Jun. 19--PORT NECHES -- No one would look at John Leggett's stocky build and consider him a candidate for one of those weight-loss shows on TV, but the photos don't lie.
One photo showed Leggett among a group of about 15 men and women whose rounded faces sat above hockey gear that covered their sometimes lumpy bodies.
As for the other photo -- taken four months after the first -- Leggett noted a major difference.
"It's remarkable when you consider the total amount of weight we all lost," said Leggett, one of many struck by how many calories got burned atop a pair of ice skates.
Leggett, 48, lost an estimated 25 pounds through a season of playing in a rec hockey league on the same ice used by the Texas Wildcatters professional hockey team in Ford Arena.
Once the Wildcatters' season ended in April, ice was removed from the arena and Leggett needed another way to not only get his hockey fix, but also to keep his shirts from feeling snug again.
So, he began another rec hockey league -- one that uses four-wheel inline skates, plays weekly games on an indoor cement surface and has four teams, complete with colorful uniforms and referees.
"Without ice, it's the best thing you can have," said Leggett, who wore a lime green mesh jersey with a No. 7 on the back for the league's third week of games Tuesday.
Games are played at Champion's Rollarena, 2326 Nederland Ave., in Port Neches, and the 12-week league runs until Aug. 12. After then, Leggett hopes to have found enough members for his Golden Triangle Inline Hockey club to expand the league from four teams to eight.
"We're all glad to keep playing hockey," said Leggett, who played ice hockey during his childhood in upstate New York.
Waiting for ice
Although weight loss for some has been a bonus, many players said they hope to keep their hockey skills sharp long enough for ice to return to Ford Arena.
For that to happen, another professional hockey team will need to call Ford Arena home.
The Wildcatters spent five years in Beaumont, but poor attendance caused ownership to move the team to a new arena in the Los Angeles suburb of Ontario, Calif.
The owner of a minor-league hockey team in Austin looked into moving a team to Beaumont for next season but shelved those plans until he found a local investor. The next chance for ice hockey to return to Ford Arena is the fall of 2009.
Until then, inline hockey will have to do.
The rink is 170-by-70 feet -- smaller than the 200-by-85 ice -- and has a blue cement surface covered with a clear plastic epoxy. The puck is lighter but similar in size to an actual puck.
Games are played with four to a side and there is no intentional body contact, unlike in the rough-and-tumble ice version, which has five to a side.
Deep hockey history
Although this is a first-year league, the history of roller hockey in Southeast Texas dates to the 1950s, said Rollarena owner Roy Huckaby.
Huckaby, 62, played on a Port Neches-based team that won four straight national championships in a sport called "ball roller hockey," played on a hard surface with a weighted ball instead of a puck.
Huckaby's sons, Keith and Karl, played on six title-winning teams and competed at the Barcelona (Spain) Olympics in 1992, the only year in which the Olympics had a ball hockey competition.
Keith Huckaby, 42, said the Rollarena has been home to youth roller hockey for decades and adult leagues have come and gone.
"Hockey in this area has been around for a long time, but there's still people who don't know about it," said Keith Huckaby, a player in Leggett's inline hockey league.
Variety of players
Many current players hope the sport can develop a stronger following as workers from hockey-playing regions in the north migrate to Southeast Texas for refinery expansions over the next five years.
Among current players, Gordon Gillies, a 46-year-old mechanical inspector at a local chemical plant, is a native Canadian who played hockey on frozen ponds as a child but never played the inline game until this month.
"It's a little foreign," said Gillies, who skated in one game and played goalie in another Tuesday, "but this is the next best thing to being on ice."
Beaumont resident Matt Schnitz, 20, turned six years of playing on a local roller hockey team into a chance to play a season of ice hockey with a traveling team in Pennsylvania last season.
Alvin Mott is a 35-year-old insurance claims adjuster who drives from his home north of Sulphur, La., to play a weekly inline game. He learned to skate on ice during the winter.
Nederland native Myers Mullins, 22, played one season of high school football but stuck with roller hockey, a sport he picked up at age 10.
"It's the only thing I wanted to play," he said.
Leggett, a technician at the Energy Museum, said he hopes to attract more players as workers from the north migrate to Southeast Texas for the refinery expansions over the next five years.
As for members of the weight-loss club, Steve Talalis said he dropped 43 pounds by playing ice hockey in the winter. He continued to play on a team with Beaumont and Houston-area residents that recently won a tournament in San Antonio.
Like Leggett, he has high hopes for the inline league.
"We have to get the word out about this," Talalis said. "The best way to do that is through word-of-mouth."
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