West Morris Wolfpack Hockey Rink Opens For Street, Roller Hockey

LONG VALLEY, NJ — After years of presentations and planning, Long Valley now has an all-season hockey rink – the West Morris Wolfpack Hockey Rink opened for public use Wednesday morning.

The rink, located at Harrington Park, will be open from dawn to dusk for the public to play floor and roller hockey, as well as futsal soccer or box lacrosse, said Jeff Rainforth, president of Phelps Construction and a longtime member of the board of Long Valley's hockey club.

Community members will be able to reserve it for practice or other events, Rainforth said.

The rink will be used for street hockey throughout most of the year, and in the winter the town will put a liner over it and flood it to create an ice rink – as it did for eight days last winter.

Rainforth said he's excited that people will be able to use it to learn how to ice skate, as Long Valley has a dearth of ponds that freeze over in the winter.

Phelps Construction donated the rink to the town and built it, Rainforth said. Construction began in November 2020 after years of debate over where it should be located.

Now that it's completed, Rainforth said, it will make other forms of hockey more accessible to interested kids.

"There’s a lot of kids that don’t join our ice hockey club because they don't know how to ice skate," Rainforth said. "But street hockey, kids can play in sneakers."

The rink also represents a revitalization of Harrington Park, Rainforth said – the town has built miles of hiking trails at what was once solely the home of several soccer fields.

"Many people go there to walk through the nature trails," Rainforth said. "And now they'll go there to use the rink."