The first team photo of the St. Joe’s ice hockey club, established in 1971, can be found in the 1972 edition of The Greatonian, the university’s yearbook.

The team used the University of Pennsylvania’s facilities for games and practices. According to the yearbook, located in the St. Joe’s Archives Collection, the team finished its inaugural season with a 2-9 record.

The Hawks participated in the Delaware Collegiate Hockey League, now called the Delaware Valley Collegiate Hockey Conference. The team’s opponents included LaSalle University, Drexel University, West Chester University, Villanova University and the University of Delaware.

Ken Ortega ’74, a retired orthopedic surgeon who majored in biology, founded the team as a sophomore with the help of Chris Frey ’74. The two were club president and vice president, respectively.

Ortega, who played organized hockey in his home state of Rhode Island before coming to St. Joe’s, said the men started hanging flyers around campus trying to find students to sign a petition to start the club. Within a couple days, the men had close to 100 students who wanted a hockey team.

“We rented ice, and we started getting organized,” Ortega said. “Kids were coming, and we had some pickup games and we finally got down to a core group of about 20 guys that were really serious.”

Ortega said during the season, St. Joe’s gave the team “a few hundred bucks” to rent ice slots, but all of the players also helped pay for the slots.

“We would practice once a week and then play a game once a week, and that was the extent of it,” Ortega said.

Ortega said he did not know the club would last as long as it has — the team is in its 54th season — but he believes the popularity of ice hockey in the Philadelphia area helped keep the club alive.

“I’m happy it did,” Ortega said. “As hockey built up in the Philly area and you got more ice rinks, the key thing was the fact that more kids were playing hockey.”

Dylan Kouba ’27 plays forward on the St. Joe’s men’s club hockey team.