In 1998 Joe “Chucky” Cruz and Joe “Toronto” Tavares founded the Bristol/Mt. Hope Hockey Alumni Association. The school systems had just regionalized a few years before that. Their goals were simple. To gather the hockey playing alumni from Bristol High School and help generate funds to assist the hockey program. Their ability to infuse cash into the program was the slapshot on net that this program needed. With their tireless efforts, the school system was able to fund both a Junior Varsity program at the high school level, and a Middle School program at Kickemuit MS. This kept the program secure, with plenty of kids being introduced to hockey at the Middle School level – and allowing these kids to contribute at a high school level.

With the help of Dave Estrella, Pat McGinn, Bobby “Chet” Fereirra and several others – the alumni association created their most notable contribution to date – our annual golf tournament. While most charity golf tournaments in our area have a shelf life of 6 years on average, the Hockey Alumni association celebrated our 25th golf tournament in 2024, with no sign of slowing down. Each year, in the 3rd Saturday in August, the Hockey Alumni hosts 100+ golfers at Swansea Country club – complete with lunch and dinner – tons of raffle items, and an equal amount of on course challenges and prizes. It is an amazing day.

Shortly after graduating high school himself, Jeff Day joined the Alumni Association, and recruited several of his 1999 Division championship teammates with him, including goalie Tim Pray, Alan Ferreira, and Peter Sousa. This gave the alumni association a balance of members spanning the history of the program.

For the better part of 2 decades the alumni association dedicated their funding to the high school program – funding everything from new jerseys and equipment for the team, to an annual scholarship that is awarded to an outdoing high school player.

In 2023, Jeff and his former teammates did not like the direction local hockey was going. They saw their beloved high school fielding a roster of less than a dozen players, and thus having to co-op with other schools in the state. The problem is just as simple to solve as our founding members did. Hockey is too expensive. We need to find a way to introduce kids to the game at no cost to them and their parents. So that is just what we did.

Jeff launched an all out effort to make this problem disappear. He asked for the approval of his Alumni Association to focus exclusively on promoting hockey at the middle school and grade school level. With the thoughts that if they started the game early enough, they would be ready for high school. He turned the basement of his shop into an organized repository of donated equipment that players learning the game could get outfitted. He worked with his former teammates and partnered with local hockey shop J&B Hockey in Fall River, MA to develop ten $200 equipment scholarships throughout the year, where players can get any missing pieces of gear they need. Lastly, he developed the Bristol/Mt. Hope Hockey Alumni hockey clinic programs, where he and Peter Sousa give hockey clinics to players from Bristol and Warren from grades 1-8. There is a winter series and a summer series. All of this is completely free.

The Bristol Mt. Hope Hockey Alumni Association is an organization with a proud past and a promising future.