Peter 'Skip' Fryling
SHS Class of 1958
What can you say about a guy who started skating on a frozen pond in North Scituate at the age of thirteen and just laced them up again this week at the age of seventy-eight? And probably hasn’t missed a week or two in between. There’s very few of us with a passion for hockey like Skip Fryling.
Skip, along with Ron Rencurrel, Paul Johnson, Bill McKeever, Jon Story, and Bruce Sunnerberg formed the core of the original 1956-1957 “junior” hockey team at Scituate High School. These young men played pond hockey together for years until the age of sixteen and seventeen when they finally convinced the school committee to recognize their efforts and endorse their sport. Scituate had been without a varsity hockey program until the late-1950s when this group of teenagers inspired its creation.
Growing up on Booth Hill Road, Skip walked or rode his bike to North Scituate’s Hunter’s Pond where Country Way turns into Cohasset’s South Main Street. Once the ice froze, it became a hockey surface all day, every day from December to March. If the ice was better at the Dishpan across Route 3A, Skip would walk over there to get a game started. Skip and his friends chose sides amongst themselves for games of three-on-three and occasionally against a group of fathers who were looking for a pond hockey game. Skip remembers how skilled many of the fathers were on the ice. He recalls watching them tie magazines to their shins for protection from pucks and stick blades. He also remembers the old men using every opportunity to run up the score on the youngsters.
Playing pond hockey on a good surface of ice was a joy for these young men. As they got a little older and learned to drive, they would all pile into someone’s truck and head down to the cranberry bogs on Old Oaken Bucket Road or, even better, Greenbush pond. Greenbush had a huge ice surface where they had more room to practice skills and show off moves.
By playing exclusively on ponds, Skip and his friends got very skilled at passing and puck control. A bad pass could end up lost at Greenbush pond, so they put extra effort into making crisp blade to blade passes. Sloppy play resulted in delays in which they were forced to search for the puck. The town of Scituate would sometimes flood Greenbush pond and even clean the surface for them. Repurposed barrels were used as goals until someone’s dad welded steel to make regulation-size hockey nets.
When the “junior” team of 1956-1957 got to play at Salt’s Rink in Weymouth, using the boards to bounce passes to one another was a thrill. No more chasing errant pucks. Playing with lights strung on poles twenty feet above the ice surface was a new and different experience.
The “junior” team was created by Skip, Ron Rencurrel, Paul Johnson, Jon Story, Bruce Sunnerberg, Bill McKeever, and a few other young skaters in 1956-1957. Joseph Gately of the Scituate VFW coached. After a very successful first season (10-1) against other area junior varsity high school teams, they lobbied for a real varsity team.
The 1957-1958 varsity team was the culmination of their long desire to play in the South Shore League against the best public high school hockey teams in the area. Besides Skip, Paul, Bruce, Jon, and Bill McKeever, the other seniors on this first varsity team included Bill Kay, Jack Kelly, George Rodgers, Glen Tedford, and Luther Haartz. Paul Finnegan, a teacher at the high school, coached the squad. The team manager was Don Allen. Scituate’s varsity hockey team acquitted themselves very well that first year in the South Shore League. The seed was planted for even greater participation and success in competitive high school hockey. That senior year for Skip and the rest of them went by quickly. Some went on to prep school and college; some stayed in Scituate to earn a living.
Encouraged by his guidance counselor, Skip applied and was accepted to Norwich University in Vermont. There was no shortage of talented high school hockey players from all over New England and eastern Canada going out for the hockey program his freshman year. Melrose and Arlington were well represented at Norwich that year. He persevered and made the freshman team and then the varsity squad his sophomore year.
