Hockey-hungry teen builds his own rink

Building an ice-skating rink taught 16-year-old Eitan Bar-David two important lessons: that a person can learn how to do just about anything by watching videos on YouTube and how to start up again after experiencing failure.

The first lesson came up early in the process, when the Riverdalian decided to give an idea he had for more than a year a shot. He watched videos for “hours and hours” and decided to build an ice-skating rink on the nine-by-nine-foot deck over his family’s garage on Grosvenor Avenue.

On Dec. 28, Eitan, a junior at the SAR Academy, started working. He covered the borders of the deck with tarp and secured the fabric with bricks to keep the water from pouring off. He then filled buckets of water — more than 100 — and emptied them onto the deck. He did exactly as he had learned on YouTube, but neglected to take one detail into account. The people in the videos were from places like Minnesota where temperatures are colder than in New York, even during a chilling winter.

Instead of an ice-skating rink he had built a swimming pool. Eitan learned his second lesson when the water didn’t freeze.

“Starting up again was the hardest part,” he said.

In mid-January, after more than 50 hours of work, the rink was finally ready.

“I hoped it wasn’t going to take so much work,” he said, noting that one night he toiled from 8 p.m. to 1:30 a.m.

His mother, Tamar Bar-David, said neither she nor her husband helped Eitan. He has always been creative but this was the most complicated project he had taken on, she said.

“I didn’t think it would really work,” she said, adding in a previous e-mail, “I thought his idea was unrealistic but encouraged him.”

With the skeptical moral support of his parents, Eitan’s only helper was his 9-year-old sister Ayelet. Together, they found objects to perfect the rink, including a gardening shovel and a walker, carpet and ice hockey goaling pipes that they used to create a homemade zamboni.

Eitan, who has been playing on a floor hockey team since he was 7, said he can now practice while his little sister does tricks.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, he laced up his skates, took his hockey stick and started hitting a puck with the content expression of a winner.

Ayalet decided not to join him, but would likely wake him to skate the next morning, as she often does. As for Eitan, building the rink twice has taught him some handy tricks, like covering the rink during the day to keep the ice from defrosting. He said he plans to use his expertise next winter when he builds a bigger rink in his neighbor’s backyard.

For now, though, all Eitan has to do is to wish for cold days. He might be the only New Yorker who hopes temperatures get lower and snow keeps coming.