world

Minutes before the most important hockey game of their lives, on a frigid afternoon in February 2002, members of the North Branch bantam team began shouting and pounding their sticks on the concrete floor of a locker room in Blaine.

What choice did they have?

Their coach and motivator, John Pinsonneault, an ex-Marine who made them skate 'til they puked, had just walked out of the locker room, too choked up to finish his pregame speech. No bantam team from North Branch had ever made it this far before, to the district playoffs.

Two years later, it was Pinsonneault's boys who were crying as their coach's casket, draped in an American flag, was carried through a crowd of mourners at Fort Snelling National Cemetery. Pinsonneault, 39, died in a suicide-bomb attack on Oct. 14, 2004, in a public market in central Baghdad, where he had been working as a civilian security contractor.

Some of his players remembered that afternoon in Blaine and the words that Pinsonneault had spoken before he left the locker room. "The greatest glory was not in never failing," he said, according to the team's yearbook, "but in rising when we fell."

'Takes a certain kind of kid'

In the world of youth hockey, North Branch is something of a backwater. The town has no indoor arena, which means that North Branch players must settle for ice time that no one else wants.

In bigger cities, players can practice after school and make it home in time for dinner. In North Branch, practices usually begin at 6 a.m., which means players must rise before 5 to catch buses to Chisago Lakes or Cambridge, 20 to 30 minutes away.

Occasionally, when ice time can't be found, North Branch's youth teams practice at a rundown outdoor rink near Main Street known as "the shack," where the paint is peeling from the sideboards and, every so often, someone dashes into the woods to fetch a puck that has sailed over the wire mesh.

The absence of an arena has one commendable effect: Only those who truly care about hockey in this town of 10,000 people participate. "It takes a certain kind of kid who wants to play hockey in North Branch," said Becky Lure, activities director at North Branch High School.

But even in North Branch, residents were not prepared for Pinsonneault's arrival as head coach of the North Branch bantam team in 2001. He was, in the words of one parent, "just a little bit over the top."

Most bantam coaches stick to teaching the fundamentals and save aerobic conditioning for the final 5 to 10 minutes of practice. But Pinsonneault's team skated almost nonstop for an entire hour. If someone made a sloppy pass or missed a shot on goal, Pinsonneault twirled his stick in the air -- a signal that everyone had to skate laps.

He ended each practice with a series of sprints from board to board -- known as "Omahas" -- followed by pushups at center ice. Often, the players were so fatigued they simply stayed there, spread-eagled on the ice, until the Zamboni arrived.

"I remember watching those kids and wondering if it was hockey practice or boot camp," said Jody Hughes, the mother of player Patrick Hughes.

One of Pinsonneault's most controversial policies was requiring players to bring their report cards to practice and benching them if their marks were poor. Some parents thought he was overstepping his authority and complained to the local hockey association, but he continued to collect grades from players who volunteered to bring them.

"That ruffled a lot of feathers," said Stacy Johnstone, a special education teacher at North Branch Middle School and former president of the hockey association. "It said a lot about who John was. He didn't compromise."

That glorious season

That winter the North Branch bantams beat a slew of teams, including St. Cloud, Elk River and Coon Rapids --towns with much larger hockey programs that had grown accustomed to beating North Branch. By February, the team had made the district playoffs -- a first for a North Branch bantam team.