The two boys leaned in, with only hockey sticks, and a whistle blew. Almost instantly after the chirp rang out, a ball dropped and they leaned in and fought for it, sticks slashing against the pavement. The goalie, dressed in catchers’ gear, shifted in front of a goal the size of himself as he prepared for oncoming shots, readjusting the baseball mitt on his hand. Shirts reading “The Greater Indianapolis Street Hockey League” were spread out across the concrete, as players looked for passes and took shots on goal.

The Greater Indianapolis Street Hockey League (GISHL) began last year when juniors Nathan Zweig, Joey Pietras, Luke Thompson and former CHS student Liam Gentile joked about it over Twitter. GISHL is a student-run intramural street hockey league that plays weekly games in “the lot,” or the parking lot of the football stadium.

Zweig, a co-founder of GISHL said, “Joey Pietras, Luke Thompson, and Liam Gentile created a fake hockey team so I went and created my own fake hockey team.” According to Zweig they decided to make it into street hockey and then other students wanted to join.

Current player and junior Charles “Chuck” Burton said, “It was just a joke on Twitter, first, and then they decided that they were going to play each other.”

“We have eight teams and play-offs,” said Burton, “We do standings and it’s like a real thing now. We just play street hockey on the weekends.”

Now with eight teams and growing, GISHL is beginning to expand, searching for sponsorship and players from other schools, but GISHL is not a CHS sponsored club. According to CHS’s website clubs are “a safe place for students to meet and discuss their similar interests under staff supervision within the school.” This school also does not sanction anything planned outside of school without the sponsor present, making it difficult for GISHL to become a club. As a club, however, GISHL could get the sponsorships they need for their merchandise, but they would not be allowed to expand to other Hamilton County schools.

According to Assistant Principal Joseph Schaller the league is required to sign out the parking lot for their use. Schaller said, “Usually there is a form that is submitted when you are using an area on campus, and in that it might ask specific questions like ‘Who’s reserving it’ for liability issues.” Schaller said it does make a difference how organized the group using the property is. 

Zweig said, “We don’t really know what we are going to do yet,” when asked about what the league was planning to do. “Hopefully we can make it a club and keep everyone that’s not from Carmel but we’re still working on that.”

“We already have people that are from Guerin, Cathedral, you know, other schools, so we can’t really make it a club here at Carmel,” said Zweig.

He said a few teams have one player from another school, but they are expecting to create different teams with specifically students from other schools.

Junior Joseph “J.C.” Hanley, who is part of the GISHL team here, said, “We’re just trying to get bigger, more teams, more people.” He said due to a lack of players from CHS, the league has decided to expand to other schools. “There’s only so many people who want to do it here at Carmel.”

According to Hanley, expanding to new schools has been very easy for GISHL. “Most kids are athletes who know kids from other schools who are athletes and stuff like that,” Hanley said. “So it’s pretty easy to get kids to do it.”

Burton shares the similar enthusiasm as his fellow teammates about the expansion to new schools. He hopes that GISHL will become a larger league that encompasses the greater Indianapolis area. “We have a few Guerin kids in the league. I think it will really broaden our GISHL horizons, and also, it will just make the league bigger and let us meet new people, which I think is cool.”

Zweig said that the league is meant for more than just CHS students, “Our name is ‘Greater Indianapolis,’ even though there is just only Carmel people in it.”

While expanding to other schools is an issue, GISHL faces another problem in finding funds for the league’s spirit wear and bumper stickers. In the past, the league collected money then placed orders for T-shirts, but now they are hoping to have the funding to buy a large quantity of T-shirts and bumper stickers then charge players and students for them and be able to provide them at the time of purchase.

Zweig said, “(Sponsors) would help us with all the spirit wear we get because it’s hard to coordinate all that stuff.”

While GISHL faces many problems and has an unclear future, members encouraged people to create teams and support them through purchasing their spirit wear and coming out to competitions in the football stadium parking lot.

During the game, junior Trevor Davis said, “Honestly, it’s like a fun recreational thing to just have fun and be competitive.”