Twenty-six-year-old C.F. McElhinney moved to Houston in 1934 to serve as Assistant Director of Curriculum for HISD. In his first semester working for HISD, which, at the time, operated the Houston Junior College, the Nova Scotia native organized the junior college’s hockey team. Within four months, HJC had fielded its first athletics team, met Rice for the first time in a sporting event, and approved the University of Houston’s formal charter.
Efforts to assemble a team began in the fall of 1932 when a notice went out in The Cougar.
A team formed, and by the spring semester, coach Jack Potter’s team began practicing together but struggled to find equipment and ice time.
In 1934, McElhinney (now the coach) put together another team and secured access to a rink through a local man named Bill Jolly. In the mid-1920s, Jolly owned an ice company and manufacturing plant but needed more customers. He came up with the idea of opening an indoor ice rink, dubbing it the Polar Wave Ice Palace. The rink, next to his plant at 2323 Hutchins (at McIlhenny), was distinctive for its vaulted lamella-lattice roof.
Soon, Jolly helped start a citywide hockey league with high schools, colleges, and businesses forming teams. The City Amateur Hockey League featured teams such as the Lone Star Creamery, the Falstaff Brewery, Rettig’s Ice Cream Parlor, the Spalding Blue Streaks, the Houston Polar Bears (later called the Polar Wave), the Eddelmann Mappers, the Rice Institute, and the Sam Houston HS Tigers. Teams paid to practice and played all league games – with 15-minute periods – at the Ice Palace for years.
UH beat Sam Houston HS in a scrimmage on November 14, 1934, and played its first-ever game against Rice on November 24th, losing 10-4. The Cougar puck pushers beat Sam Houston on December 11, 8-3. UH won several games that season and believed they were up for a City title, but the league determined they had not played enough games.
The 1935-36 team was the first to wear the interlocking UH. Cougar hockey invented the mark that would represent Houston for generations.
UH hockey did not play for several years in the late 1930s, but the sport reappeared in the fall of 1939. By the following December, it was reported locally that “three stars from Montreal doing grad work at St. Thomas” would suit up for the Coogs in 1941.
In that 1941 season, the Canadians anchored a solid UH team that entered the City League with a chance at a title. The Rice Thresher said, “The very tough Houston icers who have gotten together a collection of talented performers (are) capable of taking the league championship.”
UH led the league heading into the final game of the 1941 season with a 6-1 record, but fell to the Eddelman Mappers. Now tied with Rice, UH was forced into a two-game aggregate playoff. The Cougars beat Rice, 9-5, in the opener, but gave up five goals in the first period of the second game and lost to Rice, 7-1, handing the Owls the title.
Before the next season started, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and the nation was drawn into WWII. UH teams competed in 1942 and 1943, but it appears the sport died out at UH then.
For the first time in 80 years, hockey returned to UH on Friday, September 8, 2023, as a club sport.
Cougar Ice Hockey history
