Peconic Wildcats, A Youth Travel Hockey Club That Serves The East End, Has A Successful First Season

This weekend will mark the end of the first season of the Peconic Wildcats youth travel hockey program. By all accounts, it was a success.

Bryan Wish, Southampton Ice Rink director and general manager of the Wildcats program, overseeing all three of its different age groups, came up with the idea of starting a youth hockey travel program that served the East End a few years back, but it took some time to develop.

The Wildcats call both the Southampton Ice Rink on County Road 39 and Buckskill Winter Club in East Hampton home during the winter.

“​The growth out here has been tremendous,” Wish said. “Even our mini-mites, which is our beginners hockey for 4-, 5- and 6-year-olds, that has around 70 players in that program. We have over 200 players in our travel program that go back and forth between Southampton and Buckskill. It’s been a development process up until this stage. We didn’t have enough players, or really the quality of players to run these programs, but they’ve really grown and the numbers are pretty strong. It’s taken some time, about three years or so, but we’re ready to continue to grow.”

Currently the program has 8U, 10U and 12U clubs with plans for adding both 14U and 16U clubs for the 2022-2023 season. The players hail primarily from across the South Fork, with some players from up-island, and Wish even said there are seven families from New York City who are also involved.

The Wildcats, a Tier III tournament-bound organization that competes in the Long Island Amateur Hockey League, are a part of the Peconic Hockey Foundation, an organization based out of Wading River that aims to grow the “culture of hockey by helping to offset the cost of participation and to create more opportunity to families who want to play hockey,” through scholarships, training and other programs.

Chris Minardi’s son Cam plays on the 10U team, and a few weeks ago the East Hampton family made the trek into Brooklyn to play a game. Minardi said, as his son has continued to play, he’s learned that there are a number of hockey rinks up-island, but there are no dedicated hockey rinks once you pass The Rinx in Hauppauge at Exit 58 of the Long Island Expressway.

Minardi said the dream, not only for him and his son, but for all hockey families on the East End, is for one day to have that dedicated rink closer to home. There has been plenty of talk in recent years of getting one, in fact Troy Albert, the Peconic Hockey Foundation president, who is Sebonack Golf Club’s chief operating officer, is on record about a year ago stating that through the foundation’s primary fundraiser — a golf outing with professional athletes at Sebonack — nearly $1 million of the needed $3 million had been raised to help build a rink in the Calverton area.

Additional donations can be made any time through the peconichockey.org website.

“My son is on the ice every day,” Minardi explained. “He can’t play other sports. He’s in three summer camps, there are tournaments all year round. The Wildcats have a summer team called the Penguins, which already has four tournaments lined up. I can get to The Rinx in about an hour with no traffic, but in the summertime it’s tough with all of the local traffic out here. All of these kids are at least on the ice once a week. I’ve calculated that we’ve been on the ice 120 times since November 1, which is almost every day.”

While the winter season is about to come to an end for the Southampton Ice Rink — the season officially ends April 3 — the Wildcats’ season will end this weekend with a tournament in Hershey, Pennsylvania. After which, the club will hold tryouts in April for next season at the Dix Hills Ice Rink.

For more information on the Wildcats, go to southamptonicerink.com.