BETHLEHEM, Pa. – At Bethlehem’s Municipal Ice Rink, it is face off time outdoors.<\/p>\n
“This is our 13th year now,” said Joe Guellnitz, Special Hockey of the Lehigh Valley founder.<\/p>\n
The energy is high at the Lehigh Valley Winter Classic. It is an all-day event that raises money for the Lehigh Valley Polar Bears, a special needs hockey team for children and young adults.<\/p>\n
“It’s awesome. It’s definitely a chilly year this year,” said Guellnitz.<\/p>\n
Not cold enough to keep Kieran McMonagle and the rest of the Polar Bears off the ice.<\/p>\n
“It was pretty good. It was nice to be back here at Bethlehem Municipal Ice Rink,” said McMonagle.<\/p>\n
The Polar Bears went up against the Philly Freeze.<\/p>\n
“I was just defending the puck most of the time,” said McMonagle.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, raffles, auctions and donations inside the lobby are raising money to help the Polar Bears and beyond.<\/p>\n
“We’ve also helped other programs across the country. I think we’re up to 20 different programs we’ve given starter funds to,” said Guellnitz.<\/p>\n
It is a game everyone here, including Polar Bears players O’Rion Erney and Gavin Fahler look forward to each year.<\/p>\n
Both of them have a favorite part.<\/p>\n
“Probably just playing,” said Erney.<\/p>\n
“Just playing, getting out on the ice cause now ice time is kind of hard to get,” said Fahler.<\/p>\n
Here the impact is felt beyond the buzzer.<\/p>\n
“The community all comes together for us and we couldn’t be more grateful for everything,” said Guellnitz.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. – At Bethlehem’s Municipal Ice Rink, it is face off time outdoors. “This is our 13th…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101920,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,1391],"class_list":["post-101919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-_homepage_top_stories","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-bethlehem-area"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}