Blocks away from where tourists flock to visit Miami’s beaches, a team of high school boys takes on a less traditional sport in the tropical climate: ice hockey.

The Miami-Dade High School Hockey Alliance consists of 14 players from nine different local area high schools — from Miami Palmetto to G. Holmes Braddock — who practice every Thursday night at Scott Rakow Youth Center Ice Rink on Miami Beach, one of just two such facilities in the county.

It’s the first team fielded by Miami-Dade County since the 2001-02 season when Barbara Goleman High School competed in the Florida Scholastic Hockey League (FSHL), which was founded in 1998.

Head coach Andrew Yagoda led a U-16 Midget team out of the Kendall Ice Arena last year, but it dissolved. Other than pickup hockey, the kids had nowhere to play. This past October, parents and players came together to form a team in time for practice to start by early November.

Gail Poe-Liu, whose son Gene plays on the team, saw Gene and his friends go off to play with different teams depending on age and skill level. But she recalls them always having the desire to skate together again.

“They also wanted to play for their own high school, so this is kind of the closest you can get,” Poe-Liu said. “They are representing their school and Dade County. These kids go back seven years, some even more.”

Since its first game in mid-November, Miami-Dade is in second place with a 8-3-2 record against Division III teams from Broward County. Six more regular-season games will precede the playoffs to be held in late February, which will include teams from the west coast of Florida that are part of the Florida High School Hockey Association’s Lightning Conference. In South Florida, there are three divisions with six teams in each. A squad’s ranking is decided by the sum of player experience.

According to the FSHL, teams are either “Pure,” meaning all students come from the same school, or “Composite,” acknowledging players from two to three schools with adjoining boundaries or zip codes. The league made an exception this year to allow Miami-Dade to recruit from more than three schools.

Game days are Saturdays and Mondays, with the puck dropped at the Saveology.com Iceplex Stadium Rink in Coral Springs, the official practice facility of the NHL’s Florida Panthers. The rules differ somewhat from those found on the professional level (though the Miami-Dade uniforms resemble the old Hartford Whalers), and so does the skill set.

The first and second periods are 12 minutes each with clock stoppages. In the 14-minute third period, it becomes a running clock whenever a team is up by six goals or more.

Varied experience

“We’ve got kids who are two years out from their first ice time and some kids who have been playing travel hockey for a really long time,” Yagoda said. “It really varies and makes the practices interesting.”

Christian Ortiz, 16, a junior at Felix Varela High School, sat during the last practice before Christmas after sustaining his second concussion of the season the Monday before Thanksgiving. He hasn’t seen the ice since.

“We take pride that there are very few of us down here in Miami that actually play this sport, and you can’t just pick up a pair of skates and go skate whenever you want to,” said Ortiz, who plays center and left wing. “You have to give it your all whenever you’re out there because you’re not out there all the time. You don’t really take it for granted once you get to our age and realize how much you love the sport.”