Sports

Orangeville Stone Crushers reunion celebrates 50th anniversary of provincial hockey championship win

April 14, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

It was April 1975 at the Orangeville Arena.

Close to 1,500 fans packed the stands to watch the Orangeville Stone Crushers and a team from Milton battle it out for the provincial Juvenile A hockey championship.

The final series was a best-of-seven event, with the first team to win four games to become the provincial champions. 

The Stone Crushers won the final game 6-1 and became a part of local sports history.

The series was held at the Orangeville Sports Complex, which opened in 1972 and was renamed the Tony Rose Memorial Sports Centre in 1991.

The remaining members of the Stone Crushers gathered at Pia’s on Broadway in Orangeville on Saturday, April 5, to reminisce and celebrate the achievement that took place exactly half a century ago. 

The Stone Crushers had a stellar run that year, undefeated in all 20 regular season games. From there, they had a series of playoffs to get through to make it to the provincial championships.

“This is the 50th anniversary of the win,” explained Roy Bryan, who played defence on the team. “On April 9, 1975, we won the All-Ontario Juvenile A Championship. Of course, some of these guys at the reunion have spread out all over, but well over half are still local. There were 17 players on the team. Our coach, JP Marchildon is here.”

Bryan added, “It was an unusual year. Normally, the ice would have been taken out of the arena in April, but they kept it in for us because we kept winning. The arena was packed every night.”

As the team kept winning, more fans came out to the games and packed the arena.

“We played teams all over and all the way down to Windsor,” said former Stone Crushers goalie Mike Robinson. “We had to win our league, and then we had four or five rounds of playoffs. The final was a best-of-seven series and we won it in six games. We were called the Stone Crushers because Lockyer Brothers Ltd., was a sand and gravel construction company and they were our main sponsor. We won the final game handily. We won 6-1. It was a close series all the way through until the final game.”

During the final game, there were 1,400 fans packed into the arena with standing room only.

The win placed the Stone Crushers in the record books and gave the Town of Orangeville some local sports heroes. 

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