Wrobleski a key Storm player in 5-3 win

Lest there by any doubt that we are really in "winter," there's lots of prep hockey to be enjoyed. We're in the midst of another exciting campaign for the puck sport, at the same time we can take walks with just shorts on! How about that? 

Our MBA Storm boys and girls have skated with resolve. The outcome was victory for the boys in the Tuesday game against Wadena-Deer Creek. 

Home games can be played at either Morris or Benson. Morris fans had the convenience of seeing the win over WDC at our "home" of Lee Community Center. MACA and Benson have hands joined on the ice in this longstanding arrangement. I wrote about sports for the Morris paper when Morris fielded its own high school hockey team. At first I was disappointed to learn about the pairing. With time it seemed quite acceptable. 

Benson is relieved of having to answer for the "Braves" nickname in hockey! Outside of hockey it is indeed a tussle for the Benson school leaders. They have tried to get permission from Native American organization leaders. Mixed results, last I checked, and not good enough to get a continued pass for "Braves." Yes it'll cost a fair amount of money to make the change to something new. 

Benson Bobcats? I don't know what it would be. I think of alliteration first. Maybe Benson is in a game of "chicken" with the State of Minnesota. Benson wants the state to pay the expense for the change. Oh my, what if the big bad state says "no?" Imagine the ill will that would be created with the community of Benson! Stay tuned. 

The MBA hockey boys skated to a 5-3 win over Wadena-Deer Creek. The game-winning goal by Zach Wrobleski was of the short-handed kind. Wrobleski had two goals in the second period. MBA came out of the game with an 11-9-0 season record. The WDC numbers: 5-12-0. 

WDC scored first as Carson Davis got the puck in the net assisted by Cooper Ness. MBA answered with an unassisted goal by Logan Hadfield. 

The second period was when MBA really took charge. The Lee Center fans cheered as Wrobleski scored with a Hadfield assist at 7:31. Charlie Goff did the job unassisted at 13:28.  Then it was Wrobleski coming through again at 14:03, short-handed and unassisted. 

Tucker Blume scored our final goal of the game. Assists were from Kye Suess and Daniel Bovee. 

WDC scored two third period goals which were by Davis unassisted and Davis again, assisted by Ness and Nicholas Wright. Gavin Schmidt wore the goalie gear for the Storm. He turned back 22 shots in 25 attempts. Gunner Olson did the goalie work for WDC.

Girls hockey: Windom 3, Storm 2

The MBA girls have been faring below .500. They were dealt defeat Tuesday in a very close contest by Windom at the Benson arena. The outcome was 3-2. The Storm out-shot Windom 36-24 but couldn't reap victory from that. We never led.  

Karlie Bruns

Our Karlie Bruns kept making waves with her stellar play. She's a senior who achieved 45 goals and eight assists over a span of 22 games. 

The game againsst Windom required overtime. The teams traded goals in the first period. Our goal came from Bruns in unassisted style, also short-handed. Windom's Mataya Hall scored with an assist from Gretta Smith. 

Windom had the only second period goal. It was unassisted by Madyson Fredin. 

Our Sadie Koehler got the puck in the net at :10 of the third period. Charli Erdahl assisted. Bring on overtime! Alas it was Windom with the game-winning edge. Reagan Haugen scored. Ella Dockter assisted at 6:22. Our goalie was Ava Breuer who had 21 saves in 24 attempts. Windom's work in goal was done by Fiona Robillard.

 

Here's an assist!

I got help from a friend for having access to the MBA hockey info for this post. I do face lots of choppy waters these days. By that I mean, very limited info available from area media. Brett Miller left the Morris radio station. 

The newspaper's website deserves a thumbs-down. Not pleasant to be critical but I fail to see why the UMM teams dominate the paper's site, I mean like almost to the tune of 100 percent. I saw some Storm news there recently but it was very dated/old. No sense of performing a service on the part of the newspaper management. 

I heard an interesting thought on KFGO yesterday from a guy filling in for Joel Heitkamp. Why don't newspapers give their product away? he asked. It's not an absurd thought. "Free circulation papers" do exist out and around. The business advantage is this: advertisers are delighted to know that there are no obstacles for the public to obtain the paper. No payment needed. 

The cost of the Morris paper at places like Willie's is not token, in my opinion. "Senior Perspective" is free to the public. Get your product out there into as many hands as possible, and the advertisers in the product ought to be happy. Seems like sound theory. The guy on KFGO articulated it pretty well, maybe better than yours truly here. I'm an old "ink-stained wretch," to use a term that I associate with the late Steve Cannon of WCCO Radio. 

Seriously I'm simply a journalist. It's just that I once had my home in the print media. And I fully appreciated that experience over many years. I wrote about the birth of Morris prep hockey and I even remember who scored our first goal, guy named Dan Zahl. I wrote of the irony of the first goal being by a guy who was last on lists that were organized alphabetically! First and last. But in the history books. 

