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TOTAL SPORTS DURHAM
FROZEN MEMORIES The NiceRink Story
By Jim Stoller President, NiceRink Hi, I’m Jim Stoller, creator of NiceRink®, the outdoor ice rink system that will transform your backyard into a winter play land and a lifetime of Frozen Memories.® One of my earliest Frozen Memories® is of my Dad coming home one winter afternoon and building an ice rink in our backyard. He’d brought some small plastic tubing from the shop at our family’s business that my grandfather, Irving J. Stoller, had started in 1948 as a maker of poly- coated paper drop cloths. My Dad Jim Stoller, Sr. had joined the business in 1963 and over the years the company developed new and creative plastics solutions and applications for the flexible films it converted and distributed ranging from construction, agriculture, packaging & industrial amongst many other proprietary applications. Like my grandfather, my Dad was a creative kind of guy who was always coming up with new ideas. On that winter afternoon, he took that tubing and laid it around the patio, then filled up the interior with water that froze overnight into the first Stollerena. And from that day on, that little rink ended up making ours a Skating family, with a capital S! My brother Ken and I went on to pursue our boyhood dreams by playing Junior “A” in the USHL. And after a year playing in the USHL with the Dubuque Fighting Saints I permanently joined the family business in 1987. Having already spent my teenage summers working in the factory, I used those first years to learn the complete ins and outs of the operation. My Dad and I also embarked on our first rink-building adventure when we donated a plastic liner to the local town and flooded a parking lot to make an ice rink. The liner held the water fine, but the town didn’t take care of the ice and the rink didn’t attract many skaters. During the winter of 1991, I also tried to make my own backyard ice rink. I started like most novices do, by spraying the grass and spraying and spraying – and spraying and spraying to build a whopping half-inch layer of ice (whoopee, not!) the first night, only to have it disappear the next day. “This is ridiculous,” I thought. Who in their right mind would continue this losing fight against Mother Nature?
Then, the light bulb went on. The very next day, we cut the first NiceRink® liner, installed it in the yard, filled it that night and had a frozen-solid ice rink the next. It was that easy. I benefited from a small 10’ x 20’ level area the first year and was able to get my then 11-month old son out on the ice with me. (In our family, we like to say that if they can walk, then put skates on ‘em—and to this day my son Tyler, daughter Tatum and nephews Christian, Dominick and Devin are all serious skaters.) They have all been getting involved in the company to bring in the company’s fourth generation. I wondered how many other crazy rink-building parents of little skaters would enjoy this ease of sitting inside and watching a rink fill and freeze on its own. It turns out, a lot!
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