Rabid rivals for generations: Eveleth, Virginia combine to save storied Iron Range hockey tradition

EVELETH — A generation ago, this would have been the oddest of sights: a bunch of old-timers — some from Virginia, some from Eveleth — throwing back Coors Lights and Pabst Blue Ribbons together under the neon lights of Margie's Roosevelt bar, laughing about the old days when these neighboring Iron Range towns really despised each other.

Keith Hendrickson, who graduated from Virginia High School in 1975, told a story. He was skating in warmups for a hockey game at Eveleth's historic Hippodrome. Eveleth cheerleaders were on the ice, pompoms resting on the red line. Hendrickson skated past a cheerleader, who screamed at him: "You're going to (expletive) die tonight, Hendrickson!" So his teammate whacked Eveleth pompoms all across the ice.

They spoke of Jack Carlson, the former NHL player from Virginia, being hit with an egg in the face during warmups. They talked about fights — so many fights: on the ice, in the stands, in the arenas' smoke-filled lobbies and when the goal judge climbed the chicken wire behind the net to fight an opposing player. They snickered about Eveleth fans pelting Virginia buses with rocks after a game.

But the old-timers also spoke about a new hockey team about to play its first sectional playoff game: the Rock Ridge Wolverines, which combines these longtime rivals into one. The high school for the new consolidated school district opens in 2023, part of a $190 million project that'll bring some of the newest, fanciest schools and athletic facilities the Iron Range has ever seen — and will fuse together these hated rivals. Before the schools open, sports teams are already hitching together.

"Could you ever envision a Hatfield marrying a McCoy?" said Mike Sertich, star hockey player of Virginia's class of 1965 and longtime men's hockey coach at University of Minnesota Duluth. "That's what's happening here."

This is a different era on the Iron Range. Eveleth and Virginia are half the size they once were, with 3,600 people now in Eveleth and 8,500 in Virginia. The 1980s mining crash decimated schools here: Virginia once had more than 300 students in each graduating class but now hovers around 100. Eveleth-Gilbert High School — Eveleth consolidated with a nearby town in 1993 — has 65. The dwindling population has made it difficult to compete in athletics. Consolidation has been talked about since the 1980s, but even a decade ago, that was a nonstarter.

Old rivalries die hard

For generations, this was the Iron Range version of Michigan-Ohio State, Yankees-Red Sox, Lakers-Celtics. But enmity was not just left to sports. People in Virginia wouldn't shop in Eveleth, and vice versa. Parents in Eveleth didn't want their kids to marry anyone from Virginia, and vice versa. Virginia comprised stoic Scandinavians, Eveleth raucous Eastern Europeans and Italians, and no love was lost between the two.

But if anything could bring the towns together, it's the sport that for generations set them apart: hockey.

This is one of Minnesota's hockey hotbeds. Eveleth won five of the first seven Minnesota high school hockey championships and is home to the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame Museum. Across the street from Margie's Roosevelt is the Big Stick, a 107-foot hockey stick — the world's largest. Virginia is no hockey slouch, either, and has produced such NHLers as Matt Cullen and Matt Niskanen.

With downtowns 6 miles apart, the area between the two cities is officially called Midway. But old-timers call it the demilitarized zone. Appropriately, the stunning new high school sits there, a literal bridge.

"It's hard sometimes to let go of your identity," said Josh Lamppa, Virginia's athletic director. "Some people are having a tough time getting over this. But the kids are leading the way."

Something clicked

The first time coach Ben Johnson got together with players on his new team, they all wore hard hats.

It was summer, and Johnson, who'd been coaching boys' hockey in Ely, had just been hired as Rock Ridge's first boys' hockey coach. He wanted his players excited, so he got the Virginia city attorney to let them into the soon-to-be completed Iron Trail Motors Event Center, a $38 million convention center with two sheets of ice and prodigious amounts of local timber and taconite rock. Iron Rangers hope the building, plus an adjacent Marriott hotel, will become an economic driver.

Johnson grew up in Duluth, but he knew these towns' hockey histories. He also knew he had to stay above the fray and away from old personal spats. He had to field the best team he could.

One problem: These districts never cut players. Now, nearly 60 players were trying out, and Johnson had only 36 spots on varsity and junior varsity.

