Wichita ? It was an 84-degree evening. Announcements from the speakers at Lawrence-Dumont Stadium were carried on a slight breeze. A great night for baseball.

But the guys getting out of their cars across the street from the stadium thought it was just right for hockey.

Every Wednesday evening at 8:45, members of the Ice Hockey Geezer League take to the ice.

“We love it,” Tim Scanlan said. “It’s mostly guys who grew up playing the game and still enjoy getting out there. It’s what I do to stay in shape.”

Scanlan, his slight build thrown out of proportion by huge shoulder pads, explained that you must be at least 35 to qualify as a “geezer.”

“That’s really not old enough, but we had to go that low to get enough players for a league,” he said.

The Geezer League is part of the Adult Safe Hockey League, a national league with 30,000 participants 18 and older. The Geezer League has 50 members on four teams.

Vic Walsberg, 72, is the oldest member on the team, wearing lucky No. 7.

He has played ice hockey since 1945, knows the game from every angle, and has enough stamina to keep up with players who are decades younger.

“This game, it’s kind of like a fever. You get out there and it gets you,” Walsberg said.

“But I’m a gentlemanly player. I’ve been in the penalty box just once in six years.”

If you enjoy watching the action and excitement of ice hockey, but not the violence, this league is for you.

A game is one 10-minute period and two 12-minute periods. The players on both teams constantly traded places on and off the ice.

“Whew!” Walsberg said as he came off the ice, thumped a teammate on the helmet and flopped down. He used his stick to hook his towel on the railing behind him, mopping perspiration from his face even though it was around 50 degrees in the arena. He hung the towel back on the railing, and three minutes, 10 seconds later, he was back on the ice.

At the end, Walsberg claimed he “couldn’t go another 30 seconds.”

“Did you see the little scuffle Darin Decker and I had at the end of the game?” he asked chuckling. “He and I always have to go at it a little bit. He gets mad when I pass him. Here I am nearly 73 years old, and he just made the league age-wise.”