Figure skaters glided and hockey players collided at the Buckskill Winter Club’s ice rink last weekend, raising money as they did so for the Katy’s Courage Foundation that the late Katy Stewart’s parents, Brigid and Jim Stewart, set up in 2012 to fund pediatric cancer research, provide local high school seniors with scholarships, and offer counseling at the Children’s Museum of the East End for families dealing with loss.
The two-day fund-raiser, which the Stewarts, who live in upstate Andes, attended, was capped by an ice show Sunday evening in which Ice Theatre of New York pros and Buckskill figure skating instructors and young students performed. A hockey game, in which Pat Rice and Johnny Pizzo were said to be the top scorers, was played Saturday night, and Saturday morning, as has been the case all season, the Hackers Hockey Club took to the ice.
Doug DeGroot, who, with his wife, Kathryn, owns the club, said it was the 13th year a Katy’s Courage event has been held there. Seventy-six businesses here offered raffle prizes, and there was one silent auction item, a one-night stay for two at the Montauk Beach House.
As for the winter, “It’s been wintry,” DeGroot said, adding that the rink had to be closed only on Feb. 16, because of an all-day rain.
“Hackers hockey is like a team of horses in a hospital,” Tim Garneau, who six years ago took the baton from John Battle, one of the club’s founders, said before the group divided itself into white and blue teams Saturday morning.
The Hackers, who number, according to Garneau, “29 men and one woman,” have been around as long as Buckskill’s National Hockey League-size rink has, which is to say for 20 years.
Hockey lessons given to youngsters at Buckskill during that span have led in large measure to the formation of the Southampton Whalers, a freshman entry in the Suffolk County High School Hockey League. Though based at the Southampton Ice Rink, where Bryan Wish coaches them, the Whalers have played three games at Buckskill this winter.
