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He thought the Flyers’ offer to fix his town’s run-down hockey rink was a scam. Now, this South Jersey mayor is ‘walking on cloud nine.’

The Gibbstown ball hockey rink is one of three that will be renovated as part of Flyers Charities’ Rink Revive initiative.

Weeds grow along the boards of the closed street hockey court at the Gibbstown Sports Complex on Monday. It is one of the local rinks Flyers Charities will be renovating through Rink Revive, “a community initiative aimed at transforming local hockey rinks and expanding access to the game for players of all ages.”
Weeds grow along the boards of the closed street hockey court at the Gibbstown Sports Complex on Monday. It is one of the local rinks Flyers Charities will be renovating through Rink Revive, “a community initiative aimed at transforming local hockey rinks and expanding access to the game for players of all ages.”Read moreTom Gralish / Staff Photographer

When Vince Giovannitti first received an email to apply for the Flyers’ Rink Revive project, he was pretty sure it was a scam.

The Gibbstown, N.J., ball hockey rink opened in the 1980s and was last resurfaced in 2004. It was home to a thriving ball hockey league, but over time, cracks in the rink’s floor began to form and expand. The rink was deemed unplayable in 2012, and the league disbanded.

Since then, Giovannitti, mayor of Greenwich Township in Gloucester County, has been searching for the money to fix the rink up.

The email from Flyers Charities about its Rink Revive program seemed too good to be true. But after multiple rounds of interviews and applications, he finally got the news in March that Flyers Charities would fund a full rebuild of the rink and he was ecstatic.

“As a mayor, you have to sometimes make a fool of yourself,” Giovannitti said. “I told them I would do whatever, I would ride on the back of the Zamboni and let Gritty beat me up, I don’t care. If I could get this kind of grant to help our town promote deck hockey and ball hockey, then I would deal with it, because that’s how important I think it is. I was walking on cloud nine for a bit.”

The Gibbstown rink was one of three rinks chosen for the inaugural year of the Rink Revive program, Flyers Charities’ new initiative to support ice and ball hockey in the Philadelphia area. After Flyers Charities stepped in to help two 12-year-old girls from Gilbertsville save their local ball hockey rink last year, the organization decided to make it an annual initiative to support hockey across the Philly area.

Flyers Charities is supporting a full remodeling of the Gibbstown rink, in addition to upgrades at the Jacobs Rink in Northeast Philadelphia and IceWorks in Aston.

At Gibbstown, the donation will support the installation of new Dek flooring, boards, benches, equipment, and more. At Jacobs Rink, the donation will support a new Dek floor, and at IceWorks, the donation will support the purchase of 10 new bumpers to expand children’s programming on the ice.

“The softer surface, for one, will allow less injuries,” Rodney Stahl, president of Philadelphia Frenzy, a youth ball hockey organization that plays at Jacobs Rink. “You have more people that will want to play the game. It’s a more enjoyable sport on that surface. You can play in some inclement weather. It’s just an overall better time on that surface. It’s a lot safer. That’s the main goal for us.”

Stahl said he hopes to have the new surface installed by the fall. He and his son have been involved with ball hockey at the rink since 2010, and while it’s always been a little “rough around the edges,” he and the rink began to more urgently seek funds for a new playing surface five years ago. A large crack ran right down the middle of the rink, which led to a number of injuries during league play or in pickup games, and play often stopped because of sticks getting stuck in the surface.

Since the rink is city-owned, securing funding had been a challenge — until it applied for the Flyers Charities initiative. Stahl wants to capitalize on the new surface to bring in more children for youth leagues, add more days for availability, and bring in adult leagues.

The Gibbstown rink is also hoping to reopen sometime in the fall, and to get the youth league started back up as soon as possible. People have already been knocking on Giovannitti’s door about getting the rink back up and running, and he’s confident the community will embrace it like it did the original rink.

“We were one of the first rinks in the early ’80s,” Giovannitti said. “One of the first towns to have a real rink, so there was always a history there. I know the buy-in from our local residents is going to be immense, because there have been people on my rear end coming to council meetings, young hockey players coming to council meetings, asking, ‘When are we getting this rink fixed?’”

Thanks to some help from Flyers Charities, he finally has an answer.