News & Events

Despite repeated forecasts for inches of fresh sledding snow, none was in sight. Doug Taylor MA’66 was in a pinch. With dozens of friends on their way for what he had billed as a midwinter sledding fest, he needed to find a new party pastime — quickly.

Looking out over frozen Woodland Lake from his home in Brighton, Mich., Taylor remembered an article he had read about an attempt at a new winter sport.

“I had read years ago that somebody tried to play soccer on ice, and they used a traditional soccer ball on a lake. The whole event was a total bust because whoever was playing would kick the ball once or twice, and it would be a quarter of a mile down the lake. Well, that stuck in my mind for years and years. And when I had the party, it clicked that, hey — I have clean ice, I have a nice lake, and I have all these people coming.”

Doug Taylor stands with the Boot'r he developed for his new game played on ice.

Faced with a challenge, Taylor knew that innovation must come into play.

“So it was, OK, what can I come up with that might work?” he asked himself. He crafted a makeshift kickable sack out of a burlap bag stuffed with rags.

After a lively game played by guests of all ages and a lot of laughter, Ice Soccer was created. And it soon became a yearly tradition at Taylor’s winter get-togethers.

“It was just such an overwhelmingly positive reaction that I said to myself, ‘I want to make it go further.’ So I started working on a patent,” said Taylor.

What emerged was a durable, custom designed, and oversized cloth-filled puck whose weight and shape help players to keep it in play on the ice.

Its name? “Well, you’re kickin’ this thing around. You’re booting it. Call it the Boot’r,” suggested his sweetheart.

He trademarked his creation and also created a company, Taylor Sports, LLC, and a website, http://www.icesoccer.com/, to market the Boot’r, along with other Ice Soccer goods and information about the game.

Taylor’s vision for the game reaches far beyond his own personal enjoyment. As the official Ice Soccer website states, “Taylor Sports, LLC, hopes to see it played professionally in franchised leagues by the year 2015.”

Ice Soccer may be bundles of fun, but this man means business, too. Taylor sees bringing Ice Soccer to college campuses as an intramural sport played in indoor rinks as one step toward the attainment of his vision.

Colgate was the first stop Taylor made to promote the fledgling sport, in February 2005, making the university the site of the first-ever organized game of Ice Soccer.

Senior Gavin Fisco was one of the players.

“I really liked it and actually called the athletic department to try and see what I could do to get the sport started here as an IM game,” said Fisco. “I am not the fastest guy out there, and yet I felt like the ice really made it so that I had a fair chance against all of the much more athletic fraternity guys out there with me.”

Although Ice Soccer has yet to make the intramural list at Colgate, reviews from student players were overwhelmingly positive. 

One might ask — this is ice we’re talking about — isn’t this sort of dangerous? Taylor’s answer: pads. With the right pads — knee, elbow, and hip pads typically worn for rollerblading — in addition to a helmet, nearly all tumble-related dings can be avoided.

“Almost all sports have safety equipment, and this one does, too. If you can get people [to realize this] they say, ‘hey, this is pretty cool!’”

Ice cold, to be exact.