Can you name a high school basketball coach who has been told he’d have to raise money to fix the leaky roof, or else the gymnasium would be closed? 

No? Well perhaps you’ve met a math teacher or librarian who faced this kind of threat.   I haven’t, but it happens all the time to hockey, so I sharpen my poison pen — keyboard, actually — to rally some support for the kids who skate at New Hope Ice Arena.

Martin Opem, the mayor of New Hope, issued an ultimatum on local TV news to a gathering of youth hockey folks.  It went something like this: when the 30-year-old refrigeration plant stops working in the north rink, you must either raise the money or this building might become a beach volleyball gym.

I wondered how helpful the beach volleyball crowd was at the time of construction in 1975, so I contacted one of the original volunteers who “built” the New Hope arena, Nils “Sonny” Sundquist.   He’s still fighting for hockey kids, but he points out that the solution must fit modern times. 

“We used to work together to get things done — volunteers from baseball, football, hockey and other sports.   There was power in our unity.”

He uses the term “cohesiveness,” but right now there is little of that in New Hope, where the school board and administrators are not working together with the mayor and hockey people to find a solution to the arena problem.

Sundquist continued, “Now the various factions are split up.  In communities like Eveleth (his hometown) where they struggle financially at least as much as New Hope, they’ve combined resources with other towns to make hockey available for the same fee as when I was a kid. It’s free.”

Free, as in the cost for practice to young basketball, soccer, football, baseball, volleyball and lacrosse players.  Free, as in the cost to youth hockey players in small towns of northern Minnesota.

In New Hope, like most communities, hockey arenas are expected to make money — unlike gyms, football fields, and physics labs — or unlike the outdoor swimming pool near the New Hope City Hall. It loses money so fast, the city can’t wait for cold weather, so they can close it down.  But arenas must operate as a business, sometimes paying for the initial construction — always covering the cost of ongoing maintenance.  No other high school sport or academic activity faces the same expectation.   Maintenance costs are just part of the school budget. 

So, why not hockey?  In a meeting at the mayor’s office, I learned that New Hope (like all cities) faces a severe financial crunch.

“I can’t just put money into the arena and take it from elderly citizens who might lose their homes if taxes continue to be raised,” Opem said.

Good point.  But as I left his office and drove by Cooper and Armstrong High Schools, I noticed the newly installed artificial turf — a reminder that expensive facilities are still a priority if it’s about football.   I snooped around the schools a bit and found no demolition of gyms and libraries that had been operating in the red.

Because of the fiscal expectations on hockey, it’s children who must pay to practice their skills, unlike counterparts in other sports — unlike students in extracurricular activities like band, dance, debate, theater — well, you get the point.  Hockey students are treated differently than other students.

There is a belief in educational circles — actually a well-documented fact — that extracurricular activities are healthy and constructive — that they are a worthwhile investment by the community.  So, why is hockey treated differently? 

The answer is simple: hockey volunteers have always answered the challenge. Some might call it a threat, as in “extortion.”  When hockey was played outside, volunteers built the boards, shoveled snow and flooded the rinks.   Basketball/football coaches were also the athletic directors, and no assistance was offered from the school maintenance budget.

When arenas were first being built, they were financed on the backs of hockey parents.  Even if there were general obligation bonds, the cost of playing hockey rose with the costs of arenas. School boards buried their wallets out of sight.  As girls’ hockey was added, schools did not build new facilities as they did when girls began playing basketball, volleyball, softball and soccer. The result was reduced practice time for boys — exception: Roseau, of course.

The state of Minnesota offered some assistance — the Mighty Ducks Plan — which provided seed money for construction of new arenas.   New Hope’s south rink is an example.  The major cost was covered by various financing schemes; again increasing the fees for young hockey players.

It’s no wonder hockey has moved gradually to wealthier suburbs, away from communities where children can still play other sports at a much lower cost.  Mayor Opem pointed out that demographics have changed in New Hope, adding, “We don’t have as many kids playing hockey any more.”

Of course not, and it’s tempting to guess this trend would change if kids could play hockey for free.  “We flood three outdoor rinks,” the mayor added to demonstrate that hockey operates on an equal basis with other sports.

Opem really does want to see the New Hope Arena operate for another generation, as he explained to a large gathering of hockey parents who tailgated in the City Hall parking lot to demonstrate their resolve.  The mayor’s plan includes a 25 percent matching contribution by the city if the hockey community goes out and solicits donations.

Mayor Opem points out that the school board — not the mayor’s office — is responsible for any differences in the way various sports are treated.  It seems the school board and administrators are “no-shows” so far in this latest endeavor.  “Hockey is an expensive sport” was the reply I got from the secretary in charge of keeping me out of the superintendent’s office.

Well, football would be an expensive sport, too, if the kids had to pay for the artificial turf.  Young basketball players probably couldn’t go to the gym to shoot buckets —  free of charge — if their program had to build the gym, pay for the lights and heat, maintain and repair, and shovel snow in the parking lot.

No arena should be closed; there are too few compared to the number of basketball gyms.  Count the gyms in your community — then count arenas. I often hear the ridiculous claim that we are approaching a “saturation point” — that it is becoming harder to keep the arena rented 20 hours a day.  Think about it from their purely-economic perspective.  If we eliminate a few arenas, the ice-time fees will rise — isn’t that how the free market works?

We must stop thinking of arenas as businesses.  Kids are not commodities.  If arenas contribute some revenue to the school’s mission of providing opportunities for children, remember it will also eliminate hockey in communities where families can’t afford to rent ice time.  

Large donors to the New Hope Arena project would receive naming rights on the boards or the building entrance — and most importantly, large donations can reduce the economic burden on hockey parents.  This project — and others like it around the state — will require a “cohesive effort,” in Sundquist’s words.  He’s seen it work before, and he, like other New Hope hockey families, are determined to make it work this time.

For the politicians in the state who don’t understand cohesive efforts — the mayors and school board members who think hockey should operate as a for-profit business?  Well, there’s always those nasty elections.