Park’s boys hockey season kicked off with their third annual trip to Duluth. This trip was the weekend following tryouts, which happened on Nov. 17 and 18. This would be the 2023-24 Orioles first look at competition and first time playing together this year.
Co-captain, senior Griffin Krone said he thought the trip was a good learning experience and would help the team come together more to start the season.
“We kind of figured out our identity a little bit,” said Krone. “(We) learned how to play together as a team, how each guy gels with each other and things like that, and just figure out who we were as a team.”
Senior Tony Kruse said the trip was an overall fun experience to start off his last season with the hockey team.
“It was fun, you know? Just getting to travel up north with all of your friends,” Kruse said. “It was just a great time to play hockey.”
Head coach Tyler Brodersen said he felt like this trip was a good way to jumpstart the season and compete at a high level.
“I think we played really fast, which was really good to see,” said Brodersen. “Seeing us compete against a team like Duluth East at the end of the weekend, a team that competes to go to the state tournament every single year, taught us a lot about the group we were going to have and that we were going to be able to score goals and play with those better teams.”
Kruse said they didn’t have much time to practice before going up to play as it was at the beginning of the season.
“We had tryouts right before the trip, so we didn’t really have that much time to practice,” said Kruse. “We really only had teams made.”
According to Krone, he appreciated everything that the parents and team members did to make everything possible.
“We fundraise a lot,” said Krone. “We did things from golf tournaments to bagging at Cub, we did a GoFundMe and we also did a car wash to help make everything happen.”
Brodersen said there was a lot of work from the Blue Line Club, which is the fundraising group, and players to raise money for the team this season.
“The Duluth trip was one of our big expenses. We did a GoFundMe this year, we’ve been selling those gift card cards. We also do bagging at Cub Foods. We did a pancake breakfast at the Legion during homecoming weekend,” said Brodersen. “The club and players do a lot of stuff that makes this possible.”
The Orioles will continue through the regular season until their next tournament on Dec 26th-28th in South St. Paul.
