The Hobart hockey team will take part in a charity sled hockey game with the Mountain Warriors from Fort Drum, New York, on Saturday, Oct. 11. The game is scheduled to take place at 1 p.m.
 
This will be the seventh time, and the first since 2019, that Hobart has hosted a sled hockey game with the Mountain Warriors. The event is free and open to the public. Fans can make donations to the Mountain Warrior sled hockey team to help purchase protective equipment (helmets, gloves, shoulder pads, elbow pads) for new players.  
 
Sled hockey was invented at a rehabilitation center in Stockholm in the 1960s by a group who, despite their physical disability, wanted to continue playing hockey. Players sit in specially designed sleds that sit on top of two hockey skate blades. Two sticks are used by each player instead of one and the sticks have metal pics on the butt end for players to propel themselves.
 
The Mountain Warriors sled team came together because of the work of Mark McKenna, a project engineer with the Fort Drum Field Office of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, New York District. He was working out in a gym in Fort Drum and saw a soldier in a wheelchair enter the gym. McKenna felt more could be done for wounded veterans. Since he was a volunteer hockey coach for over 30 years, he came up with the idea of forming a sled hockey team for the disabled soldiers. McKenna was inducted into the New York State Hockey Hall of Fame this past summer.
 
 
Paralympian Paul Shaus competes with the Mountain Warriors. He won a gold medal with Team USA in 2014 in Sochi, Russia, and won gold medals at the world championships in 2012 and 2015.