Dedicated group keeps hockey off thin ice

Three members of the North Commons’ 11-under team skate toward the rink for a game at Lynnhurst Park.

Story and photos by David Pierini Staff Reporter

Coach Mick, a hockey stick in one hand and a bucket of pucks in the other, walks into the warming house at North Commons Park with cheeks already rosy from the four-degree air.

Kids are squirming while parents lace their skates, stretch hockey sweaters over padded shoulders and swaddle scarves under caged helmets.

“I hope you got wool socks for Christmas,” Mick Kukielka tells them as the boys and girls waddle outside to the rink for Wednesday night practice in January.

It is an idyllic scene celebrated by the “State of Hockey,” played out on frozen lakes and outdoor park rinks from Thief River Falls to Winona to the Northside. Hockey is hardwired into Minnesota’s DNA.

Every town has its fabled figures and some of North Minneapolis’ most important ones are the people who have been working for the last 35 years to keep youth hockey alive.

These are coaches who teach kids to skate, drivers who pick up kids, a dad who sharpens skates, and people who donate equipment. It also includes two men, one a physician the other a pastor, who rounded up a small group of kids in 1985 to enroll them in hockey.

STARTING FROM SCRATCH

Dale Hulme measure a stick for Leo Martinez. Hulme’s New Directions Youth Ministry revived youth hockey in North Minneapolis 35 years ago.

Chris Williams and Dale Hulme attended the same church and were taking skating lessons together when, one day, Williams asked Hulme, “What’s going on? Where did all the hockey go?”

Williams had grown up on the rink at Harrison Park, a rare figure skater who also played hockey. When he returned from medical school, the rinks for the most part were empty.

Hulme, an Iowa native, was Minneapolis Public Schools teacher who had just become a Lutheran pastor. At seminary, Hulme created his own curriculum to work with youth. He and his wife, Sue Quist, founded a youth ministry called New Directions, designed to help children in North Minneapolis “overcome obstacles to their development presented by the inner city environment.”

These were programs to get kids doing outdoor activities like camping and skiing. Williams asked Hulme if New Directions could add hockey to its mission.

“I had never seen any hockey teams in the parks,” said Hulme, the pastor at St. Olaf Lutheran Church. “There was a program in St. Paul for inner-city hockey, but nothing was being done here. Hockey was near the end of the line and North Minneapolis seemed to lack a hockey culture.”

Hulme says there were a swirl of obstacles to hockey thriving on the Northside.

North High School had already dropped varsity hockey; its last season was in 1979. North students could play for Henry – which had a storied program that included several college stars, an Olympic silver medalist and one who ascended to the NHL – folded its program in 1998 as the city high schools consolidated players into two teams of East and West.

Minneapolis now has one team with kids from the city’s seven public high schools.

The game was increasingly moving to indoor rinks and getting more and more expensive. North Minneapolis has a disproportionate amount of poverty and more kids were turning to less expensive sports.

Hockey is also a very white sport with few players of color. The lack of representation, along with stories of racial harassment suffered by the few who moved up the ranks, were unappealing to black kids, Hulme said.

“Some of the kids who get to the higher levels are often the only black player on the team and have to put up with harassment,” Williams said. “I played through that. I wasn’t going to let it stop me, but a lot of kids aren’t going to have that confidence.”

Williams helps coach the North Commons seven, eight and nine-year olds, which includes his son, Marko. He had also coached Hulme’s kids when they were in the program.

Hulme doesn’t get much time to appreciate the fruits of his labor by being the administrator of the North Commons’ program.

Leilani Bolanos gets help with her helmet before taking the ice for practice at North Commons.

He is busy securing funds from state and local sponsors that greatly reduce the cost barriers of hockey. Families with kids who qualify for free lunch pay $25 for the season. They get skates, a stick, padding and a uniform. Funds from sponsors also help pay for ice time at indoor arenas and cover transportation costs to pick up kids for games and practices.

When Hulme is not recruiting kids, he is in a room at the North Commons park building called “the cage.” New players visit the cage to get outfitted with all the equipment they will need. If a stick is too long for a kid, Hulme pulls a saw out of his briefcase and cuts it down on the spot.

