Hooligan Bunch: LaGrange-based ball hockey team enjoys inaugural Georgia Ball Hockey League season
Released Saturday, June 15, 2024 at 8:00 a.m.
What happens when you put players from LaGrange on the same hockey team? You get hooligans.
The LaGrange Hooligans are enjoying their inaugural season in the Georgia Ball Hockey League, which operates under the umbrella of the National Ball Hockey League. The team currently has a 2-1 record and sits second out of four teams in the standings.
“I held on in the first match and ended up winning 5-0. I think I did pretty well in the second match too, winning 4-2. Then the last match I lost 8-0. It was a tough match, but you never know how good you are until you play against someone better than you.”
The Georgia Ball Hockey League would not exist without Cunningham, who was the driving force behind the league's formation and helped it run smoothly in its first year.
“It's going really well and I'm 90 percent sure we'll have at least one or two more teams next season,” Cunningham said. “I know a lot of the players on the other teams so it's fun and competitive.”
Growth and expansion is already on the horizon: The league is just over halfway through its inaugural season, but Cunningham is already planning how and where the league can grow in the future.
“The guys from Birmingham might bring a team. We might have a team in Dothan. We might have a couple from Columbus, another one or two from Macon. We might have something from Savannah. We have ball hockey and roller hockey teams in those places, and some of them might be interested in playing for a state title,” Cunningham said. “I don't think it would be a big deal to go from four teams this year to eight or even 10 next year.”
This was LaGrange hockey's first foray into the National Ball Hockey League. The Hooligans were originally called the Quad State Hooligans and would bring in people from all over the Southeast and travel to North Carolina to play in the ball hockey league there.
It was fun, but too taxing, and ultimately, this led Cunningham to found the Georgia Ball Hockey League.
“It's been really tough. Carolina's been around for a long time and the Raleigh Street Hockey League has been around for about 20 years, so there's a lot of guys that have grown up and played hockey in that and they've got some really good talent,” Cunningham said. “Probably the best thing about it is that we're all playing together now.”
Now we play all of our games in Peachtree City, which makes the travel a lot easier – we have two teams based in Atlanta, one in Augusta and one here in LaGrange.
“The three teams are pretty evenly matched, but the fourth team is a lot more experienced, they're from Atlanta and obviously have a lot more depth of players, they're playing with college hockey players,” Cunningham said.
There's no real age limit either: the Hooligans have players ranging from 16 to 62 years old.
The season will continue through August, with the playoff winners earning a chance to compete in the national championships in September in New Jersey. The Hooligans' next game is this Saturday, with games at 12, 1, and 4 p.m.
“I've been in sports my whole life and even the really strong teams have weaknesses and once you've seen them or played against them you can identify those weaknesses and know what you need to do to counter them,” Cunningham said of the Dirty Birds, who beat the Hooligans 8-0 in their first meeting of the season. “They dominated the other three teams. We just have to adapt.”
