By Paul Allan

Slung low like a piece of tan sponge toffee, sitting on the side of the road, the metal veneer of Mankato’s All Seasons Arena belies what’s happening on the inside on any given night or weekend.

Step into the tiny entryway located on the building’s east side on a Saturday morning in January and you might as well be inside Grand Central Station. Moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas move amongst youth hockey players, their siblings and the requisite slurry of equipment bags and sticks.

It wasn’t always this way in this city of 50,000. Constructed in 1974 on the corners of Balcerzak and Monks near the campus of Minnesota State University, Mankato, the arena was originally called the Ice Palace. A city-owned and operated facility, the building consisted of one sheet of ice until the 1998-99 season, when an Olympic-sized sheet was added along with a two-story addition.

The Maverick men’s hockey program called All Seasons Arena (aka ASA) home from the time it opened until moving to the 5,000-seat Midwest Wireless Civic Center in 1995. Women’s hockey was added in 1998-99 and while the Maverick men’s team only uses ASA for practice, the Maverick women both practice and compete there.

Not unlike the advances made by MSU Hockey in the last 30 years, so, too, has evolved youth hockey in the Mankato area. Brian Lawrence, President of the Mankato Area Hockey Association (MAHA), says it’s not a coincidence that his group has seen its numbers grow and a second sheet of ice has been added at All Seasons Arena at the same time that MSU has risen to Division I status and added women’s hockey.

“There’s no question that the MSU Hockey program has played a role in the expansion of youth hockey in the area,” says Lawrence, who added that he initially noticed a rise in the sport’s profile locally when the MSU men’s program first got into the WCHA during the 1999-2000 season.

“As an association we’re extremely fortunate to have a resource such as the Maverick coaches and players willing to work with our coaches and our players,” said Lawrence, who oversees an organization that includes around 19 teams with 370 players. “Certainly their interaction with our coaches and kids has been one of the keys to our continued improvement as an association. And having the players from MSU’s men’s and women’s programs interact with our teams really helps in turning the kids on to the game, showing them how to act and how to be hockey players. They’re very visible at the rink and in the community.”

The improvement Lawrence refers to includes a pair of unprecedented state tournament appearances by Mankato Peewee teams in two of the past three years and a top-twenty ranking by this year’s Bantam A team. Additionally, the Mankato East high school boys’ team has also come within one game of qualifying for the state tournament the past two years. As the high school teams have gotten deeper, more players are moving on to play college hockey.

Remarkably, while some association numbers across the state have declined slightly, Mankato’s have increased despite no significant change in population base. Some of the growth can be attributed to families who have been introduced to the game in the last ten years, or at the same time MSU’s program made the leap to top level of college play in the country.

Nick Frentz, a Mankato lawyer with three sons playing youth hockey and a daughter who played for a few years, says MSU has played a role in drawing folks to the game who traditionally haven’t been involved before. “We’re probably a good example of that. I didn’t grow up around the game, but all three boys play and are having a lot of fun,” says Frentz. “In the Mavericks, the kids have someone to cheer for and someone to look up to. The players work with the kids, during the season with clinics and during the summer with camps. Undoubtedly we’re fortunate to have the best college hockey players in the nation in our town, and we get to see ’em. Seeing the traditional national powerhouses like Minnesota, Wisconsin, North Dakota and Denver during the winter certainly has given a boost to the sport in our community.”

Paul Ostoff, who served as ASA’s rink manager from 1979 to 1989 and is in his second stint with the two-rink building since 1999, echoes Lawrence’s comments on the impact of Minnesota State on the expansion of hockey in the area.

“The facility was originally built because there was a need,” said the East Silver Bay, Minn., native. “MSU had a varsity men’s hockey program that was looking for a home and the youth hockey and figure skating organizations were in their infancies. The youth hockey numbers were kind of stagnant, but not because there wasn’t interest — there just wasn’t enough ice to go around. As soon as we added the second sheet of ice, the numbers jumped up right away.”

Ostoff points towards several factors, including the addition of the second sheet of ice.

“Obviously, the University being part of the mix has been key. They needed to have upgraded facilities, a varsity women’s program had been added, we had gone from one boys’ high school team to two, we were adding two girls’ high school programs, and girls were joining at the youth level.”

Ostoff is currently overseeing a $1.7 million renovation to All Seasons. He said that ice-time bookings in Mankato currently total around 100 hours per week. “It was great to add the extra sheet of ice,” said Ostoff. “But it didn’t take long to fill the available ice times and if we had another sheet, we’d take another jump.”

As with many associations around the state, the biggest percentage of growth for the local association has been on the girls’ side, with MAHA going from just a few girls during the mid-’90s to around 40 young females today. This total does not include those involved with the initiation program, run by MSU assistant women’s coach Ruthann Kragh, which focuses on introducing hockey to young girls with no experience in the game.

“There’s a lot of interest,” says Kragh. “There’s a stigma that hockey’s an expensive sport, but we’ve been able to do this program with getting girls involved at a minimal expense. We wanted to make sure that more girls knew about the opportunities. It starts here — we need to have more kids come through.” It sounds like only a matter of time until that happens. MHJ

Paul Allan is the Assistant Athletic Director/Communications at Minnesota State University, Mankato.