Officially the Gallaudet club hockey team
started in 1966 and lasted until mid-seventies.
The team won one conference championship during
these years.
In the early sixties, a small group of 3 or 4
Canadians wanted to play hockey but there were
not enough students that were skilled players.
This small group attempted to join a hearing
hockey club, but during the open tryouts
at Washington Coliseum (few blocks from the
Gallaudet campus, they were rebuffed. The
hearing players felt the deaf cannot play
hockey and ignored their pleas for some
action during the tryout scrimmages.
The angry Gallaudet group, led by John
Burton, agreed to wait untit the right
time – a break between shift changes
and to jump altogther on the ice.
By the time they jumped on the ice,
the hearing players couldn’t stop them
from playing. These hearing players were
awed by the skillful playing of these
three Gallaudet players.
At the end of the shift, the club
teams mobbed them, urging them to
play for their teams! They agreed
to join the University of Maryland
club team – on one condition, that
the team be renamed Gallaudet-Maryland
team.
After that season, there was a bumper
crop of first year hockey playing
Canadian students. This led to the
birth of the Gallaudet hockey club.