Young, Bill and Shirley

BORN APRIL 26TH 1927, Bill Young began roller hockey at 13 and played with Mac Edwards throughout the 1940s and 50s at Adelaide's quad roller rinks. He taught roller skating at the Our Boys Institute, a skilled speed skater, figure skater and roller dancer who easily transitioned to ice skating. The first Life Member of the Adelaide Redwings, one of the state's original ice hockey clubs in 1964, he went on to became a coach and judge of figure skating on ice. Some believe his leadership in ice sports over the years saved many a young man from going astray.

Yet, Bill did not discover ice as a skater, rather as a refrigeration mechanic installing freezing equipment at the new ice rink upstairs in Hindley Street, in the heart of Adelaide's nightclub district. The owners, Molony & Gordon, employed Young as the second manager of St Moritz Adelaide. Dimensioned at just 25m x 10m, the new rink was well below the IIHF specifications of 61m x 30.5m, and its owners were initially unconvinced even recreational ice hockey could be played there. However, Young and old roller skating colleagues, Ted Budarick and Mac Edwards, thought otherwise.

They called for players and ran a recruitment drive among the better skaters at a Christmas party scratch match organised at the rink. He then convinced Ted Molony to give ice hockey a try, and it was not long before the local skaters proved the rink owners wrong. They made their own gear from newspaper and foam, and played shinny for a year during 1963. On their next visit, impressed by what they saw, the owners permitted competition ice hockey. Matches were three-on-three (less a winger and defender) over two twenty-minute periods on Thursday nights at 9:30 pm after general skating, with training for an hour from 7:00 am Sunday. Bill also started the first Pee Wee (U15) league at that time. The Blackhawks, the Li'l Devils (1964 Premiers) and the Saints trained and played on Saturday mornings.

The first senior league initially comprised the Falcons, Magpies, Redwings, Tigers (1964) and later the Maple Leafs (mid-1964). The Magpies' Bob Charman and the Tigers' John McKinlay took the first face-off. The Leafs were the first League Premiers in 1964 with Alan Dyer, Mac Molloy, Joe Szuna, Val Puck, Chris Fennell and Jim Beatty. The short-lived All-Stars formed in 1965 for one season, morphing with a number of other players into the Blackhawks. The Maple Leafs dropped out in 1966, but otherwise today's South Australian league is the same as Young's foundation league.

In 1966, Young formed the first state ice hockey association, became its first president, and launched the first official State team that year in Melbourne. There, for the first time, South Australia played for the Brown Trophy against New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. Young was state coach, pitted against teams stacked with imported overseas players. In 1969, two South Australians, Rusty Smith and Stephen Kilgariff, made the cut for the Australian All Star team the first time. In October 1967, Young coached a state team against a team from HMCS Yukon, a Canadian Navy vessel visiting Port Adelaide. The match finished in a high scoring draw.

Bill married an Adelaide girl named Shirley, born February 20th 1932, who became deeply involved with the ice rink business. The couple's daughters — Beryl, Janet and Karen — took up figure skating, Karen switching to speed skating in 1985 and competing in three Olympics. She married short track speed skater, John Kah, one of the four Australians to win the 5,000m relay at the 1991 World Championships in Sydney, Australia's first Worlds victory in a winter sport.

Bill sold the rink in 1978 when the proposed new Olympic-size rink at Payneham threatened to drain its patronage. Eventually left with insufficient income to keep afloat, the tiny boutique rink closed in 1979. Young's 20-year association with it had enabled him to write a page of local history. He laid the foundations of organised local ice hockey in South Australia, extending the vision begun by H Newman Reid in the same street 60 years earlier, and launching state ice sports onto the national and international stages.

Bill Young died on March 18th 2011 and his wife Shirley died on January 23rd 2018.