When I first began covering prep boys hockey in 1972, there were only a handful of quality indoor rinks in the western suburbs.

Main venues at Golden Valley Ice Center, Breck School, The Blake School and Edina’ s Braemar Arena were being used day and night. A few of the high school teams still had some outdoor practices. I had heard all of the stories from the longtime high school coaches, who had to bring snow shovels to the outdoor rinks and clear them before they could practice.

I also heard stories about how the coaches would make sure the ice was thick and safe. The

John Sherman

Sports Editor

John Sherman is a sports editor for APG of ECM. Contact him at john. sherman @ apgecm. com.

late Willard Ikola revealed his method:“ We had a kid named Paul Faust, who was a really good football player. Fausty was our only 200-pound kid. When he tested the ice and didn’ t fall through, we knew it was safe for the rest of us.”

Thank goodness, Faust never broke the ice. Eventually, he became a collegiate player for the University of Minnesota and later signed with the

Minnesota Vikings as a linebacker.

Back in the 1950s, every Lake Conference team and all of the teams in the old Minnesota Valley Conference practiced outside. I remember watching practices on a rink at the Old Junior High in Bloomington, just south of 98th Street on Penn Avenue. I was there every day before going to my own youth practices and games for hockey and basketball.

BRAEMAR DAYS

Early in my days as a Sun Newspapers sportswriter, the Lake Conference played all of its Saturday games at Braemar Arena.

A typical schedule from

the 1972-73 season looked something like this: 9 a. m. Hopkins Eisenhower vs. St. Louis Park, 11 a. m. Wayzata vs. Hopkins Lindbergh, 1 p. m. Robbinsdale vs. Armstrong, 3 p. m. Edina-West vs. Mound, 5 p. m. Cooper vs. Bloomington Kennedy and 7 p. m. Edina-East vs. Bloomington Jefferson.

There were days when I watched every game – from the early morning to the time they turned out the lights.

Thankfully, in the 1970s, other communities finally had rinks for their high school boys teams.

Bloomington Ice Garden became a great venue for the three Bloomington schools – Lincoln,

Kennedy and Jefferson. New Hope Ice Arena was home base for Armstrong, Cooper and Robbinsdale. Hopkins Eisenhower and Hopkins Lindbergh began holding their home games at Minnetonka Ice Arena. When a third version of Wayzata High was built on Vicksburg Lane, a couple miles west of Highway 12, administrators had he foresight to put a hockey arena on the back of the building. Promos hailed the novelty as the first on-campus arena in the metro area.

HOCKEY VENUES

If there is one change I would like to see immediately in local high school hockey, it is bigger venues

for section playoff games. Sorry, but Bloomington Ice Garden is not big enough for those rivalry games featuring schools from Edina, Benilde-St. Margaret’ s and Wayzata in Section 6AA. Braemar is barely adequate to accommodate all of the fans who want to see the Section 2AA Tournament that usually features teams from schools like Minnetonka, Eden Prairie, Holy Family Catholic, Chanhassen and Shakopee.

One of the best nights of the high school hockey season used to be the Section 2AA-6AA championship doubleheader at

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