History of Slydysk

I learned the game of ice hockey under a hockey legend by the name of Joseph Francis Marmo who moved out to Idaho in the late 50s from Boston, MA. Big Joe played three years from 1949 to 1952 for the University of Michigan’s Wolverines and won the NCAA championship title in 1951. He later was elected the National Director of the Amateur Hockey Association of the United States in 1977 and received the National William Tutt Award from USA Hockey, Colorado Springs in1986. This award is given to a volunteer who during many years of service, displayed a selfless dedication to the enhancement of ice hockey at the grassroots level in America.

In those early years hockey practice was on a handmade sheet of ice bordered with snow and was played on a pond just north of town in an area called Mud Lake. The team shoveled the ice as part of the warmup to get ready for what was going to be a fun practice period. Most of the time it was rough and thin, so falling through the ice happened quite often, a good thing it was only two feet deep. Hockey practice was an event to be remembered, great ole’ time hockey.

During my high school years, I played under another great coach from Michigan that played for the Copper County Junior Championship hockey team from 1950 to 1951 and the CLK Radars UP championship team from 1952 to1953, by the name of Wayne Lehto. Wayne also played for the US army hockey team in 1954 winning the armed forces Far East Championship before going back to the Radars and finished out his hockey career in 1960. Together with Coach Bill Harry from Wisconsin, known as Farther Timeless by USA Hockey, took us to another level where we won the Tri-state B High School Hockey Championships, two years straight in 1977 and 1978. Although in his 80’s, you might still see Coach Harrie at the rink, teaching and giving youth players some coaches advice.

In the mid-70s, IFYHA, Idaho Falls Youth Hockey Association, built the Marmo-Lehto Ice Arena, where I played youth hockey, coached, and played recreation hockey until I turned 60. 

Over the last 50 years, my affiliation with hockey has been consistent as being a part of the IFYHA (Idaho Falls Yourth Hockey Association) includes being a registered player and USA Hockey level 4 coach, being one of the founding members of the ISHL, (Intermountain Senior Hockey League) in 1990 and the founder of the IFHL, (Idaho Falls Men’s Hockey Association) in 1994, General Manager of our local ice arena in 2017-2019 and being a part of several rink committees. This experience has given me the ability to tour lots of ice arenas all over North America viewing different ice facilities and youth hockey programs and seeing the difficulties to maintain infrastructures and programs. Many rinks struggle to keep the doors open due to high cost of ice because of lack of commerce for their facilities and communities. 

Inspired by this and by winter activities in general, mainly on ice, I continually ask the question, “How can ice facilities utilize all their ice slots to better support their cause and keep ice affordable for youth hockey?”  This planted the seed to defining a new game for a whole new user group and help ice facilities fill unused ice slots. That’s how the concept of the game of icebocce was created in 2007. So I started defining and creating the apparatus and methods for playing the game of Icebocce.

By thinking through the creation of making the game of icebocce, I had to come up with how the game would be played. This would require rules, equipment, the playing area, and its terms and definitions to play the game. After researching several old-time games like bowling, curling, bocce, billiards, shuffleboard, ice stock sport, and any game that included balls or sliding components, I was able to envision this new game. I looked at the structure of each of these games play to the composition that their devices were made of. 

After many years of thought, TESENT Games was created in 2015 to finalizing the design, development, and testing of the icebocce dysk. I made discs of all sizes and shapes using wood, rubber and all kinds of polymer resins. This testing and research was done to make sure the discs work with ease and with the proper amount of bumping action. By working with multiple resin distributors and being able to use the new products that are available today, we were able to come up with the perfect product that could withstand extreme temperature changes while being thrown at high velocities against solid structures and not be damaged. In 2017 Slydysk® was created and the World Icebocce Association (WIA) was formed so you too can now play the game of icebocce on your backyard ice or at your nearest ice arena.

After I came up with the perfect product, my next job was to get it made at the best cost possible. So, for months I searched manufacturing and resin companies for multiple things like location, quality control, workforce, distribution, assembly lines, and most of all the type of resins they had access to. In 2017 we negotiated and licensed with our first manufacturer to create tooling and start manufacturing.  We received our first order in 2018. Orders took forever and only received 30 game set at a time. We continued working with this manufacturer until 2021 when they went out of business. We then found another manufacturer in 2022 only for them to shut down their polyurethane injection business that same year.  

With all the problems that we were having with manufacture. Getting product in a timely manner and the quality control of our product. We decided to create our own manufacturing company. So in 2023 we created Intermountain Composites and now manufacture everything ourselves. 

We now have full control of our product and distribution. We are now 100% American Made.