Eissportcenter Osnabrück

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Eissportcenter Osnabrück

Information and visiting-experience by Bernt Pölling-Vocke (bernty@gmx.com)

Osnabrueck´s answer to all those Madison Square Gardens, Brehmstrassens or United Centers of the world is the Eissportcenter Osnabrueck, home of the Osnabrueck Stars (Inlinehockey) and Osnabrueck Bladeflyers (Icehockey). Both teams more or less play with a huge lack of public interest and could be considered semi-professional at best. Rumors indicate that the Bladeflyers even have scheduled practice-sessions but when I got interested in playing for that team and inquired about those times a few winters ago the practice-sessions where on friday evenings after 10 pm and prior to 9 am on sunday. I don´t know if anything about this has changed so far but apparently the owners of the arena put the emphasis on other activities than team-sports.

Visiting the Eissportcenter Osnabrueck is of course a worthwhile experience. If you happen to drop by in the summer you might become a part of our 3:03 pm-hockey and besides the general fee of 5 marks for the building you don´t even have to drop a single cent in addition to that in order to see us flying over the surface. If you also happen to bring some equipment you might get drafted within minutes for a whole new perspective of 3:03-hockey!

On a ice-cold winter-day a couple of yours ago I also went to a game of the Bladeflyers. Due to the fact that the heating-unit of the seating-straight wasn´t installed at that time (well, still isn´t and never will...) I decided after the first period that there are better places to freeze to death. Even though I left about 3,33 marks of the 5 marks  I had paid to get into the building unused I didn´t really have any regrets when I took off.

Just for the case that some kind of success ever comes to the Osnabrueck Stars or Bladeflyers the team will also run into additional trouble. As soon as you move up to the upper leagues in Germany you might not get a license when your playing surface has nothing to do with the international standard-sizes. And while the city of Osnabrueck helped the funding for the Eissportcenter nobody shelled out the extra-money for some expert-advise about the normal sizes of a rink and in the end what the city ended up with was a rather unique shape. I am pretty sure that the city will dig into it´s pockets again when the success happens on the ice or concrete and that a new facility will be build but at the moment everything is just fine the (strange) way it is.

The building itself is used as an inline-center in the summer and a normal skating-rink (ice) in the winter. In the summertime about two thirds of the surface are available for cool looking and even cooler skating youngsters in trash-sack-sized clothes who happen to find it fun to skate on pipes or to jump around like crazy. Of course they also enjoy the freedom of allowed underage-smoking so if a 9-year-old asks you about a cigarette the suprise-factor should be rather limited. The remaining third of the surface is reserved for real sport as we´re doing it and while the kids chase themselves around in the other two thirds we chase a little ball around in our part of the building. Due to the lack of a working PR-department of the Bladeflyers I can´t really write too much about them, I also somehow think that nobody cares too much.

If a player or member of the Osnabrueck Bladeflyers somehow stumbles along these lines I would be happy to receive any information that would be worth some space here. Just e-mail me at bernty@aol.com and the Bladeflyers will get their space here as well.

And now the starting-lineup of the Osnabrueck-Stars with full-sized playercards as well:

Starting Lineup of the

* team-leaders in bold writing.