In the summer of 1967, several Deerfield fathers, encouraged by their sons' interest in ice hockey, formed a Peewee hockey team that practiced on natural outdoor ice in Deerfield's Jewett Park. The team included twelve boys, aged 10-12, and played one game a week in the Metro League in Elmhurst.
The following winter, 80 enthusiastic skaters comprised five all star teams and competed at the squirt through "juvenile" levels.
In April 1969, the Deerfield-Highland Park Hockey Association was officially incorporated as a not-for-profit organization. Ice rental was about $85 per hour at any of the area's four artificial rinks (at 5 A.M. when available), so the association recognized that an ice rink was a number one priority if a quality hockey program was to succeed.
In order to expand the 1969-1970 program to include a House League and more ice time, the association purchased a portable ice rink from a motion picture production company in California. The Deerfield Park District approved Mitchell Park for the location of the artificial rink in exchange for about 12 hours a week of public skating. The rink officially opened in December 1969 after parent volunteers had laid all of the pipe, constructed the boards, wired the lights, and built a garage to house the ice resurfacer.
The association enrolled 423 boys from Deerfield, Highland Park, Highwood, Bannockburn, Lincolnshire, and Riverwoods for the 1969-1970 season.
In the spring of 1970, the Park District backed away from its original agreement with the Falcons and demanded that the rink be removed from Mitchell Park. The original group of Falcons' fathers was not to be deterred from their goal, and within three days, an agreement was reached with Trinity College to locate the rink on its land near the Tollway in Deerfield.
Groundbreaking for the new rink at Trinity began in September, 1970. Once again with parent volunteers, the rink was constructed and team players and spectators huddled in two construction trailers to escape the winter wind. When the construction was "red tagged" by the county inspector for lack of proper permits, over 200 mothers barraged county supervisors by phone. Two hours later all of the necessary permits were in order.
The 1970-71 season saw the Deerfield-Highland Park Hockey Association membership grow to 551 boys and two girls.
An air supported enclosure, formerly a tennis dome, was purchased and erected over the ice in 1972. It was to be the first of two coverings. After the original was irreparably damaged in a storm, insurance proceeds funded the purchase of a replacement.
The official open house for the facility, which came to be known as "the Bubble," was conducted on December 13, 1972. This was just prior to the Association's Second Annual Christmas Vacation Hockey School. The Bubble had little heat in the lobby and none in the rink, but was welcomed protection from heavy snows and inclement weather. On several occasions snow collapsed the airfilled structure, and emergency repairs, consisting of sewing and reinflation, went late into the night. Falcons' families continued to maintain the facility while Trinity College paid for the utilities.
For fifteen years, until 1987, the Bubble was considered the best ice surface in the area. Two other area youth hockey programs, the Highland Park Leafs and the Lake Forest Vikings, faltered during the seventies, and they united with the Falcons Hockey Association in a new distracting format.
The Falcons held its first Turkey Time Tournament in 1981, and it has been one of the Midwest's best youth hockey tournaments since its beginning. For many years, Thanksgiving Thursday was not complete without the evening's Falcons Alumni game against the Alaskan All-Stars.
When Bannockburn annexed the Trinity land, the Bubble was given a tenyear exemption from zoning requirements that defined it as a non-conforming structure. The exemption actually lasted 12 years, but when the Bubble became the focal point of threatened litigation, the village had no choice but to require its removal.
The Association sold the Bubble and the rink to the Marshall Hockey Club of Marshall, Minnesota in 1987. After it was dismantled over a period of four days and loaded onto four flatbed trucks, it was driven off to the “land of golden gophers and 10,000 lakes”, never to be seen again. It is reported, however, that while the Bubble is no longer in existence, the rink is still working well in Marshall.
Highland Park's Centennial Ice Arena was built in 1973 by the Park District, and along with the Lake Forest College Ice Rink, has been considered the home ice of the Falcons since the sale of the Bubble. Even in the Bubble's prime, the Highland Park and Lake Forest ice surfaces were utilized extensively by the organization due to the popularity of the Falcons. Due to the continued growth of the Falcons, the ice arena at Lake Forest Academy and the Glacier in Vernon Hills have also been increasingly utilized by the Falcons. The Falcons have continued to assist these rinks in their financial needs for maintenance and upgrades, to provide our program with facility needs for years to come. The recent renovation of Centennial is just one example.
Falcons Varsity-Travel teams have competed successfully throughout the United States and Canada, and the House League continues to provide the highest quality recreational hockey program in the Midwest. Combining this historic and successful foundation with the goals and philosophies of our Director of Hockey, the Falcons Hockey Association looks forward to a new era of excellence in youth hockey.
