Freezing cold temperatures throughout the past week may cause some to ponder a move south, or to at least anxiously anticipate the warmth of spring.

But that’s not the case for hockey players and figure skaters who welcomed, and took advantage of, the true arrival of winter with this cold blast.

A snow day Friday, January 9 gave Newtown High School students a chance to lace up their skates for a pickup game at Hawley Pond on the Ram Pasture. Those plucky pond hockey enthusiasts shoveled some snow expanding an area that was cleared off prior to their arrival.

The players brought nets and set up makeshift goals using shoes or boots for fun-filled 3-on-3 scrimmages. Girls wearing figure skates, and parents with young children also carved through the ice surface that, just days earlier, could only be occupied by ducks and geese.