Dek hockey could be headed to Apple Valley

Minnesota is ice hockey country, yet street hockey has never quite caught on. It's still a game teens play in the offseason on neighborhood corners. But in Iowa, a new kind of street hockey is taking off — dek hockey has leagues, coaching and specialized courts. And the founders of the Iowa arena are looking to expand to Apple Valley.

"The beauty of it is, no matter if you play pro hockey or you play junior hockey or high school or you never played hockey before, you can play it and you will love it," said Patrik Levesque, the man behind the plan to bring dek hockey to Minnesota. "It's really a sport that gets all the family together."

Levesque knows what it takes to bring dek hockey to the masses. A professional ice hockey player, Levesque learned dek hockey in his home province of Quebec more than five years ago. When he moved to Iowa to play for the Quad City Mallards, he missed dek hockey so much he decided to start a league.

Levesque built his first rink in Bettendorf, Iowa, 2½ years ago. The game has become so popular they had to turn away 300 players last spring. In August, they opened their second rink in the same park.

Dek hockey is a bit like ice hockey. But instead of a puck, there's a ball, and instead of skates, players wear sneakers. The style Levesque has popularized in Quad City is played three-on-three on a court about half the size of a traditional hockey rink.

With players spread out on the bright blue court, surrounded by low white walls and bleachers full of spectators, dek hockey bears little resemblance to informal street hockey. That was Joe Bluhm's first thought when he stopped by a game in Quad City.

"I grew up in a neighborhood where we played street hockey in the driveway all the time. I was expecting it to be more like that," said Bluhm, a Minneapolis resident who played dek hockey for a season when he lived in Bettendorf. "I was expecting to go play a street hockey game like I do with my buddies, and what I walked into was an organized league."

In Bettendorf, Bluhm said the league draws crowds of 50 to 100 people to watch each game. Some are friends and family of the players, but the arena also attracts spectators from the surrounding park.

Levesque calls it "professional street hockey," but his Iowa league is designed for amateurs. Some players have been playing ice hockey their whole lives. Others are soccer or baseball players. Many have no experience with competitive sports.

Dek hockey is great practice for ice hockey players, Bluhm said. But it's also accessible to a much larger group, because it is affordable and doesn't require skating experience. His team of experienced ice hockey players often lost games to teams that were completely new to hockey.

"It's for everyone," he said. "I think that it definitely will be a success up here in Minnesota."

Levesque's goal is to build two rinks on public land near the northwest corner of the parking lot at the family aquatic center in Apple Valley. Levesque and his partner, Brant Marple, a St. Paul resident who grew up in Apple Valley, would pay for the rinks, which cost about $300,000 in total. Their company, Minnesota Dek Hockey, would pay rent to the city and utilities for the space.

"If you look at cities, they spend so much money on maintenance of their baseball field, outdoor rinks, indoor rinks, tennis courts. All that stuff costs a lot of money for cities," Levesque said. With his plan, "Apple Valley would get a new sport, a new activity for free."

But beyond the rent — Minnesota Dek Hockey has proposed a nominal rate of $100 per month — Apple Valley wouldn't get any of the revenues from the arena, and it would have little control over the space once it was rented. Minnesota Dek Hockey would manage the rinks independently, organizing the leagues and collecting fees of about $100 per player each season.

The city of Apple Valley hasn't discussed the proposal but plans to at its Jan. 8 City Council meeting. Parks and Recreation Director Barry Bernstein said Apple Valley doesn't currently lease any parkland to private organizations, and the arrangement would put the city in "uncharted waters."

"There's always a concern with public/private partnerships on public property," Bernstein said. But he brought the proposal to the city's attorneys, who said it was plausible to lease the land for a dek hockey rink.

While the proposal is new for Apple Valley, it is similar to the arrangement Levesque made when he opened his first two rinks in Bettendorf. Both Iowa rinks were built on city property, which is leased to Levesque's organization for a few hundred dollars a month.

Apple Valley Mayor Mary Hamann-Roland was cautiously optimistic about bringing a new sport to the area, but she said the City Council will seek public input on the project before it makes a decision on whether to welcome dek hockey to the city.

"Public/private partnerships exist everywhere in government today," Hamann-Roland said. "I need to know how the neighborhood is going to respond — if they think it's a great idea or if they think it's a problem because it goes to 10:30 at night."

According to Levesque, the Bettendorf teams form the only three-on-three dek hockey leagues in the country. But he is hoping to spread the sport across the country. He is in the midst of building a rink in Des Moines. If Apple Valley rejects the proposal, he will look for another city in the area.

"There's got to be a place to play dek hockey in Minnesota," he said. "It's gonna be huge there."

Dylan Peers McCoy is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.