RANGELEY – Sixty men will take to the ice here this weekend in the first New England Pond Hockey Festival.

Four rinks are being created on Haley Pond behind the Rangeley Inn to host the 10 teams from New England with some members from Canada, event organizer Linda Sikes said Wednesday. The inn will be the headquarters for the festival which runs Friday through Sunday, Feb. 9 to 11.

Three men from Rangeley and Farmington have been clearing snow from the ice on the pond for the past three days and creating rinks, each 75 percent of the size of a regulation hockey rinks.

They’ve cleared more than a football-field-size area on the pond, she said.

She wanted to have the festival on Rangeley Lake, but when they initially looked at the ice there, it was only 6 inches thick and ice on Haley Pond was 12 inches thick, she said.

“We didn’t know this freeze was coming,” she said.

Three businessmen from the Portland area who own property in this area got the idea that Rangeley would be a great place to play pond hockey on a little larger scale this first year, said Sikes, a veteran event organizer in the Rangeley area.

Deron Barton of Barton Mortgage Corp., David Eaton of Capital Source and John Fay of Atlantic Sports Inc., all play hockey and have talked a number of their hockey buddies and opened it up to others to play in this year’s festival, she said.

The men had contacted her to help organize it, she said.

“I thought it was great. We’ve been working on this since August,” she said.

Sponsors include Portland Pirates, Shipyard Brewing Co. and 20 local businesses, she said.

Teams are coming Maine including Rangeley, Farmington and Skowhegan, and New Hampshire and Massachusetts, Sikes said. Players must be 35 years or older on Feb. 10.

“We’re playing four on four,” she said, which means four men on each team will play against another team of the same number with two substitutes on each team.

This sport has its roots in Canada and has exploded in popularity, Sikes said.

The U.S. Pond Hockey Championships were played on Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis, Minn., in January, and the World Pond Hockey Championship will be played Feb. 8-11 in the Village of Plaster Rock, New Brunswick, Canada.

Rangeley’s pond hockey festival will have only a men’s league this year but plans for a youth league and ladies league event are under way for the future, Sikes said.

The games will begin at 9 a.m. Saturday and be 30 minutes in length with two 15-minute intermissions, she said.

Each team is guaranteed four-round robin games and each team will play at least three games Saturday with the semi-finals and championship games to be held Sunday.

Sikes doesn’t know how many spectators will come, she said, but she’s hoping many will.

She has sent letters to 11 snowmobile clubs in Franklin and Oxford counties in hopes they will come.

For more information visit: http://www.rangeleymaine.com/pond-hockey-festival.shtml.

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