Despite his age, or maybe because of it, Gene Wagner still gets a bit protective around the crease.

With a youthful outlook that belies his age, the 98-year-old Wagner — who’s still lacing up his skates twice a week with the Bald Eagles at the local rink in southeastern Wisconsin — has probably earned that right.

“If he stands in front of the goal and I'm playing defense, I don't like people standing in front of the goal, so I try to move him around a little bit,” Wagner said with a chuckle. “I'm not supposed to do that, but it's so natural. Get away from my goalie, you know?”

Even the most junior of the senior players are aware and respectful of everyone’s physical limitations, Wagner said. 

“We don't play rough. No, we don't do that,” he said. “There's no rough stuff, no checking. We're pretty careful that way. Nobody wants to get hurt, especially seniors.”

Wagner started skating as a youngster on a frozen creek near his house in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, and soon gravitated toward hockey.

As a teenager, Wagner moved up to the elite local league when his older brothers went into the military during World War II.

“There was a senior hockey team, not a school team, but the older guys played on the Fond du Lac Bears, which was the best team in Fond du Lac,” Wagner said. “They were my older brothers. So, when they went into the Army, there was an opening for us younger players to join the Bears because there was nobody else to take their place. So that was up to us. Younger brothers like myself, we filled in.”

Wagner eventually got married, moved to the Milwaukee area, became a barber and raised a family.

In the late ‘60s, his family moved to Cedarburg, about 25 miles north of Milwaukee. Wagner had been away from hockey for about four decades when the Ozaukee Ice Center opened in 1995 in nearby Mequon, which Wagner said was about five minutes from his house.

Guy Gosselin, now the manager of player development for USA Hockey, was the general manager of the Ozaukee Ice Center following a standout college career at the University of Minnesota Duluth and six professional seasons, including a stint with the NHL’s Winnipeg Jets.

“Guy Gosselin provided us a few hours just for seniors to have their own time for open skating, I think on a Wednesday morning, maybe from 9 till 12 o'clock,” Wagner recalled. “That was our time for open skating as seniors, men and women. There was about six or eight of us.”

Gosselin said those senior skating sessions quickly became popular, both with the participants and the staff.

“They appreciated the facility, and I interacted with a couple of them a lot,” Gosselin said. “They're great volunteers. We worked a deal out where they would get two hours of ice a couple days a week and they would be our skate guards for the public skate.”

Wagner said just being back on the ice naturally led back to hockey.

“One day I brought a hockey stick and then pretty soon another guy brought a stick and that's how it started. Just one person at a time, then another and another.”

That led to the formation of the Bald Eagles, a non-checking hockey club for players 55 and older. Wagner was 72 at the time.

“My idea was to have enough seniors show up so we could have a pickup game,” he said. “It took a couple of years for that to happen, but the older skaters, they came out.  And it was only about a year or so and we had enough older players that showed up so that we could make a game of it.”

The camaraderie among the players is special, Wagner said, but on the ice, it’s still hockey.

“We get on the ice and we try hard and we have some fast skaters,” said Wagner, who also plays golf regularly. “The guys are in their 70s for the most part and they are fast skaters. Most of the time, I stay out of their way, you know. I'm the slowest and I don't want to get run down because if they touch me, I'm going to go down. I spend a lot of time just avoiding the fast skaters. They don't look out for you, you have to look out for them.”

Story from Red Line Editorial, Inc.