Ron Rencurrel
SHS Class of 1958
Ron Rencurrel first learned to skate at the age of five or six on a frozen duck pond on the Lawson estate in the Egypt section of Scituate. The duck pond is clearly marked on a map of the property, which Lawson named Dreamwold, in the archives of the Scituate Historical Society. The pond looks to be about an acre at most, situated between the estate’s horse stables and Lawson’s oval racetrack.
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Like his friends, Ron played basketball and football, but he favored ice hockey, following his older brother Bob into the sport. Bob Rencurrel, born in 1927, attended Thayer Academy and went on to play college hockey at Dartmouth in Hanover, NH.
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Hockey skills were not easy to learn in those days. Kids could learn baseball or basketball in gym class or after school, but there was no formal instruction or organized youth leagues available for hockey yet in the town of Scituate. Ron taught himself hockey by reading about it and then taking what he read to the pond. He was right-handed but shot left. He played every position, even goalie, as a kid. When he got to high school he played left wing and left defense.
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Years later, Ron played football and hockey at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, following in the footsteps of another brother, Charlie, in football, who preceded him at school by fifteen months. Ron figures he had no more than 125 appearances on a hockey rink with boards by the time he arrived in Canton, a town closer to Montreal than Albany or Syracuse. In between, he was instrumental in helping start the hockey program at Scituate High School in 1957-1958.
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The inspiration for the first Scituate High School hockey team came one year prior. In 1956-1957, Joseph Gately of the Scituate VFW formed a “junior” hockey team. As coach of this “junior” team, Mr. Gately was fully supportive of his players’ aspirations in establishing Scituate’s first high school hockey team. He encouraged Ron and his friends to recruit other SHS kids interested in playing organized hockey and ultimately to lobby the school committee to add ice hockey to the school sports program.
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It’s important to point out that some Scituate kids aspiring to play competitive high school hockey in these years opted to attend prep schools or private high schools like Archbishop Williams in Braintree. Archbishop Williams anchored the very competitive South Shore Hockey League with a talented pool of hockey players. Jack Garrity, a Medford MA high school hockey legend who’s an inductee to the United States Hockey, Massachusetts Hockey, and Boston University Athletics Halls of Fame, was the first head hockey coach at Archie’s.
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Garrity recruited talented hockey players from South Shore towns lacking varsity hockey programs. However, a number of his recruits had a high school hockey program but were urged to attend Archbishop Williams by their parents, seeking a private school education for them. Weymouth, Quincy, North Quincy, Hingham, Braintree, and Milton rounded out the South Shore League.
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Meanwhile, Ron and his teammates were told that if they could generate enough interest participating as a junior hockey team, they had a better shot at getting accepted as a new varsity sport at Scituate High School. But resources were scarce. There were no rinks in town, they had to ask a teammate’s father to make regulation-size goals for pond practice, and they wore used football jerseys as hockey sweaters. They had to buy or make their own equipment, right down to the handmade goalie gloves.
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Ron estimates they practiced at least 30 times as a team on town ponds that winter, skating outside for a couple of hours in the morning, a couple in the afternoon, and then a couple in the evening until they could no longer see the edges of the pond. Greenbush pond, Hunter’s pond, and even Musquashicut pond were used as practice ice as real rink ice was difficult to secure, especially without a budget. Around this time a new rink was being built in Weymouth, which they eventually got to use for games and a few practices.
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Despite these shortcomings, that first 1956-1957 “junior” team was a success. They went into that first season with better than average talent. Playing games at the new Salt’s Rink in Weymouth, these Scituate boys took on all comers. Coach Gately put together a schedule made up of other South Shore junior varsity teams with far more experience than his squad. Playing in real games for the first time in a real rink with real boards (but no roof), Scituate posted a record of 10 and 1. That success generated enough excitement to convince them that they could field a competitive varsity hockey team at Scituate High School.
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Appropriately, three starters from the “junior” team, Paul Johnson, Skip Fryling, and Ron Rencurrel went on to play college hockey: Paul at Boston University, Skip at Norwich, and Ron at St. Lawrence. Johnson and Bill McKeever later became head hockey coaches at Scituate High School and were instrumental in inspiring and teaching hundreds of high school players from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s.
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After that 1956-1957 “junior team” season, the players lobbied the school committee to provide the funds required to make ice hockey a varsity sport. Committee members Ed Gunn and Nellie Sides, Wendell Sides’ mother, supported their enthusiasm and agreed to set aside the necessary funds.
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Unfortunately for Ron, he was 19 years old his senior year and ineligible to play high school sports. Not wanting to give up hockey, he skated out of Salt’s Rink in Weymouth, playing forty games in a senior league and another ten games in a spring league of talented 19- and 20-year olds going off to college.
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Back in Scituate, the first group of hockey players couldn’t wait to hit the ice. They were finally going to reach their dream of playing other South Shore high school teams on real terms – varsity ice hockey. Resources were still scarce, but it didn’t matter. Each player was given a varsity football shirt and one stick for the season. A Northland Pro was $3 in 1957, including a roll of black tape. Everything else was a hand-me-down or borrowed from another program.
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The coach that year was Paul Finnegan, a teacher at the high school. He played hockey competitively at Boston College and his players picked up on his experience and enthusiasm. Coach Finnegan was no pushover though, reminding his players to stay sharp if they expected to compete at this level. Several players remember Coach telling them they looked like they still wore double-runners and had better work on their skills if they expected their wrist shots to break anything thicker than a pane of glass.
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Again, ice time was difficult to secure. They managed only one hour a week on Salt’s Rink, so practice was on the ponds. It didn’t matter though, as long as the games were played on real ice. Opponents that season were King Phillip High School, Archbishop Williams, Hingham, Weymouth, Brockton, and Milton. These were well-established programs but Scituate was not intimidated. Their first win came early against King Phillip and they managed to hold their own through a very tough schedule. The finale against Hingham made it all worthwhile. Hingham had beaten Scituate decisively 5-0 in their first matchup. The last game of the season offered a bit of redemption. Scituate got behind hot junior goaltender Bill McKeever and stuffed Hingham 2-0. It was a huge boost to the new high school hockey program.
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Many eastern Massachusetts high school hockey games were then played in the old Boston Arena, known today as Matthews Arena, on the Northeastern University campus. It wasn’t until the mid-1950s that rinks began to appear here and there in the greater Boston area. Salt’s Rink in Weymouth opened in the winter of 1956. Braintree’s Ridge Arena, on West Street, was built in 1965.
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The Cohasset Winter Garden, where most Scituate, Cohasset, and Hull kids learned to skate, wasn’t built until 1966. Ron skated for a time at the Winter Garden in 1966 after his military service. According to Ron, Henri Richard along with a number of Montreal Canadiens came down to the Cohasset Winter Garden for a skating clinic that summer to teach skills to young South Shore hockey players.
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Ron went on to St. Lawrence University in 1958 and graduated in 1962. He played hockey and football. The Skating Saints made the NCAA Frozen Four each year he was there. Ron married and entered the military right after graduating. In the advanced ROTC program, he served three-plus years in the Army as a Regular Officer. After leaving the service, Ron and his family moved to the Hartford, CT area. He continued to play hockey in Connecticut for the Hartford Leafs. He worked for United Technologies for three years and the Aetna Life Insurance Company in Hartford for twenty-five years.
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Ron Rencurrel is retired and lives on Cape Cod with his wife Evelyn. He enjoys golf and biking and just celebrated his 80th birthday.
edited January 5, 2019