If your Saturday errands happen to position you in or near Baudette, Minnesota, well, firstly, have some gloves and hand and feet warmers, cause you’ll be rather near the North Pole, but consider spending $5 real well and taking in the Baudette Bay Hockey Classic. Last Saturday was Hockey Day in Canada; this Saturday Minnesota, the State of Hockey, celebrates the game in its own fashion, and the centerpiece of the festivities is the matinee high school match between the Lake of the Woods Bears and the St. Paul Johnson Governors. $5 admission. For the game played on a pond.
Actually, on a sizable lake, Baudette Bay. It’s not pure pond hockey — the locals have erected boards and lights on the lake — but with national television cameras in place, you can’t quite expect prolonged pauses in the action while the varsity tracks down errant passes into the next county. Thousands of Minnesotans are expected to cram the banks in Willie Walleye Park to watch.
You have adore the manner in which Minnesotans have embraced harsh winter (harsh of course is a relative term — when temps dipped below 50 here in D.C. this week, I saw Metro commuters wrapped up like mummies). The latest update on the official web site for Hockey Day Minnesota includes these advisories:
“The bridge on Hwy. 11 will be open to spectators. An admission ticket will be required. Tickets will be sold at the bridge . . . [Also] Border State Bank plans a tailgate.”
Fox Sports North is televising 11 consecutive hours of Hockey Day Minnesota, beginning with the schoolboy tilt.
It’s been a mild winter in most parts until very recently, and just a few weeks back, it looked as if the second annual U.S. Pond Hockey Championships were going to be a casualty. That bit of frozen fun also takes place in Minnesota this weekend. Organizers have shifted the site of the tournament out of Minneapolis proper and onto Lake Nokomis, a wee bit to the north.
Thin ice isn’t so much a concern up at Baudette Bay. They presently have 22 inches. And tonight that tally is likely to grow: a low of -2. Saturday’s forecast, however, is pretty spectacular — a high of 23, with winds between just 5 and 10 mph. You can play outside all day in those conditions!
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