WAUPUN — The Waupun Ice Arena hosted the first annual Waupun v Beaver Dam Alumni game last Friday, February 14, in the day leading up to IceFest.
The game was organized by Malachi Buchholz of Waupun and Austin Ehlenfeldt of Beaver Dam. While Waupun already has an Alumni Game with two Waupun teams, this game was specifically organized with the younger generations in mind so that there could be a faster paced game.
“We’ve always wanted to do it,” Malachi Buchholz said after the game. “Austin and I have always talked about it. Austin has his kids in the Waupun Youth Hockey Association, but he’s from Beaver Dam.”
“With IceFest happening this weekend they asked the rink to have an event, so we decided this would be a good time for us to do this,” he said. “The rink gave us the ice time, so we decided to have it for this Friday, and it was the best day so it just kind of worked out.”
This is different from the existing annual Waupun Alumni Game, which is typically organized around signups to the event from only people who were members of the Waupun Hockey Association in High School and includes some members from early on in the organization’s history from the 1970s.
“We hoped we had the best team, but tonight we didn’t and I’m sure they did the same thing,” Malachi said. “They struggled to get a full alumni team, but they usually do theirs in the spring, we do ours in the winter. And it’s kind of getting towards the end of the hockey season—there’s not a lot of guys skating anymore, but we figured it out.”
“We’re hoping that we can keep doing this in Beaver Dam and Waupun,” Malachi said. “Fond du Lac High School and Springs High School actually play each other every year because they can’t get enough guys for a solo High School alumni game, so we talked about having a tournament in the future with Fondy and Springs, and to be able to do a tournament every year would be really cool.”
The game ended with a victory for Beaver Dam, with a final score of 9-3. Waupun scored early on in the first period but were quickly overtaken and couldn’t retake the lead.
In between periods they also had a chuck-a-puck fundraiser and 50/50 raffle. Scott Van Galen, who was announcing for the game, was the winner of chuck-a-puck and donated his winnings back to the Hockey Association for the rink floor fundraiser. Half of the ticket proceeds went to Beaver Dam and the other half to Waupun.
