Then as now, Mount Hermon played in McCollum Arena, the name being a bit grand for what was really a rink with a shed roof on it. 

The rink was down the hill from the gym complex (made up of old James Gym and the newer Forslund Gym). There were no locker rooms in the rink, so you dressed in the Forslund locker room, a warm cave of a place, with the smells of Red Crouse’s training-room liniments and the pool’s chlorine in the air.

You put your stick and skates over or across your shoulders (stick blades fit through skate struts back then, for ease of carrying), and then trekked down the hill to the rink, negotiating an unpaved pitch right outside the east gym door that was usually icy or muddy.

A gravel road ran down to the rink parking lot.  If the wind and the cold didn’t force your chin into your chest, you could look up and out at one of the nicer views in New England—out across the Connecticut River to the flanks of Northfield Mountain.

It might only be me, but my richest sense memories from Mount Hermon are from coming and going to sports practices—fall, spring and winter.  Leaving the soccer field—then down by the river—in the chill of fall dusk.  Running past greening pastures to the lax field (also down by the river then). Heading to the rink in gusting snow. 

The entrance to the rink took you through an area that, to your right, was supposed to be locker rooms, given the footings that had been installed but never built upon.  (And still have never been built upon.)

For practices the players could use the warming room, to the left of the entrance, to put their skates on. 

For games, Mount Hermon graciously allowed the visiting team to use the warming room, forcing the Mount Hermon players to put their skates on and spend between-period-intermissions on benches set along the east wall of the Zamboni room.

The Zamboni room was about the size of a tight one-car garage, with a workbench along the front wall and a grate in the middle of the floor where the melt water could drain.   

The players sat facing the wall, resting their skates on duck boards, and they faced the wall so that they could keep their skates away from the grit that the Zamboni tires tracked into the room from the patch of concrete between the Zamboni bay and ice sheet.

If the coach wanted  to hold forth before the game or between periods, he had to either wedge into the narrow space between the players and the wall or the players had to look over their shoulders (much as Dave Terrie is doing in the photo to the right) as the coach stood in the parking space of the Zamboni. 

The rink was basically a steel-frame structure, with corrugated metal cladding on the peaked roof and east and west gable ends.

The rink ran north and south.  The east and west sides of the building were enclosed with chain-link fence.  A year or two later canvas got added to the fencing, but in 1970-71 there was nothing to stop the wind from blowing through the rink. 

The Mount Hermon rink could be brutally cold.  Pity the poor goalie manning the south net when Alberta Clippers blew out of the northwest.  But hockey is a winter sport and on winter days and nights playing essentially outdoors on the Mount Hermon rink was a way of feeling the full essence of winter.

The ice tended to be fast, given how cold the rink was.  The Mount Hermon rink manager didn't paint the ice; early in the season you could see through the ice to the concrete floor and tennis court lines painted on the concrete. As the season went on, the ice eventually took on a white sheen.  The Mount Hermon decal was painted at center ice.  You can see the "MH" stencil stored on the wall in the photo above. Nothing fancy.

The boards were topped with chain-link fence—no glass dashers.  If you ever got your face smashed into that fencing, you might stick a bit to the freezing cold metal pipe or wire.