Source: Xinmin Evening News 2022-02-10 17:05
More than fifty years ago,
They used to be hockey teenagers at Beijing Shichahai Sports School.
Dreaming and spirited.
In 2015,
Beijing's successful bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics,
Several people in the hockey class met at the ice rink that year.
They decided
Reorganize the team of the year.
For the next four or five years,
More than twenty ice hockey players have returned,
To commemorate the time of that year,
The name of the team was named "Beijing 1979".
The team from disbanding to rebirth,
It's been more than 30 years.
Teenagers become flower nails.
But none of that matters.
They firmly believe that:
"The important thing is,
We still have the courage to get back on the field. ”
Image
Beijing 1979 Ice Hockey Team Xinmin Evening News chief reporter Xiao Junwei photo
At that time, they met because of ice hockey
On the evening of February 9, the Beijing Aozhong Ice Sports Club, the "old cannons" of the Beijing 1979 ice hockey team, as usual, successively entered the locker room and prepared to change their costumes: everyone sat in their seats, slowly changing into playing equipment, while chatting about home jokes, the atmosphere was lively and warm, as if the time had returned to the days of practicing ice hockey together.
Time back more than 50 years. In 1970, China's first artificial indoor ice rink was completed in the Capital Gymnasium, and it was also in this year that the Beijing Amateur Sports School (Shichahai Sports School) opened an ice hockey class. Wu Lin, who once played in the Bayi ice hockey team from the Shichahai Sports School, recalled that after the completion of the indoor ice rink in the Capital Gymnasium, there were teams from all over the country to train and compete every year, while Beijing did not have its own ice hockey team, so the Shichahai ice hockey class came into being, "Shichahai Sports School has produced many famous professional athletes, such as Lang Ping of volleyball, Song Xiaobo of basketball, Jet Li of martial arts, etc. The establishment of the ice hockey class is also to try to see if it can cultivate some good ice hockey talents." ”
Old photo IC drawing of the team members taking a group photo 40 years ago
In the 1970s, there were many children in Beijing who liked to skate, but ice hockey was not developed. Mei Chunhui, the last captain of the Shichahai ice hockey class, recalled that a pair of skates cost more than 90 yuan that year, which was worth three months' wages for ordinary citizens. Therefore, when I heard that Shichahai Sports School was going to set up an ice hockey class and "select" team members, many people moved their minds to sign up, after all, there are skates, there are training subsidies, and more importantly, they love skating and think that practicing ice hockey is also a very promising thing. More than 20 people in the ice hockey class, taking cultural classes in the morning and practicing ice hockey in the afternoon, everyone trained hard for the ice hockey dream in their hearts.
At the end of 1972, Zhou Yunjie joined him, and at the age of 11, he was tall, thin, flexible, and was designated as a goalkeeper by the coach. For the training conditions at that time, he still remembers vividly: "At that time, the conditions were so good like the current children, many of the protective gear used to play was made by the team itself, and our protective gear was handed down from the previous generation, at that time I did not wear the new protective gear, but now after the team is rebuilt, I bought a new set." ”
Compared with the past, the equipment in the team has finally been upgraded, and Xiao Junwei, chief reporter of Xinmin Evening News, photographed (the same below)
The equipment conditions are almost bearable, the most helpless for the players is that there is no indoor ice rink at that time, only outdoor Shichahai ice play, only about two months a year on the ice time, other times can only wear roller skates on land to train special techniques, or practice speed or endurance on the playground. "Every winter when it's freezing, we go to see when we can go on ice training every day." Qu Zheng, one of the first selected team members, recalled that every year when they could just practice on ice, they often encountered embarrassing things: "When the weather is sunny, the ice is easy to melt, and sometimes when we finish practicing, the ice on the shore melts away, and we have to help run to accelerate from the ice to the shore. ”
In 1979, the amateur hockey team finally had its highlight moment in the National Junior League, drawing with several teams and finishing sixth. However, shortly after returning to Beijing after participating in the full national league, the Shichahai Sports School announced the dissolution of the ice hockey team. In the impression of the player Li Honghai, there was no dissolution ceremony at that time, and everyone did not know the reason for the dissolution, but they all knew that the dissolution of the ice hockey class meant that most people had to say goodbye to ice hockey. Later, they began to turn to other life arenas: entering the university, enlisting in the army, starting a family, starting a career, resigning and going to the sea...
