In 1969, a lot of us who attended St. Louis Park High lived our hockey lives vicariously through Southwest and Edina High Schools.
We identified with Southwest because our schools and communities were a stone's throw from each other. We'd hang out together, say at Porky's on Lake Street or the Embers on Excelsior Boulevard. Sometimes some of us would surreptitiously drive to Southwest High to quickly kibbitz in their cafeteria, until we'd be recognized as non-students and told to "return to your school right this minute" by a lunchroom monitor.
And Edina? How could that be? St. Louis Park and Edina didn't get along so well, to say the least. Nevertheless, we were in awe of their hockey greatness. You loved to watch them play.
What choice did some of us Orioles have but to skip school and attend that year's state high school hockey tournament? Not only were the Southwest Indians (now the Lakers, thankfully) and Edina Hornets in the tourney, but so was "The Great One," our peer from a remote, tiny town, who we suburban and city kids mythologized as the best Minnesota hockey player ever — Warroad High's Henry Boucha ("Boo-shay").
Our fervent hope (worth the price of $2.50 tickets and infinite school detention) was to witness Boucha and the Warroad team show up Edina (and even Southwest, for that matter).
Why? One David against TWO Goliaths.
What a tournament! Thousands packed Bloomington's long-vanished Metropolitan Sports Center for each session. The exuberance and joy of youth reached a once-in-a-lifetime peak. Letter-jacketed kids from all over the state created a kaleidoscope of color in the arena. During the championship game between Warroad and Edina, a handful of us ended up finding seats in the Warroad student section, which turned out to be fine with them. We made a speck of our orange and black in their sea of their yellow and black. That night we were Warriors, too.
The air was, as they say, electric. Festive. Thrilling.
