Oliver Seibert

Oliver Seibert
Hockey Hall of Fame , 1961
Date of birth	March 18, 1881
place of birth	Berlin , Ontario , Canada
date of death	May 15, 1944
Place of death	Kitchener , Ontario, Canada
position	center
Career stations
1900-1902	Berlin Rangers
1902	Guelph
1905	Canadian Soo

Oliver Levi Seibert (born March 18, 1881 in Berlin , Ontario , † May 15, 1944 in Kitchener , Ontario) was a Canadian ice hockey player . He is considered to be one of the first ice hockey players in history to achieve professional status in 1904.

In 1961 he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in the Player category . Two years later he was followed by his son Earl , who would later become a professional ice hockey player, into the Hall of Fame, the two being the first father-son team to be inducted into the ice hockey hall of fame.

Private

Oliver Seibert was born on March 18, 1881 as the second of 14 children (according to other sources also 18 children) of Franklin and Sarah Seibert (née Bedford) in what was then the small town of Berlin, around 100 kilometers west of Toronto , in the Canadian province of Ontario. On November 6, 1901, he married the native Emma Fuhrman, with whom he subsequently had six children (May, Ray, Vera, Earl , Ruth and Doris). Through his paternal grandfather, Jacob (or rather Jakob) E. Seibert, who came from Bavaria , Oliver Seibert is of German descent. His paternal grandmother comes from Switzerland . His mother Sarah was born in England to English parents who later emigrated to Canada, which is why he also has English ancestors. The parents of his future wife Emma were both born in Germany. The 1911 Canadian census shows that Oliver Seibert was a machinist.

Sports career

Since he grew up in a large family, they could put their own team, which mostly consisted of Oliver, Edward, Nelson, Clarence, Bert, Shannon and Frank Seibert. During this time they played in teams of seven players each and not, as is common today, with five field players and one goalkeeper. Oliver Seibert was already admired at this time for his skill and speed on the ice, although he had this from his father Frank "Butch" Seibert, about whom there are reports that show that he was a horse in a race on ice Grand River defeated. At the beginning of his career, Oliver Seibert was considered to be versatile and started his career primarily as a goalkeeper. For the first time in a men's team he appeared in 1900 when he appeared as the center for the Berlin Rangers in the Western Ontario Hockey Association ( WOHA for short ). After two years for the Berlin Rangers, in which he sometimes acted extremely dangerous, he moved to Guelph . Then he came to Berlin for another season. He was a member of the Western Ontario Senior Champions Team from 1900, 1901, 1902 and 1904. In 1904 he played a friendly with the Berlin Rangers in St. Louis , Missouri , which is widely regarded as one of the first games on artificial ice .

After the WOHA was accepted by the Ontario Hockey Association in 1904 , Oliver Seibert was declared unfit to participate in the first game on December 30, 1904, which also nullified the possibility of ever playing for Ontario. Just one month later, Seibert joined the Canadian Soo professional team on January 31, 1905, with play in the International Professional Hockey League ( IPHL for short ), earning $ 30 a week there. For the team, however, he only completed a single league game in which he suffered a season-ending injury. During the game against the Calumet Miners , he suffered a fractured leg on February 2, 1905. He continued his professional career as a hockey player in London and Guelph in the also short-lived Ontario Professional Hockey League . With the Guelph Royals he completed, among other things, the OPHL season 1908/09. Oliver Seibert also played at the professional level in the Northwestern Michigan League . Seibert is one of the first players who practiced the wrist shot, which sometimes contributed to his goal danger.

After retiring from active professional sport for a long time, Oliver Seibert died on May 15, 1944 of a stroke that he suffered in his house at 79 Elgin Street in what is now Kitchener (until 1916: Berlin). In 1961 Seibert was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame ; he was also represented in the Waterloo Region Hall of Fame . His son Earl was also inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame as a player just two years later and was also a member of the Waterloo Region Hall of Fame . This made the two of them the first father-son team to be included in the ice hockey hall of fame.

literature

• Dave Blevins: The Sports Hall of Fame Encyclopedia. Baseball, basketball, football, hockey, soccer, 2 volumes . 1st edition. The Scarecrow Inc. ( Rowman & Littlefield ), Lanham , Maryland 2012, ISBN 978-0-8108-6130-5 , pp. 881 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Oliver Seibert on legendsofhockey.net (English), accessed on July 4, 2016
2. ↑ Sarah Bedford at generations.regionofwaterloo.ca (English), accessed July 4, 2016
3. ↑ Emma Fuhrman at generations.regionofwaterloo.ca (English), accessed on July 4, 2016
4. ↑ Oliver Seibert at generations.regionofwaterloo.ca (English), accessed on July 4, 2016