For more than four days, all they did was hockey — lived it, breathed it, ate it and slept it — and now organizers of an epic street hockey game in Nanaimo, B.C. say they have set a new Guinness World Record.
The puck dropped at 8 a.m. PT Friday, Aug. 8, in the Lacrosse Box at the Nanaimo Curling Centre, for 40 players who committed to the challenge.
The teams played for 105 hours and 44 minutes, ending the game at 5:45 p.m. on Tuesday and beating the previous record, set in Lethbridge, Alta. in 2008, by 27 minutes.
"We cried tears of joy today with a bunch of new family members and we broke a record together," said ShaneNicholls, of the non-profit ball hockey group Topaz Hockey.
Guinness World Records has yet to verify the result, but organizers did register the game as an official attempt.
While the epic game had its ups and downs, Nicholls said it was ultimately the support of the community that made it worthwhile.
"[It] was a true test of mental, emotional and physical endurance," he told CBC News in an email.
"Honestly, we couldn't have done it without support, as we would check texts and social media from time to time and the posts keep us going at times — and the fans that came to sit and watch!"
The final score was 1,728 to 1,381, with Team University Village Mall topping Team Coastal Community Credit Union.
The event was organized by Topaz Hockey and Youth Sticking Together, a mentoring organization for young people based in Nanaimo, to raise funds for Big Brothers Big Sisters, Canuck Place Children's Hospice and the Topaz Lacrosse and Hockey Box Revitalization project in Victoria.
Nanaimo is no stranger to record hockey game attempts. Last year, Youth Sticking Together made their way into the record books for playing the longest indoor ball hockey game ever recorded.