Ah, "Morris Area High School hockey," has its niche in our history. I contributed a thousand bucks to the construction of Lee Center. I wrote about countless hockey games through my halcyon days with the Morris paper. It all got to be a zoo sometimes. I would not trade the experience for anything. It had to end because of certain pressures and complications building up. 

My career experienced "slippage," to use the word that might be offered by the late TV journalist Edwin Newman. Slippage. The owner of the Morris paper at the time I left ended up leaving town, I would say ignominiously. 

Today the paper survives but it has a flaccid website. Not worth the trouble to check in there. Why does this have to be? A true journalist wants to get his work out in front of the public. It's in our blood. It was why I got up in the morning. 

I have trouble these days partly because the Willmar paper has been in retreat. Morris is outside its official coverage territory. Not that some MACA games, or at least scores don't show up there sometimes. But even then, there is an ever-tighter "paywall." And I don't pay to read anything online. I don't buy anything online. If the Hancock bank can be "hacked" as what happened a year ago, is anyone safe? 

I sometimes communicate on current media trends with my old Bonanza Valley compatriot. That's who helped me get the hockey info for this post. Thanks a bunch Randy! I share further on local media frustrations in my email. So I'll quote from it here. Thanks for reading y'all.

Randy - Checked in with WC Trib site this morning. It was open for those who are registered. I am registered and have never paid any $ for this. I never pay for anything online. I notice that the Hancock bank just got sold to "Star" Bank. The Hancock bank was the one I told you about having gotten hacked. So that may have really hurt them.

Willmar paper changes-up its system from time to time. Sometimes they totally lock-out those who don't pay. This morning you get in if you're registered, and sometimes I think it's totally open and free. Nothing about Morris teams there today. I wonder how they'd respond to a complaint where a caller says they paid for subscription but then their favorite team isn't showing up much if at all. 

Of course it's up to the coaches to "call in." I wonder how many coaches are weighing whether to continue doing that. They might consider it a game-night hassle, and if some of their info is questioned, as it always could be, that's another issue. I told you before about the disaster of a call-in from the Paynesville coaching staff maybe ten years ago after a game in which Morris came back miraculously in the fourth quarter to win. The info that was called in was riddled with errors. Lyle Rambow even emailed me to give me a heads-up about 3-4 hours after I had posted. They had the wrong name of the Tiger who caught the game-winning pass among numerous other errors.

Right now I'm feeling almost completely shut out from blogging about Tiger sports any more, and that makes me sad. My life is overall rather empty. On occasion I might get a chance. I blogged about Tiger boys' close loss to Osakis last week, but my post did not include any MACA names. Game was on Monday, which means what for the SCT coverage? We'd have to wait over a week, totally unacceptable. 

I remember when I left the paper, the mgt. was all excited about shooting video at sports events! And they did in fact do that from time to time, but just showed brief snippets. So what happened? Well, the kids decided to establish something through YouTube, completely bypassing the paper. When I left the paper I was scared that the video thing was going to substantially increase my workload. Already we had the "photo gallery" which stood to do that also. What became of that? That died even while Sue was there. I guess I was a victim of changing times and technologies. 

BTW I was doing the obits for the Morris paper during the "faxing" era! Very dodgy, that was. And now today, newspapers expend no labor with obits. The funeral home does all the work and then the families pay. I think funeral homes are going through a huge transition now as people back off from the traditional approaches. Cemeteries will stop expanding, they'll be frozen. Frozen in time. And what will become of them in the next couple hundred years? 

Columbaria? Why do we even need those? A way for the funeral business to keep making money? 

All these news articles about the high percentage of Americans who can't put their hands on $400 for an emergency expense - well what happens when there's a sudden death and there's a $10,000 funeral bill? There's a topic for your blog. People can't even afford to have kids any more.

There is an exodus of people from YouTube. I can easily see why. It has become such an endless sea of stuff, it's nigh impossible to put anything there that has a chance to get noticed. My song about Joe Mauer should have gotten some clicks recently and it did not. I experimented with the search bar and found it was nigh impossible to even find the song, even with the carefully crafted search terms. The situation was much different ten years ago. A good topical song could get attention. Well I wrote a few of those.

If I'm shut off from writing abut MACA sports, the pace of my overall blogging may slow down, so be aware of that. High school sports was kind of a mainstay for me. And I'm tired of writing about Trump so often.

- BW

 

Remembering my dad

Let's always remember my father Ralph E. Williams who passed away on this date, Feb. 2, in 2013. He's pictured below. He started the UMM music department in 1960, ensured it would get off the ground quite solidly. He directed the first-ever UMM music concert at the old armory, located where the public library is now. Historic occasion. Size of the band was bigger than had been forecast. That's my dad!