"The politics didn't matter for me," Johnson said. "You take two communities who hated each other for 100 years and you try to bring them together in one year, it's hard. They all hated each other a month before, and now they gotta be teammates."

Consolidation had been years in the making. Two years ago, Virginia Superintendent Noel Schmidt revealed the proposed school name and mascot after a hockey game between Virginia and Eveleth-Gilbert. Even though some called Schmidt a "pack sacker" — an Iron Range term for people not originally from there — the crowd applauded when players gathered at center ice around a Rock Ridge Wolverines banner.

A few months later, voters approved the plan, perhaps because it came with a big carrot: The Minnesota Department of Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation, which reinvests taconite taxes in the Iron Range, would fund more than half the $190 million project. But only if the towns collaborated.

With nearly 200 students in each grade, the high school will operate in an academy model, unique on the Iron Range. Students choose one of three career paths — trades, including engineering or manufacturing; health and human services; and business and technology — with general requirements embedded in each. There will be more advanced placement classes, better athletics facilities, more opportunities.

"People are screaming for workers, and they want kids to stay," said Willie Spelts, Rock Ridge's fundraising coordinator and director of school-to-work engagement. "This is the greatest thing to ever happen up here. It's an opportunity for our kids and our communities to have a renaissance."

All this is well and good for kids. But parents and grandparents had to get over long-held grudges. Which wasn't easy.

"We're only 10 minutes away from each other, but you just didn't associate with Eveleth people," said Lisa Callister, who has had four kids in Virginia's hockey program. "We play them in any sport, it was always, 'Kill the Bears!'"

Tryouts in November brought tears and hurt feelings when some friends made the team and others didn't. The season started rough as players adjusted to new teammates and a faster style. Parents and fans still wore Virginia Blue Devils and Eveleth-Gilbert Golden Bears gear. Half the home games were at the new arena in Virginia, half at the 100-year-old Hippodrome in Eveleth, an arrangement that will continue. The team lost its first three games. Players weren't playing as a team and didn't reach .500 until the end of January.

But by the middle of the season, Eveleth players had started hanging with Virginia players. They went bowling together. At the end of January, something clicked: They won three in a row, dropped a couple, then went on a four-game winning streak in February. Rock Ridge's first sectional playoff game would be a home game.

"Hockey is everything up here," said Nick Troutwine, a senior defenseman from Eveleth. "Going to state, that hasn't happened in a long time up here. If we can win sectionals and prove people wrong about these towns coming together, it'd be good for this community."

'Let's go, Green!'

"You ready for tomorrow?" the coach asked his players after a skate-around last week.

The boys sat silently in their locker room. The next day would be their first sectional playoff game as the Rock Ridge Wolverines. Johnson had won state with Duluth East in 1995. He wanted his players to experience "the best feeling ever" of playing at St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center.

Johnson pulled out a goalie stick in Wolverine colors, then he told a story. Before the team's second practice, Johnson got a phone call that one of his best friends died suddenly from a heart attacked related to COVID-19. Johnson was devastated, but he still had to coach. After telling the story, he pulled out a Sharpie and signed his friend's name on the stick.

"Think about who you are playing for, your purpose, and write it on this stick," he said.

The players wrote names of people who mattered most: grandparents and parents, uncles and friends. In the hockey-stench-filled locker room, though, something was left unsaid and unwritten: that these players were playing for their towns and for their towns' futures.

On Wednesday night, the parking lot in Virginia overflowed. Fans parked on the street and walked to the arena in sub-zero temperatures. Every seat was filled. The student section was decked out in the green, black and white of the Rock Ridge Wolverines. The band — also newly combined this year — played Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train." Eveleth parents sat next to Virginia parents, all shouting, "Let's go, Green!"

They lost. Even though Rock Ridge dominated the first period, the puck just wouldn't go in the net. The game was not without controversy; referees waved off two Rock Ridge goals in the same shift. But it just wasn't their night. They lost to another Iron Range rival, Hibbing, 4-2.

Their first season was over. But it wasn't hard to glimpse these towns' united future.

"The kids came out, the communities came out — zero parochialism," said Spelts, who has been working on the consolidation project for years. "It was the start of something big. It was the beginning of the Rock Ridge Wolverines."