“Dale is a great sower of seeds and North Minneapolis is his garden,” said Booker Hodges, who was among the first groups of kids in Hulme’s early program. His father and uncle played in North Minneapolis on park rinks and now his son, is on a North Commons team he now coaches.

“I firmly believe if it were not for Dale the harvest of so many people giving back to their community would not have manifested,” said Hodges, now Minnesota’s assistant commissioner for public safety. “If it were not for Dale’s dedication I would not be where I am today.

FROM A SEED, A SPROUT AND A BLOOM

Devin Lay is big, quick and wears the game face of a fierce lion. He plays on the North Commons 15-under team, "Dale is a great sower of seeds and North Minneapolis is his garden." Booker Hodges Leilani Bolanos gets help with her helmet before taking the ice for practice at North Commons. Dale Hulme measure a stick for Leo Martinez. Hulme’s New Directions Youth Ministry revived youth hockey in North Minneapolis 35 years ago. NOW NORTH NEWS 13 where he splits time as a goalie and hard-driving forward.

Devin Lay plays goalie and forward for the 15-under team. Next year, he will be a freshman at North High School and must decide whether to pursue basketball or continue hockey with Minneapolis consolidated high schools team.

He was at Jenny Lind Elementary School when the Herb Brooks Foundation, named for the St. Paul native who led the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey team to a gold medal, were offering free skating lessons.

Devin was among the kids to go and soon after, he approached his mother, Corrine Martin, with a brochure for the New Directions program at North Commons.

“He wanted to play right away,” Martin said. “I told him if he can find a team where we don’t have to buy anything, he could play. I’m a single parent. Hockey sticks cost $300.”

Devin is in his third year of hockey and loves it. He is well-aware of the lack of black players in the NHL and this gives him some pause about continuing to play. He can only think of three and proudly names the one black goaltender, the Vegas Golden Knights’ Malcolm Subban.

Next school year, he will be a freshman at North High School and when asked whether he plans to play for the consolidated Minneapolis high school team, Devin doesn’t say no, but he says he is a football player.

“Football is his passion,” his mother says. “We’ve talked to the football coach and he encourages the kids to play other sports. Devin is playing basketball this winter, too. He has a choice to make what sport he wants to play in the winter.

“We let him try everything and then let him choose. My brother and I would like to see him stick with hockey. There aren’t a lot of AfricanAmerican kids and maybe he could be an example and get other kids involved.”

PIONEERING PLAYER, AND A NEW GENERATION

Lacing up the skates and gliding across the rink at Farview Park was all Betsy Freelove wanted to do with her winters as a kid. When Hulme was looking for kids for his fledgling program in 1985, he signed up a group of Farview hockey players, all ages 11 or 12. “She was the best one,” Hulme said.

Freelove developed her skills in the New Directions program at a time organized girls youth hockey was in its infancy in Minnesota. She remembers she and her teammates played with mismatched gloves and broken sticks, skating in whatever gear Hulme and Williams could find.

It didn’t matter. She loved hockey and got to hone her skills in real games.

She wanted to play in high school, but there were only boys teams at the time and the coach at Edison High School would not let her try out.

Betsy Stock (far left) played on the boys junior varsity team at North High in the late 1980s. Her daugher, Lizzie, plays for the 15-under team at North Commons. Her son, Jack, is the only Northsider on the Minneapolis high school hockey team.

She transferred to North High School, which had dropped hockey but was trying to revive its program in the late 1980s with a team that played a junior varsity schedule. They needed players and the coach welcomed Freelove.

Hulme says a girl on a boys high team was unheard of and once again, he says, she was the best player on this team. Freelove, who is now Besty Stock, says, “Dale would say that…I held my own.”

Betsy still lives in North Minneapolis with her husband, Kevin, who sharpens the many dozens of hockey skates for the North Commons hockey program.

They have two children playing. Lizzie plays on the 15-under team for North Commons. Their son, Jack, plays for the Minneapolis high school varsity team. He is the only player on the roster from the Northside.