How Minnesota became the center of the broomball universe

Grant Dawson’s introduction to broomball happened young. And it left a mark.

Gym class might never have been as fun as when he slipped and slid across a frozen tennis-court-turned-rink at his New Brighton middle school. Broomball was like hockey without skates. All the fun but with half the equipment: chase ball, get ball, put ball in the back of the net.

Dawson was hooked, a love that was bedrock by the time he got to Bethel University, with its robust intramural leagues.

“Part of the allure of broomball at that level is it is fun,” Dawson said, “and it only gets more fun as you get better.”

Today Dawson, 42, has played at every level of the sport, experiences that reflect the spectrum of broomball in Minnesota and its wild, sustained popularity — from rec teams that scream “beer league” to elite-level squads that use special lightweight sticks and break down game film.

Dawson also personifies another truth about the sport: Minnesota is the center of broomball in the United States. World dominance isn’t a stretch, either.

“Minnesota is the hub of broomball nationally,” Dawson said. Though overall player numbers aren’t tracked, Dawson said he believes there are more players in Minnesota than in the rest of the country combined.

Perhaps it makes sense that the sport is anchored here. Ice, cold and winter are glorified here as things to be embraced and enjoyed no matter the extremes. Indoor or out, broomball remains a winter scrap. It’s hockey reimagined and retooled: Five players and a goalie matched up with your best six. (Broomball.com traces the sport’s U.S. beginnings to Duluth, where structured play started in the 1960s.)

This season, Minneapolis’ outdoor recreation league play began in early January for about 2,000 players on 155 teams in 23 leagues (men, women, co-ed, men’s masters and open). In St. Paul, 80 teams play in 11 leagues.

The level of play and skill runs from A level (elite) to D (rec league), with the latter a feeder for even higher-level teams.

In broomball’s upper echelons, most of the best men and women are Minnesotan. So are the best teams: The women’s, mixed and master teams that won world indoor championships last October in Chamonix, France, were flush with North Star State residents.

Also a coach, Dawson said women are driving the sport’s growth. “It’s only a matter of time before they outpace men” in interest and participation.

At the worlds, they kept pace, and on one level exceeded, the men, where Ellen Raushel, 33, of Little Canada, was MVP of the women’s bracket. She had seven goals and seven assists in nine games.

Raushel and her wife, Melissa Elke, were teammates on the women’s gold-medal squad. The roster had 17 players. All were from the Twin Cities metro.

On Saturday nights, the couple play together in a women’s elite league at Augsburg University’s ice arena in Minneapolis. The league has 11 teams, with four considered A-flight teams and the remainder B. It has added four teams in the last two years.

Raushel, who grew up playing high school hockey in Aitkin, Minn., says broomball satisfies her competitive nature. With two young daughters, she and Elke also find a connection with the women they play with and against — many of whom also routinely have their kids in tow.

“There is a competitive level but not to the detriment of the community that we have built — and built with a lot of different ladies and generations,” Raushel said.

Elke, 40, recalled “falling so hard” for the game after she was invited to join a company team in St. Paul’s Rice Park, and she soon got Raushel on board. “It is such a fun sport,” Elke said. “As long as you have the ability to run, you can play broomball. Running on ice is such a leveling skill. No one is good at the start.”

That proved a small step toward a greater commitment. In 2018, Elke attended the world championships at the Blaine SuperRink and was wowed by the skill on display.

Teams at that level of the sport are miles removed from the days of broom bristles dipped in wax and chunks of carpet lashed to shoes to help with traction. Raushel said her world team watched videos that helped set up defensive schemes and fine-tune power plays.

The game was perhaps even more popular in Minnesota decades ago. League coordinator Auggie Garcia, a St. Paul community rec specialist, said interest is slowly increasing after COVID-19 chilled participation in the sport. He recalled the 1990s, when broomball fanned out across six rinks a night at heavily used McMurray Fields, off Lexington Avenue south of Como Park.

Dawson, who met his wife, Shalanah, in 2006 in a bar league, plays on an elite men’s team called Met X. But the Friday night league is just a dot on his broomball calendar. There will be a state tournament and invitationals before the national tournament caps the season in April.

Those events will happen indoors, “where you get the obsessives, the weirdos who have hundreds of hours in the game,” said Dawson, who used to fly back on weekends from a new job in Reno, Nev., to meet his game obligation. “None of these games mean anything except that they mean a tremendous amount to the community itself.”

Dan Kennedy has been joining or rounding up a Saturday morning group for 30 years. It currently plays pickup at Van Cleve Park in Minneapolis. Kennedy, 60, said the game was already popular when he discovered it, and he’s hardly the only long-timer who has guarded winter Saturdays on his calendar for years.

Today, he goes for the camaraderie and the love of staying active outdoors in winter, in all weather. He sees ideal conditions where others might cringe. “You’ve got wind and sun. It’s just a different experience. Great variability,” he added. “But to those who love the game, it’s all worth it.”