The tournament travel experience alone can be extraordinarily educational. To assess the success of the Blades program, check out the ever-expanding list of our alumni accomplishments.Įxcellent coaching, highly-competitive tournaments, and international travel all serve to "stretch" Blades players' abilities and attitudes, building self esteem in a variety of areas. The tournaments that Blades teams participate in are selected based on the strength of the competition, the dates, and the location. Blades coaches stress skill and systems development, play making and teamwork. The strength of this concept lies in the belief that highly skilled players, playing with others of similar skills, are able to learn more about teamwork and the game of hockey, because their coaches are teaching a team of players who can all execute and understand at the same level. Part of the Blades philosophy is that the best competition challenges players to be their best. Funding for the Blades activities comes from parents, corporate sponsors, and the annual Blades-sponsored Spring AAA tournament, the Minnesota Super Series. Since then, the organization has grown to include teams from Mites to Midgets, ages six to nineteen. They started with two select teams, playing hockey across Europe with 19 birth years players. The founders, John Arko and Dennis Postregna, wanted to give talented Minnesota youth hockey players the opportunity, in the off-season, to travel outside the state and country to compete at the Tier I level - experiences not normally available to Minnesota players during the regular season. In the Gophers’ bowl game and in its season, Mason’s words describe Minnesota perfectly.The MN Blades AAA Hockey Club is a non-profit youth hockey association that originated in 1989, initially as the Minnesota Stars. “Some days you just can’t buy a break, and sometimes it seems like the ball bounces your way all the time,” Mason said. How its luck will change is up to the coaching staff. Ultimately, if Minnesota wants to achieve elite status in the Big Ten and the nation, they will have to change. The Gophers cannot close out a meaningful game. The 2006 season yielded the seventh bowl bid in eight years.īut the Insight Bowl emphasized a major flaw in Minnesota’s football program. In the end, what looked to be a lost season ended in significant gain. “We had good defense and unstoppable offense in the first and all the breaks went our way.” “That game was a game of two halves,” Mason said. While Minnesota fought back in the second half of its season, it floundered – and ultimately gave away – the second half of its bowl game.Ĭoach Glen Mason said it’s as simple as splitting the game in two. In retrospect, the Gophers’ season was a mirror image of its final game. 1 Ohio State at the Horseshoe, 44-0.īut facing the prospect of postseason elimination, Minnesota picked up the pieces of its battered team and won its final three Big Ten games despite suffering injuries on both sides of the ball. The Gophers were then thoroughly dismantled by No. Its third victory came against Division I-AA North Dakota State thanks to a last-second missed field goal by the Bison. Minnesota began the season 2-5, defeating two teams that ultimately did not qualify for bowl bids in Kent State and Temple. The game’s results will go down in bowl history, but only the Gophers’ faithful followers will truly understand the shaky road the 2006 season brought to the table. “Our defensive front played better in the second half.” “We knew we needed to make sure their drives were quick,” Texas Tech coach Mike Leach said. Texas Tech, without forcing a single turnover in the second half, stifled Minnesota’s red-hot offensive attack time and again in the third and fourth quarters, forcing two crucial three-and-outs in the fourth that ultimately set up a game-tying, 52-yard field goal by Red Raiders junior kicker Alex Trlica. Minnesota (6-7 overall) had a 35-7 lead at the half, 330 yards of total offense, had yet to punt and forced three turnovers.īut complacency set in – a sight familiar to Gophers’ football fans – and the Red Raiders (8-5) took full advantage. “Everybody was on cloud nine and a lot of people thought we couldn’t be stopped,” junior linebacker Mike Sherels said of the team’s demeanor at halftime. The 31-point meltdown in the second half is the largest blown lead in NCAA bowl history. The Gophers proved in their 44-41 overtime loss to Texas Tech that coming out to play after halftime is essential to winning a game no matter how big the lead is. Any one of the lot describes the 2006 Insight Bowl perfectly.Īnd for Minnesota’s football team, the Insight Bowl symbolizes a tumultuous year that saw highs, lows and come-to-be-expected, mind-boggling meltdowns.
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