BETHLEHEM, Pa. \u2014 Every week at the Bethlehem’s Steel Ice Center they hit the ice to play hockey for what is called Lunchtime Skate.<\/p>\n
They are proving that age is just a number.<\/p>\n
“It’s a great skate,” said Dick Johnson.<\/p>\n
Johnson is in his early 80s and suiting up to play defense.<\/p>\n
“I started when I left home for school in 1957. I started skating on the Fox River of Illinois and I fell in love with it,” said Johnson.<\/p>\n
He is on the same team as 77-year-old Toronto-native Mario Sgroi.<\/p>\n
“It’s great. There’s no doubt about it and we need it. It beats going to the gym,” said Sgroi.<\/p>\n
He has been playing hockey since he was five.<\/p>\n
“It’s hard to describe because it’s so much fun- carry the puck, make passes, you know score goals. That thing,” said Sgroi.<\/p>\n
Bruce McIntosh is the mastermind behind Lunchtime Skate.<\/p>\n
“A lot of us were playing in the men’s leagues and a lot of us were being squeezed out. As younger guys were coming into the league it wasn’t fun for us anymore,” said McIntosh.<\/p>\n
It is a group of players who have bonded for years.<\/p>\n
“We wind up going to weddings, we wind up going to funerals and now we talk about our medical stuff,” said McIntosh.<\/p>\n
“It’s a great group of guys. You have to be out here,” said Rich Crawley.<\/p>\n
Rich Crawley plays with the group year-round.<\/p>\n
“I look forward to it. It’s circled on your calendar every week,” said Crawley.<\/p>\n
Importantly it is all about having fun.<\/p>\n
“You can’t stop. The secret is you keep playing all year long,” said Johnson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. \u2014 Every week at the Bethlehem’s Steel Ice Center they hit the ice to play hockey…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[214,153,155,154,1391,9868],"class_list":{"0":"post-87543","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bethlehem","8":"tag-_homepage_top_stories","9":"tag-bethlehem","10":"tag-bethlehem-headlines","11":"tag-bethlehem-news","12":"tag-bethlehem-area","13":"tag-good-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87543","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=87543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}