The Irish sports journal The 42 recently ran a piece chronicling the growth of hockey in Dublin, featuring Pete Lalor '94.
“I played hockey at Amherst College and then played a year in Holland in a place called Dordrecht,” Lalor told The 42. It was during a six-year medical school stint in Dublin that he connected with a group of players meeting at the Phibsboro rink.
“I’m not sure I’d even call it a rink, to be honest. So it was a dark and dingy building and didn’t look like a rink at all. It was a converted movie theatre. It was fairly barren, not very clean and the ice surface was maybe about a third of a proper rink. The ice was poor quality, almost like pond ice,” he said. “But I was just glad to be skating. Hockey is one of those sports that you just obsess over. I loved the people involved. And the Irish guys were the same.”
They put together a team, the Dublin Flyers, which went to Scotland to play in tournaments, and they played well.
“They were just athletes and they loved the game. At every opportunity they would skate and knock the puck around,” he said.