Belmont hockey teams without home ice after rink closes
By Mike Sullivan, WBZ-TV
BELMONT - The Belmont Marauders are without home ice for the foreseeable future. The rink in town is breaking down, and Belmont voted not to build a new one.
On Friday, Viglirolo Ice Rink was closed to all skaters including high school and youth leagues. One of the compressors is broken, yet even when it is working, crews struggle to make ice.
"It's not a climate-controlled building. If it's not cold enough outside, you can't make ice," said Sheryl Grace, a parent of a senior hockey player at Belmont. "If you show up in the spring, if you get into the playoffs, and you are late in March, then it is starting to get warm. You show up it's slush to get on."
These issues are forcing the high school to rent ice times in other towns. Typically, the school gets the ice time for free in Belmont. Grace says the school is paying $2,500 a week to rent ice in Watertown. That figure buys the boys and girls teams just an hour of practice a day when they are usually practicing closer to two hours a day.
"If they can even find the time. That's the problem. The girls had to practice at 5:30 am, and the boys were pushed to 9:30 pm," said Grace, talking about the demand locally for ice times.
On the November ballot there was a vote for a potential $33.4 million rink. It did not garner enough votes to go forward, with the Belmont Select Board calling it a tie vote. Now the board is calling an emergency meeting on Monday to figure out what to do.
"This skating rink served the community very well, but it is well beyond its useful life," said Mark Paolillo, Chair of the Belmont Select Board.
While the district is spending money to play elsewhere, the rink is also losing money because it can't rent the ice to the public. This includes youth leagues. Palillo says the original plan for the new rink would have been cost neutral because the rink would have been able to make money off of rental times. Grace says typically newer rinks can charge more because they are nicer.
"We have an emergency meeting on Monday. The Select Board will discuss what we are going to do from an operational perspective," said Paolillo. "Re-evaluate whether we go back out in the spring during the annual town election for another debt exclusion vote."