A community planning meeting has been set for 7 p.m. Thursday January 9, 2020 at the Buena Vista Community Center. Those interested in helping with or learning about setting up a Buena Vista ice rink and multi-use facility should attend.
“We need your input,” said one of the meeting’s organizers, Mark Hammer. “Buena Vista owns an ice rink generously donated by Daniel Hamme. The town has committed some great resources for this facility. However, we need the involvement and leadership of interested people from our community to drive and help shape its development and construction.”
In fact, Buena Vista doesn’t just “own an ice rink.” It owns the ‘Miracle on Ice’ practice rink used by 1980 Olympic champions, in which the scrappy U.S. National Hockey team made up of college and amateur players, beat the internationally dominant Soviet team.
It’s the rink where coach Herb Brooks whittled down the 60-plus hockey players invited to the U.S. National Hockey team tryouts, to the 20 players who took the ice at the Lake Placid games. That the game came to be known as the ‘Miracle on Ice’ indicates just how improbable the U.S. triumph was.
Most of the world assumed the U.S. team wouldn’t get past the hockey powerhouses like Czechoslovakia, Sweden or Canada, much less the Soviet Union. The Soviets had won the gold medal in six of the previous seven Olympic games. But the U.S. team did; recording wins against the likes of Norway, West Germany and Canada in pool play.
An older poster created to promote the outdoor multi-purpose rink.
When the U.S. men’s team squared off against the Soviets, arguably one of the greatest teams in sports history, for the right to advance to the 1980 gold medal game, the oddsmakers were not putting their money on the U.S. But the team did the unthinkable, beating the Soviets at their own game, 4-3.
In 1999 Sports Illustrated called that “Miracle on Ice” match the top sports moment of the 20th century. It is the ultimate underdog story.
The rink came to Buena Vista in 2016 when Daniel Hamme, then a member of the Buena Vista Recreation Board, secured the rink for it’s new hometown. But making the rink functional has been a while in the making.
At the time the rink arrived, Hamme said the next step was to start a two month fundraising effort to raise money to buy a liner and a shaded structure for the facility. In 2016 he estimated the cost of both those pieces to be around $15,000-$20,000.
The rink itself could be used for more than ice hockey. Original programming ideas for it included summer roller hockey and emerging sports like broom ball and roller derby.
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