The U.S. Pond Hockey Championships

Last Saturday (January 21) B and I did something very Minnesotan: We watched some of the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships taking place on Lake Calhoun. Evidently this was the inagural year for them in the U.S. -- they've had pond hockey championships in Canada for decades, but this is the first U.S. event. There are some pretty good players involved -- ex-NHL players and former college stars. The winner of the U.S. event goes to Canada to play their pond hockey champs. Fun stuff.

Lake Calhoun is the same lake B and I walked around back in late October. Now the lake is frozen solid, and so walking around is for suckers, since you can walk across!

I think the last time I was actually on a frozen pond or lake I was in the eighth grade. So it was really fun just to be out there. Plus families were out for strolls and people were walking dogs, on this vast frozen whiteness, and so it was a surreal Minnesota experience for B and me.

We're having an incredibly mild January, but being out on that lake it sure felt like winter. The wind was whipping across the lake, and foolish me didn't bring a hat.

A couple people were doing what I am calling "kite skiing." I have seen kite surfers before -- they go out in the water with a board strapped to their feet, holding a mini-parachute of a kite, and they use the kite to let the wind pull them across the water. Well, these kite skiiers on Lake Calhoun had the same mini-parachute kites, but they had skis on, and the wind was pulling them across the lake:

I wondered why they weren't kite skating instead of kite skiing, but the lake had a good bit of snow covering the ice:

Okay, so we finally approached the Pond Hockey Championships, which were on the other side of the lake. We had parked in Uptown, a very nice area of Minnefabulous that I should blog more about, and gotten lunch. One reason is Uptown is so nice is that it borders Lake Calhoun. Anyway, this is a shot of the crowd as we approached the pond hockey area:

Those guys with skates and sticks are just passing the puck around. As we arrived, they were officially on a break between games. On the actual rinks, people were sking back and forth with snow shovels, trying to make the ice as smooth and debris-free as possible.

Here is a guy selling hot chocoloate made from soy:

After our walk across the lake were were pretty cold, so we popped into the warming house:

Inside Berna we some hot cider, and we saw the trophy everyone was playing for -- the golden shovel.

The the hockey action resumed, so we went out to watch. Here is B with her cider:

And here is a hockey game being played:

There are 5 players to a team, but the games are played 3 on 3 -- the extra two guys are for substitutions. There is no goalie. Instead, they use a little wooden goal that only has two openings in either corner:

There were about 30 games being played at once while we were there. It was hard to get a shot of all the action at once, but here's my best shot:

So that was the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships. It was a pretty fun little outing for B and me, although I have to admit that most of the fun was in being on a frozen lake rather than in watching the hockey. But now that football season is ending maybe I will start following the Minnesota Wild in earnest and start to develop a better appreciation for the game.