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A championship season, a lifetime of friends

This story begins with a championship. How it ends will be writ large after a summer of conjecture, serious soul searching, heartfelt conversations with family members and likely many, many beers.

This story begins with a championship.

How it ends will be writ large after a summer of conjecture, serious soul searching, heartfelt conversations with family members and likely many, many beers.

As those beers are consumed, more stories will be shared: tall tales of parties run amok, community rivalries long buried, then resurfaced then buried again, happy remembrances of the kind of kinship that forms over the course of a 20-year journey when boys turn to men turn to husbands turn to fathers turn to middle-aged masters just trying to eke out one more season on their skates.

The Port Coquitlam Vikings are champions of the Pitt Meadows Old Timers Hockey Association. Finally.

The team has been trying to win that title for 20 years. They’ve come close before, losing in the final 10 or 11 times. The most gut-wrenching brush with victory was last year, when the Vikings were within seven seconds of defeating the Bonson Beavers, who went on to win the second game of their best-of-three championship in overtime and then followed that up with another win in the decisive rubber match.

This year, the Vikings were determined not to let the three-time defending champions slip past them again. After winning the first game, they hung on for a 3-2 win in game two and hoisted the championship trophy for the first time.

But as much as the Vikings skating around the ice arm in arm were celebrating their newly-won trophy, they were also acknowledging the bond that has kept them together since the team was formed in 1996.

That’s when Cory Geill, aka “GM,” put the call out to some of his old buddies from PoCo Minor Hockey where the Vikings had won a bantam championship in 1988 to reform for the old Fog Duckers tournament in Port Moody. Kevin “Swarms” Boerma answered, as did Curtis “Daytona” Day and a host of other players from those days, like Rick “Special K” Kalman. Even goalie Robbie Christensen stepped up to strap on the leg pads again.

The reincarnated Vikings had so much fun, Geill said, they decided to stick together, join a masters league.

Over the years, players came and went, some of them overtaken by life. All of them shared the bond of growing up and playing minor hockey in Port Coquitlam. Some came from the south side of town, others from the north; but in the dressing room and on the ice, that age-old community rivalry was set aside.

“We play for each other,” Geill, now 47, said.

They also play to get away. From the demands of life, the frustrations at work, the responsibilities of marriage, the challenges of fatherhood.

“When you get to the rink, everything stops,” Kalman, 47, said.

For three hours every week, from September to late March, the rink is the Vikings’ sanctuary, their fortress of solitude and camaraderie. It used to be seven or eight hours, Day said, but their capacity to party hearty after games diminished as they got older.

And boy, could they party, Boerma said: summer “training camps” in Shuswap, the annual Christmas party that sometimes trumped family and work functions, a wedding in Vegas, a ragtag band that jammed in his Port Coquitlam warehouse. The smiles widen as the memories trail off.

Not that it was always sunshine and good times. Marriages broke up. Players moved away. Careers took precedent.

“A lot of it takes hard work,” Boerma said of keeping the team together, getting the gang motivated year after year even as their skating slowed and they descended through the masters’ tiers.

“To turn that competitive level down is tough,” Kalman said.

As new players were brought in, they were quickly indoctrinated to the Vikings culture.

The new guys were affirming, Kalman said. They showed the veterans they could still play, and they brought hope a championship was just a speedy left winger away. They were also a bit of a timepiece.

“It’s come full circle,” Kalman said. “I used to call guys old and now there’s guys calling me an old man.”

The oldest of the old men, 50-year-old Day, said it might be time to retire, go out a winner. He’s slowed a step, but then again, he only missed two games last season. The other players gathered in the half-deconstructed lobby of the PoCo Rec Centre to reminisce nod in agreement. But what would retirement mean for the future of the Vikings?

Because as great as it is to spend the summer as league champions, they’re especially proud of their perseverance to stay together, to stick it out through lost seasons and close-but-no-cigar seasons, to defy time and outwit life.

We’ve had so much life experience together since we were kids through minor hockey to present,” Kalman said. “I guess we’re kinda like family, unconditionally committed.”

Time to go for beers and talk about it.

The champion Vikings are: Cory “GM” Geill; Curtis “Daytona” Day; Kevin “Swarms” Boerma; Rick “Special K” Kalman; Rob “Robbi Lemieux” Christensen; Jason “JC” Christensen; Sean “McCraken” McCarron; Seb “Sebe” Baski; Darcy “Pinchy” Pinch; Jeremy Heuchert; Dan McLean; Doug Clegg; Travis Franklin; Scott Morris; Mike Henry; Caleb Christensen; and honourable members, Jason “Jipp” Pretzer, Dean “Deano” Davies, and Andy “Nills” Nielson.