Local group has been playing for about a year

Colby Schwindt intercepted a pass with his hockey stick and sprinted toward the goal. His flick shot scored.

And then the 19-year-old crashed off his unicycle as he veered away from a fence. The makeshift hockey rink was set up on the tennis courts at Linus Pauling Middle School.

Schwindt and 10 or so other locals have been playing unicycle hockey every week for about a year.

“It’s absolutely insane,” said Rod Williams, 49, of Corvallis. “It’s not competitive, and it’s just pure fun. You never know what’s going to happen.”

“It’s very competitive, but it’s fun-competitive,” said Lisa Miller, 20, an Oregon State University student. Participants said they often spend as much time picking and changing teams as whacking around a street hockey ball.

Unicycles bring plenty of quick stops, pivots and turns to hockey, as well as the occasional spill.

“Blood doesn’t happen that often,” Schwindt said as he wiped blood off his scraped elbow, a legacy from his close encounter with the fence.

Some residents have played unicycle hockey sporadically for five years, he said. “A group that unicycles a lot usually comes up with the idea of unicycle hockey. We’d like to play another team sometime.”

Players usually get a befuddled response when they tell people about the activity.

“People aren’t used to hearing unicycle and hockey in the same sentence,” said Griffin Alberti, 15, a Corvallis High School sophomore.

Some of the unicycle hockey players learned to ride the one-wheeled vehicles through the Corvallis Juggling and Unicycling Club, run by Angela Schwindt, Colby’s mother.

Partly because of that club, which meets twice a month, Corvallis has a rather rare unicycling community, with a skill unicycling team, one-wheeled commuters and even mountain unicyclists.

During the summer, the hockey group has played at the local middle school. But they’ll be looking for an indoor site now that the weather is turning.

“It’s not a very popular sport. We could always use more players,” Schwindt said.

For more information about the local unicycle hockey group, call Colby Schwindt at 758-7246.

Kyle Odegard can be contacted at kyle.odegard@lee.net or 758-9523.