to the city’s Iceland skating rink. The team’s goalie Alejandro de la Peña and five other players happily accepted his invitation to hold their regular Friday training drills in Chapala, arranged through the good graces of Carnaval manager Beto Alcantar and the portable rink’s proprietor Javier Matamoros.
In fact, Matamoros laced up his own skates to get in on the gig. The young entrepreneur from the state of Puebla has designed and built many of Mexico’s best permanent ice rinks, as well as his own model of the Zamboni ice resurfacer machine. He also manufactures and leases mobile rinks through the family business Industrias Facil.
A tiny group of onlookers who happened upon the scene by chance watched in awe as the seasoned Canucks and younger skating bucks whizzed across the ice running a series of passing and a shooting drills.
It was a rough round for Kertesz, who is still recuperating from recent heart surgery, as well as a hard spill he took while warming up on the ice several days earlier.
The other Canadian, Ajijic winter resident Dean Carter, held up better, showing impressive prowess even though it was his first time on skates in more than a decade. “I threw my skates into the car before heading south a few years back,” recalls the British Columbia native who has a life time of skating experience under his belt.
Like most of his Padrinos team mates, David Hernandez is part of Mexico’s small but enthusiastic ice hockey fan base. He became enamored with the sport from the first time he watched a match on TV as a young boy. He took up skating at age 13 and has been playing hockey in Guadalajara’s amateur league for five years.
Los Padrinos gained notoriety by capturing the title at the Copa El Debate tournament held last February in Culiacan, Sinaloa, going undefeated against home teams Cuervos de Culiacan and Casino Win in a clean sweep.