There are still dreams twinkling in their eyes
Now, because hockey reunites
In the fall of 2015, just after Beijing successfully bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, the shichahai ice hockey team members of that year were officially rebuilt. Mei Chunhui said that at that time, several teammates in the hockey class would occasionally meet because of skating, and one day when everyone was chatting, this idea was suddenly born: Now that Beijing's bid for the Olympic Games has been successful and the conditions for going to ice are better, can we re-establish an ice hockey team and reunite the old teammates from before? The idea hit it off, so everyone began to contact their teammates separately, at first there were only eight or nine people, and by the end of 2021, more than 20 team members had returned, and most of them were over sixty years old.
The team was rebuilt, worthy of a team name, ah, this time everyone's ideas coincided: this ice hockey team was mainly composed of the children of the Shichahai ice hockey class, and the ice hockey class was disbanded in 1979, so when these old brothers came together again, everyone wanted to take "1979" as the name of the team, Mei Chunhui said with emotion, "Because of this complex, this is to commemorate our youth era, but also to let people know that there was such an ice hockey team in Beijing." ”
The ice hockey team trains on the field
In the fall of 2020, he returned to beijing after more than a decade of absence, and in early December 2021, on the way to the car, he heard the news of the "Beijing 1979 Ice Hockey Team" from the radio and contacted his teammates of that year.
The team members returned, the team name, team uniform, team logo was also determined, every Wednesday, Saturday night, they will play a game of ice hockey in the Olympic Ice Rink - the owner of this ice rink is Zhou Yunjie, after leaving the ice hockey he took the college entrance examination, work, entrepreneurship, became a successful entrepreneur, after the reconstruction of the 1979 ice hockey team in Beijing, he invested in the construction of this ice rink, not only to make his team have a base camp, but also to let more children receive more formal training on the standard ice hockey rink. Zhou Yunjie said that after the dissolution of the Shichahai ice hockey class at that time, he was very sorry, and he did not want to mention this experience again. He also did not expect that after decades of disbanding, he would be able to play again, "The first time I put on the protective gear, I really shed tears, never thought there would be such a day." 」 ”
When she was young, Mei Chunhui had a serious illness, and her right leg was disabled, and she walked with a limp. But when the team was rebuilt, he often played, "just on the ice is really not good, wearing heavy protective gear, legs are shaking, take the first step and wrestle." But ice hockey was our dream as a teenager, and now playing is just for health and happiness, not to win or lose, so we still have to stick to it and enjoy the process. "When we were young, we could only play hockey for two months a year, and now you see, now we play twice a week all year round, and we have more than 100 games a year." ”
Although he has passed the age of flower armor, his love has never aged
The game started and everyone entered. The children in the ice hockey class at the Shichahai Sports School in the 1970s had become Beijing masters in their sixties, and their helmets covered up their gray hair and sweat, but their love for ice hockey could not be hidden. Now Zhou Yunjie is no longer a "jiezi", but has become an old Zhou, his chest, arms, thighs, and still has the hard bag that was played by the speeding ice ball forty years ago. Lao Zhou is still the goalkeeper of this team, still trying his best to block the ball that comes over.
Over the past few years since the reconstruction, the story of the Beijing 1979 ice hockey team has gradually spread, and their love for ice hockey has also infected more and more people. On January 25, 2022, ten days counting down to the Beijing Winter Olympics, the Beijing 1979 Ice Hockey Team was awarded the title of "Ice and Snow Promotion Demonstration Collective" by the Winter Sports Management Center of the General Administration of Sport of the People's Republic of China, in recognition of their contributions to promoting ice and snow sports and promoting public participation in ice and snow. "We can still go on ice now, to continue our adolescence hockey dreams, to prove that we at least loved hockey, and we're still doing it." Mei Chunhui said that as long as he and his teammates can still go to ice and play ball, they will continue to play, "The Winter Olympics are coming, and we old hockey people also have to do something, through our actions, let more people know about ice hockey and ice and snow sports." ”
Source: Xinmin Evening News (Special Correspondent Li Yuanchun Xiao Junwei).
Editor: Gong Zijun