Matt Leone long feared the hockey team he coaches made up of at-risk kids from East Baltimore might one day be displaced from their home rink at Mimi DiPietro Family Skating Center in Patterson Park.
The volunteer-run team, called the Baltimore Banners, mostly recruits and transports kids from the Ellwood Park neighborhood, which is just a couple blocks north of the rink.
“We’re real intentional about recruiting from there,” Leone said. “It’s one of the higher violence, more red-lined neighborhoods in Baltimore.”
As of Friday, his fear became reality when the city announced it would shut down the rink over concerns of the structural integrity of the building, according to a memo from the offices of Mayor Brandon Scott and the Department of Recreation and Parks.
If the city can repair the structural issues, it will reopen for the 2025-2026 season in late December or early January but then would be permanently shut down, the memo said. The team was supposed to begin practices next week.
The Banners has about 60 players from the ages of 8 to 16, according to the team. Many of whom could not afford to play hockey without the team, including some kids who don’t have permanent addresses, Leone said.
“We’re heartbroken,” said Jack Burton, executive director of the Banners, in a statement. “These are kids who see hockey as part of their identity, who see hockey as a therapeutic outlet. For months they’ve been looking forward to nothing more than the joy that comes with the community of hockey in Patterson Park.”
The city said that the Banners would be relocated to the Mount Pleasant Ice Arena, which is about 6 miles north of the Ellwood Park neighborhood. Leone, who is a head coach and chairman of the board, said he was not consulted before the announcement was made.
“This just adds to the amount of time that our volunteers are gonna have to put in,” Leone said. The volunteers often make multiple trips to get the players to practice, and he worries many of them might not be able to dedicate the extra hours.
“We go from maybe getting 40 kids to the ice to getting 10 kids on the ice every day,” he said.
Leone added that the team will get 18 hours at the Mount Pleasant arena for the season, down from their usual minimum of 45 hours, which accommodated practices, home games and their annual fundraiser. Leone said they usually practice Saturdays, Sundays and some Thursdays, but after Nov. 30 will be limited to Saturdays only at the arena in Mount Pleasant.
Mimi DiPietro Family Skating Center has been around for 39 years. Along with the Banners, the rink was used by the Patterson Park Stars, another hockey team for at-risk kids in the area.
The city’s memo said the Stars had decided to cancel their season, but Mallory Richards, the program director and skating coach, said she never agreed to that and was ready to start fitting her players for equipment this weekend when she got the news.
The Stars act as a pipeline for the Banners, often times teaching younger kids who are newer to the sport, she said. They usually practice on Saturdays in the morning hours just before the Banners, Richards said.
She said the city had asked her if she would like to get ice time for the arena in Mount Pleasant for the Stars. Richards declined, telling the city that she didn’t have the manpower to get her kids, many of whom walk to the park, up to the Mount Pleasant arena.
“The whole premise of my program is to be in East Baltimore,” she said. “I can’t make it work at Mount Pleasant.”
Now, she said she is waiting to hear if the city will let her team use the lobby of the park’s rink for equipment fitting and possibly give her ice time January through March.
A broom ball league and local high school hockey team that used the rink will also need to find another facility, but it won’t be Mount Pleasant, according to the memo.
The city said structural concerns with the ice rink date back to 1998 in the Patterson Park master plan. Some of the long-standing concerns have to do with the foundation, dome integrity and soil movement, according to the city.
There are no current plans to build a new ice rink in the park. A new one would cost the city $5 million to $10 million, but Baltimore has broader infrastructure demands, according to the memo. Officials said in the memo they would consider private fundraising and similar funding models in the future.
Leone said he wants to be included in finding ways to build a new home rink for his players in the park.
“We struggle to fundraise $200,000 a year,” he said. “But if we have to fundraise $20 million ourselves for our kids, we’ll do everything we can to do it.”
Banner photojournalist Jessica Gallagher contributed to this story.
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