Norwich played other schools like Dartmouth College, Northeastern, West Point, Colby, Bowdoin, Middlebury, AIC, and Harvard University. Skip played three seasons at Norwich before beginning his commitment to the U.S. military in March of 1962. Rather than accepting a two-year draft commitment, he instead opted for a three-year service period in which he could choose the location of his service. Skip chose to go overseas and was assigned to the recon unit of the Army’s 7th Cavalry Regiment in the Bavarian region of Southern Germany. The 7th Cavalry patrolled the border between Germany and Czechoslovakia. Russians patrolled the other side.
The decision to go to Europe in the early 1960s was not a popular one for many young Americans but ended up being quite fortuitous for Skip. He was initially stationed in Bamberg, Germany and later was transferred to Schweinfurt. At this time, Skip was told of a hockey team being put together in Bad Tolz, south of Munich. Those good enough to make the team were afforded special privileges. Hockey players were on “special duty” for the season, away from their unit. There was obviously a special incentive to stand out in those tryouts. Skip made the team and went to Lenggries, Germany to train.
Lenggries is a small town of about 9,000, situated six or seven miles south of Bad Tolz. During the twelve-week hockey season, the Army team was stationed here but traveled widely in Europe. The U.S. Army/Europe (USAEUR) Eagles, as the team was known, competed against teams from Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, France, and Germany. The team practiced three times a week and played twice. After the season was over, he returned to his unit.
Sergeant Fryling completed his military service in 1965. When he returned to Scituate, he was shocked to find that the Cohasset Winter Gardens was being built. Finally there was a hockey rink practically in his backyard. There were several weeknight hockey leagues already formed and he quickly joined some of his former teammates playing competitive hockey at the new rink. Paul Johnson was already skating at Cohasset then as were Peter Breen, Peter Cooney, Frank Quinn, Jim Grip, and Charlie Hoar.
Skip and his friends worked, played hockey, went to Bruins games, and eventually got married. Skip met his wife Mary Ann, who hails from the Portland, Maine area, during this period. They soon married and raised a family.
Skip and his buddies had Bruins season tickets in the mid to late 1960s. They took in a lot of games when the Bruins were struggling. However, in 1966 things clearly changed. Interest in the Bruins locally started to rise dramatically with the arrival of an 18-year old defenseman from Parry Sound, Ontario. Skip and Mary Ann, along with a number of their friends were at the Boston Garden on May 10, 1970 when Bobby Orr scored the overtime game winner against the St. Louis Blues to win the Stanley Cup. He has a signed, framed photo of the “Flying Bobby” in his den with the ticket stub from the game tucked in the corner of the frame. Section 13, Row K, Seat 5.
Between work and raising a family, Skip continued to play hockey. A lot of hockey. Here’s Skip on going to Lake Placid to play in a pond hockey tournament: “Pond hockey came up in the locker room over a postgame beverage in 2009. I had noticed magazine articles featuring pond hockey tournaments in various locations. Minnesota was the first one we noticed but the expense and time off for travel was too much. Then we realized Lake Placid was host to a big pond hockey tournament. What hockey player wouldn’t want to go to Lake Placid? The next year, two teams of six from Scituate signed up - one team in their 40s and the other in their 50s. I played with the 50s as this group was the oldest group available.
“We played two 20-minute periods 4 on 4, gentlemen’s rules - no goalies -and 4-inch planks for goals. We had no idea what to expect, but off we went. We stayed at the Golden Arrow Lakeside Resort which was right on Mirror Lake. We got dressed inside and walked with our skates on out to the pond surface. We would play four games total - one game Friday and Saturday morning and another in the afternoons. If you made the finals you played Sunday morning, and you were on the road home by noon. We traveled to Lake Placid on Thursday and returned home on Sunday depending if we made the playoff game or not. The on-ice and off-ice stories from those trips are legendary.”
Skip and Mary Ann Fryling reside in Scituate. They are the proud parents of three daughters and grandparents of five. If you want to hear some of his pond hockey stories, send him an email. He’s happy to share his many memories of growing up in North Scituate playing this great game. He may even show you his original 1956 junior team sweater.
Edited February 11, 2019