Bill Donley was a gamer -- scammer too

A chilled but nostalgic Rick Beresford writes:

As the temperature drops dramatically here in the frozen northland, the pond-hockey tournament has returned to Lake Nokomis, bringing back lots of memories to the hockey-playing lad trapped inside this aging body. Tonight I'm thinking of the hockey heroes that I got to play with as a seventh grader in Alexandria.

Hockey was not an official school sport in the early sixties, so if a guy wanted to letter in a sport during the winter, he'd go out for basketball or wrestling. Hockey was only for guys (or for the odd girl like my sister, Heather) that loved the game. I got to play for the team starting in seventh grade and was pretty much in awe of the older guys....like Steve Longfellow, who would show up for games driving his '39 Cadillac, Jon "Boom Boom" Susag, and Gentleman Bill Donley, one of the best defensemen I ever played with.

I often wonder how many guys from Alex played hockey beyond high school. This August, when I was in Alex, I was fortunate to see Paul Donley, who tells this great story about his big brother, Bill.

Shell game

After high school, Bill was a student athlete at Concordia in Moorhead. He played football, but his real love was hockey. Back then, of course, all the games were played at an outdoor rink. So on one occasion, Paul had gone to Moorhead to watch Bill play a home game for Concordia. Bill was always a "gamer" and played hockey the way it should be played. During one of the early periods, Bill started checking another player other hard, and before too long they were in a pretty good fight.

The ref threw Bill out of the game. Since he wasn't allowed on the bench, he stood on a snowbank by his brother, Paul, until the end of the period. Then Bill dragged Paul to the locker room, and ordered Paul to put on Bill's sweater with the No. 48 on it. Obediently, Paul suited up wearing Bill's hockey sweater, wool hat and helmet. Bill put on a sweater with a different number. When they returned to the ice, Paul stood as the ejected player confined to the snowbank, while Bill played the rest of the game with his new number, undetected by the ref!

Now that's a guy who loves the game!

Paul says Bill is STILL playing hockey out east somewhere. Bill's team recently won its senior men's league championship.

Rick Beresford

PS...can you be a cub reporter when you're reporting sports news from 40 years ago?

(TB says: There is an opening for cub archivist and it pays the same as cub reporter.)