Good for you for playing, was it in West Virginia? I played from 3 or 4 yrs old up to men's hockey when I was about 26. I quite after I was in a head on collision and shattered my right knee cap 10 yrs ago, but didn't go back because of how popular hockey is here. As it should be, kids are given priority for ice time and by the time men's leagues get to the ice, it's a 9-11pm start. By the time you play an hour, change and drive home, it's 12:30am and by the time you're no longer wired and fall asleep it's 1:30am, and that makes going to work the next day pretty hard. I'm not even in a small town with 1 or 2 sheets of ice, there are dozens and dozens and dozens of arenas, there's just that many kids playing.
I have 3 kids under 5 now and I'm going into my second year of building a rink. I tell my wife the insane amounts of money (a big part of buying the tractor was for a rink) and the huge amount time preparing, building and maintaining the rink is all for the kids, but the truth is there's just as big of a smile on my face out on the rink as there is on the kids faces.