In 2009, the Wheeler Mission Center for Women & Children moved from its home at 23 North Rural Street to its current home, blocks away. At that time, Wheeler opted to donate the building to Englewood Community Development Corporation (ECDC), a neighborhood outgrowth program that was founded just north of this location in the late 1800s.

In 2011, with help from the Super Bowl Legacy projects, development spurred on Indy's Near Eastside, and ECDC was granted funds to renovate the donated building into 32 spacious apartments with an attached gymnasium for recreational sports. ECDC was required to spend the grant money on-site, and Pittsburgh transplant (now-Executive Director of ECDC) Joe Bowling helped bring Indianapolis's first and only rooftop hockey rink to life.

"We built the rooftop rink in 2011 in hopes of re-creating our family's experience playing dek hockey in Pittsburgh when we were kids... We had to spend the money on-site, and there wasn't much left to do in the gym or the apartments. So that's when I started to think of doing a rooftop space."

The rooftop rink is a fraction of the size of a standard hockey rink (only about 60 ft by 40 ft), so gameplay is limited to 3-on-3, which creates fast and competitive action. Over the past 12 years, the building's aptly named Indy Rooftop Hockey League (IRHL) has grown to include just over 50 active players, and interest in the league continues to grow.

Just three miles northeast of the rooftop rink is Ellenberger Park, a beautiful 42-acre park in the Irvington Historic District. The park was founded in 1909 and is widely known for its sledding hill and public swimming pool, which opened in 1930. An outdoor ice rink was installed in the early 1960s and enclosed in 1974, when the pool also underwent an extensive rehabilitation. For years, the ice rink was a popular attraction that hosted public skating events as well as competitive hockey games until much-needed improvements were deemed too costly, and the rink was closed in 2009.

In 2015 the Indy Inline Hockey League (inline/roller hockey) was searching for a new home, as they had spent the previous three years playing outdoors on a repurposed tennis court near the South Broad Ripple neighborhood. After a few inquiries and coordination with the Parks Department, Indy Inline secured Ellenberger Park’s rink for their league. The rink was dark, though, and the locker rooms and exterior walls leaked during rains. The polished concrete floor seemed ideal for inline hockey but was too slick even for their high-grip rubber wheels. Ellenberger needed some upgrades and repairs in order for Indy Inline to succeed. However, their increased popularity meant more rentals for the park, and after a few seasons of playing in the dim, damp Ellenberger rink, the league's manager, Ryan Spahr, helped convince the Parks Department that upgraded lighting and flooring would immensely benefit the league and the facility. New Sport Court flooring was installed in 2020, followed by new lighting a year later.

In 2022, Indiana was invited to become an expansion division of the National Ball Hockey League (NBHL) — the first nationwide ball hockey league in the US and the first ball hockey league to be sanctioned by USA Ball Hockey. Accepting the invitation to the NBHL meant many things would need to change, including finding a standard-size home rink and adjusting from 3-on-3 play to 5-on-5. With Ellenberger's recent upgrades, this seemed like the perfect facility and the perfect opportunity to help grow the sport and thus the Indiana Ball Hockey Association was formed. In April 2023, the Indiana Division of the National Ball Hockey League got underway, hosting three local teams and one visiting team from Columbus, Ohio. Indiana competed for two seasons in the NBHL before IBHA leadership made the tough decision to pull away from the National Ball Hockey League.

“Our time in the NBHL has been invaluable, offering us experience and insight that will continue to shape the future of ball hockey in Indiana. However, we believe that the best path forward is to concentrate on growing and nurturing the sport here at home.”

While in Indiana Ball Hockey Association has opted not to manage an NBHL Division moving forward, our relationship with the League remains strong, and any local players who still have interest in competing at that level will still have an opportunity to do so.