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February 27, 2006

VIDEO: 61-year-old physician from Brazil hasn’t missed hockey season in 15 years

By Mark Bennett

Ask Jim Stephens if he’s the oldest player in the BUNS On Ice Hockey League, and he’ll reach for his left shirt sleeve.

Stephens is only 61 years old. Another league member — a 65-year-old who grew up in Chicago — is a veteran of 50 years on the ice.

“He’s good,” Stephens said. “In fact, he gave me that.”

He points to a long scar running down his arm. Just as Stephens finished sweeping a pass to a teammate during a game a few seasons ago, this guy collided with him. The impact tore Stephens’ bicep tendon off the bone. It happened that January. By spring, Stephens was back at the Carmel Ice Skadium — home of the league’s games — playing again.

“Jim is a pretty tough character,” said Paul King, commissioner of the league.

But Stephens is not some renegade on skates. He’s a lifelong athlete who, King said, “is more interested in getting out there and getting a good workout than getting a hat trick. He’s a competitor. But he’s a really good guy.”

He’s also a physician in Brazil, where he specializes in gastrointestinal medicine. And when he’s not wearing doctor garb, he’s often covered in hockey equipment, or catcher’s gear for baseball, or a fastpitch softball uniform — hardly a routine wardrobe for most sixtysomethings.

“A few years ago, my wife said, ‘You really should think about taking up a sport that doesn’t involve a helmet, a mouthpiece or a cup,’” Stephens said, grinning. “I guess she was talking about golf.”

He doesn’t mind golf. But Stephens played baseball and basketball at State High School more than four decades ago, and still prefers team sports. King admires Stephens keeping hockey on his list.

“If you’re 60 years old, and you’re playing hockey anywhere, that’s pretty amazing,” said King, who oversees the 16-team league.

Stephens drives to Carmel each Sunday night to skate alongside players whose ages average between 35 and 45. There are beginners who’ve always loved hockey but never played it, former college players, 18-year-olds, Europeans, lifelong skaters and a few talented women “who don’t back off,” Stephens said.

“We’ve got everything from a guy who mucks out stables to heart surgeons and airline pilots,” Stephens said, “a good cross-section of people.”

Their love of hockey is the common thread. They pay $235 and buy their own equipment to play in one of the year-round league’s 14-week seasons.

“They have a blast,” King said.

He got connected with the league in 1989, when its founder — Indianapolis microbiologist Randy Rosenthal — asked him to coach this assortment of players. King found several reasons to turn Rosenthal down, but finally relented to tutor these people just once. “So I came out and coached one session and absolutely loved the program,” King recalled.

He’s been doing that ever since.

It’s a contact sport

Rosenthal, whose passion for the game and the league kept it growing as commissioner, died a couple years ago. When King agreed to assume the commissioner’s position, he also changed the name to Randy Rosenthal’s BUNS On Ice Hockey League. Back in ’89, they’d created that acronym BUNS from the slogan “Beginners Using No Skills.”

But the players get coaching before and during each of their 90-minute games. Each team divides its roster into three “lines” of players, rotating in and out at two-minute intervals. Line 1 players — the most-skilled — match up against the other team’s Line 1 unit, Line 2s (intermediates) vs. Line 2s, and Line 3s (novices) vs. Line 3s.

Those pairings make players comfortable that they won’t wind up in a bone-crushing duel with someone half their age and twice their skill levels.

Still, this is hockey. Even with those skill-level divisions and rules prohibiting checking (hard body-to-body contact up against the glass), slapshots (those using above-the-waist backswings) and fighting, it can get rough.

“It’s still a contact sport,” Stephens said. “You always have collisions and people going into the boards.”

He remembers skating into the corner for the puck against an opponent 20 years younger and 50 pounds heavier.

“Fortunately, I came out with the puck,” he said. “And more fortunately, we both came out of it OK. Most 61-year-old guys probably wouldn’t come out of that.”

Most people of any age wouldn’t survive Stephens’ list of injuries, period. He’s had two surgeries on his right elbow, another on his left elbow, one on his knee and two on his right shoulder. Almost all related to his sports activities, which still include not only BUNS hockey and softball, but also the Terre Haute Men’s Senior Baseball League which has a motto of “Don’t Go Soft, Play Hardball.”

One potentially lethal mishap away from the playing field exemplifies Stephens’ durability.

A fortunate guy

With his arm propped out to his side by a brace after a sports-induced shoulder surgery, Stephens decided to work on his daughter Jessica’s car with his free left hand. Somehow, the car’s gas line ignited. Stephens’ shirt caught on fire. To douse the flames, he rolled on the ground, which crushed the splint on his injured shoulder and compounded its damage. Another surgery would follow. The burns on his chest would require five skin grafts, too.

But the real danger happened an instant earlier.

As the car and his clothes lit up, Stephens took a breath. Even though his rolling soon put out that fire and allowed him to walk away, that one breath had already scorched his trachea and lungs. As a doctor, he’d seen patients eventually die from similar internal burns and realized the implications.

“It was a scary two weeks before I knew that wasn’t going to happen to me,” Stephens said.

As he pondered the reason he’s been able to keep on playing through all the wounds, Stephens said, “I think I heal up well and work at rehab. As a doctor, I know it’s not just the surgery — it’s also how you rehab it.”

But, thinking for a moment more, he added, “Fortunately, I guess God’s with me on these things.”

Somehow, Stephens hasn’t missed a hockey season since he joined the BUNS league 15 years ago.

His window to the sport opened shortly after he and his wife, Elaine, met as teenagers. She introduced him to ice skating one winter day at Deming Park. “And both her and the skating remained permanent parts of my life,” he said.

Aside from a little “pond hockey” here and there, the BUNS league gave Stephens his first chance at organized hockey. A friend, a former trainer with the old Indianapolis Racers, first took him to play at Indy with some former pros. “One guy said, ‘You skate like a refrigerator, but you do OK,’” Stephens said.

Fifteen years later, he’s still playing a game he calls “basketball on ice.”

And Elaine sees no end to that soon. “I think he’s got a lot of hockey matches left in him,” she said.

As Jim put it, “Every year, I think I probably won’t be doing this next year, and every year I’m back out there. A long time ago, somebody told me, ‘Do as much as you can for as long as you can.’”

Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.

Get connected:

League name: Randy Rosenthal’s BUNS On Ice Hockey League.

Home ice: Carmel Ice Skadium, 1040 Third Ave., Carmel.

Operates: Year-round.

Age range: From 18 years old up.

Skill range: From beginners to intermediates. Players compete against those of similar abilities.

Game duration: Games are scheduled on various nights of the week, typically last 90 minutes and include coaching on specific skill areas and team play.

Fees: Players pay $235 each to participate in a 14-week season. They must also supply their own equipment.

Tools: Players need a stick, shoulder pads, gloves, elbow pads, shin guards, padded pants, a helmet and lots of tape.

To join: Visit the league’s Web site at www.bunsonice.com.

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