Wednesday night, HSGN was present to cover the evening Class A quarterfinal session of the 2020 Minnesota State High School Girls Hockey Tournament at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul.
But the game was secondary to what the Golden Valley based team that won two consecutive state Class A titles and of this writing one win a way from a threepeat did after they scored eight goals in the first period against the Luverne Cardinals.
What Breck did after outshooting Luverne 25-6 in the first period was that they did not take another shot on goal the rest of the game. Head coach Steve Perisian did the right thing in not allowing his team to run up the score against the Cardinals, thus causing further embarrassment for the fans in attendance who came from southwestern Minnesota.
Though the rest of the game wasn't not much with the exception of a Luverne goal in the third period, it showed how important good sportsmanship in high school athletics.
Over the last 30+ years of attending state tournaments in person, there have been numerous public address announcements encouraging good sportsmanship. For several years in the 80s, at the championship game awards ceremony in basketball and hockey, sportsmanship banners were presented to a team who displayed outstanding sportsmanship. Even the author of this blog, who has been a PA announcer for 25 years for St. Louis Park High School athletics and also Trinity, Holy Angels and Groves Academy basketball in that time frame usually begins pregame announcement promoting sportsmanship. It's not just important to the athletes, it's important to the fans who come to cheer on their teams but in a positive manner.
One more example of outstanding sportsmanship goes back to the Bloomington Jefferson boys basketball team in the 1980-81 season. They scored 99 points against Minnetonka so head coach Jack Evens told his team to hold the ball in order to not score more than 100 points. The school newspaper, The Rebel praised the move by Evens and the jaguars not to reach the century mark.
But on that chilly Wednesday night in St. Paul, here's to the Breck Mustangs and they showed why good sportsmanship makes everyone a winner.
No comments:
Post a Comment