TUPPER LAKE — The ice is in at the Tupper Lake Memorial Civic Center — right on schedule this year.

Crews put the finishing touches on the ice earlier this week, with the first Tupper Lake Youth Hockey activity taking place on Wednesday evening. The milestone marks a successful completion of an ambitious timeline laid out by Tupper Lake Central School District Superintendent Jaycee Welsh at the Oct. 6 school board meeting.

The civic center is owned and operated by TLCSD. At the board meeting, Welsh detailed a more-or-less 12-step process needed to get the ice in place and ready to skate. It involved cutting lines, replacing a cooling tower, installing a new one and connecting the lines, making sure all of the other equipment was set for the season, cooling the floor and then building the ice in several layers.

Three weeks ago, Welsh was cautiously optimistic, but cautioned that any wrinkle in the process could delay Wednesday’s intended completion date. In the end, Welsh said there were no snags and that everything went according to plan.

“It was great,” she said. “It was so incredibly relieving that it went smoothly and we had a lot of people juggling a lot of balls in the air to make it work — and it did. We hit every timeline to a ‘T.'”

This was more than just good luck. Welsh said TLCSD’s grounds crew and the contractors the district worked with for the process all understood how important ice season is to Tupper Lake. For example, she noted that the TLCSD buildings and grounds team of Sean Auclair, Ben Lanthier and Robert Durfee worked throughout last weekend on overtime to get the ice finished.

“They sacrificed some of their own personal time, and they know how important it is,” she said. “You couldn’t ask for three more dedicated guys.”

Welsh said that without Auclair’s crew working on that weekend, things wouldn’t have been ready to go this week.

“The amount of intricacy it takes to paint that jet ice, and then flooding it for two days,” she said. “Everything has to happen simultaneously and quickly, and we weren’t willing to give up two days.”

There are several opportunities for public skating coming up. These include a public skate from 3 to 5 p.m. today, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday and 1 to 2:30 p.m. on Monday. The full civic center calendar, with additional dates and events, is available at tupperlakecsd.net/130775_2. The times may be subject to change, with the online calendar offering the most up-to-date information.

Welsh said to stay tuned for a possible Halloween night event at the civic center. She and Dan Brown, the TLCSD school psychologist who also oversees a lot of the civic center’s programming, are currently working on planning the details, with more information expected to be released in the coming days.