Tolkkinen: Team’s hockey sticks all stolen, but the community steps up

The Mankato West High School hockey team was all geared up and ready to play at Essentia Duluth Heritage Center on Saturday, waiting for just one thing — their hockey sticks.

Parents were looking for the sticks everywhere, said Patsy King, whose son Sean is team captain. The game was supposed to start at 8 a.m., and the sticks, kept in a heavy wheeled bag on the team bus, were nowhere to be seen. It was the team’s last game in the tournament. They’d lost two close games and Saturday’s was their last chance for a win before heading home.

Well, the sticks, it turned out, had been stolen.

You can’t play hockey without sticks, so the team did what it had to do. Took off its skates and postponed its game against Anoka High School. Then the team trooped over to watch Mankato West’s junior varsity team, which still had its sticks. They cheered on their classmates despite their disappointment and sense of unfinished business.

The financial loss hurt, too. Hockey sticks are expensive. If you’re not from a hockey family, you might be shocked to know that in high school hockey, sticks can run anywhere from $250 to $400 apiece. And most kids carry two in case they break one. Hockey is the most expensive youth sport, according to PlaygroundEquipment.com, even more than skiing or snowboarding.

So not only were these kids robbed of their last chance to play the game, but they were also each out $500 to $800 worth of equipment. Clearly, these are not my brother’s pond hockey sticks I remember in our closet growing up, battered and bandaged with duct tape.

Youth hockey can be pretty cutthroat. Parents hollering during the games, blood pressure boiling, kids scissoring across the ice to get to the puck. It’s intensely competitive. But as word of the theft spread, Minnesota’s hockey lovers showed true sportsmanship by coming up with a way to support Mankato West.

In Esko, hockey mom Kris Anton was telling her husband, Erik, about the theft. He was born in Mankato.

“He’s like, ‘Well, we gotta do something. We’re hockey parents.’ Anton said. “And he’s like, ‘What about GoFundMe? You’re good at that computer stuff. Can you just set that up?’”

It was that simple. In two days, they’ve raised $5,815 to buy the kids new sticks. That’s enough to buy each kid one new, top-of-the-line hockey stick, and they plan on getting them at Play It Again Sports in Mankato, where owner Steve Eckers has promised to give them 30% off. Eckers has known these players or their families for many years, as long as they’ve been playing sports.

“All these families are going to certainly be in an unexpected pinch, because they’re all going to need sticks by Thursday when they play Thursday night,” Eckers said.

Duluth police have recovered at least some of the hockey sticks and arrested a suspect in the case. In the wake of that news, donations have slowed. So Anton remains short of her $15,000 goal. But that doesn’t mean that the team will get its sticks back. Police are keeping them as evidence, and nobody knows how long that will last, or if the sticks are still in good enough condition to use.

I should add that the families’ gratitude for the donations is tinged by fear of backlash. Without generous sponsors, hockey is not a game for the poor, so to be asking for funds at a time when many families can barely afford groceries and rent might be unseemly. The request has already drawn a bit of criticism on social media. I get it. There have been long stretches in my own life that I have been in that position.

But I applaud those who chose to give to this cause. Not all hockey families are wealthy or even middle class. Some rely on hand-me-down equipment and make sacrifices so their kids can play, so these donations help those families.

Most of all, replacing these kids’ sticks lets them know that even when bad things happen, there are also people with good hearts who want to help. It’s a grace note after a bewildering theft and a great way to close out the old year.

“They’re just kind of in shock that people care, you know,” King said. “They would care enough to do something like that for a stranger.”