My twelve-year-old started both middle school and an enthusiastic march towards puberty this fall.  Having a twelve-year-old is like the Saturday of a weeklong vacation; it’s all sunshine and pontoon riding now, but tomorrow we’ll be packing up the ol’ Ford Tempo to teenagerhood, beep beep.  As such, I’m guessing I will have to take a pause on writing stories with him as the main character since the absolute last thing you want in middle-schooler-slash-puberty is your mother talking about you.

Today, though, he’s given me permission – in his newly-deepened voice, which is so disconcerting since about an hour ago he was tucked into a baby bouncy chair chewing on the ear of his favorite lamby – to tell you about his favorite pastime…and what feels like one of the last sandcastles of childhood: The Kosior Cup.

Twelve and many of his friends really, really like hockey.  They like playing hockey, they like watching hockey, and they like other activities related to hockey, such as knee hockey.  Knee hockey is, as it sounds, played on a person’s knees (or, if they are small, their feet) using miniature sticks.  As opposed to ice hockey, knee hockey can be played anywhere, although I can tell you from experience that carpet is strongly advised.

Twelve has never been one for casual play.  As an example, when he used to knock about with those little plastic army men, he did so in a full soldier uniform using a large format landscape with multiple realistic battle-related features that he spent weeks designing.  So, after a couple of years playing knee hockey “the classic way” (i.e., wherever they were with only their sticks and a random ball they could find about them) Twelve felt the calling to turn things up about a million notches – and transformed our basement into a championship knee hockey facility called Kosior Arena, in which he has hosted seasons after season of The Kosior Cup.

Season 2,403 of The Kosior Cup took place a couple of weeks ago.  Somewhere between five and five hundred twelve-year-old boys descended on our basement after school, ministicks in hand.  Here’s a fact: no adult has ever laid eyes on The Kosior Cup games.  Should someone like, say, a mother, go down into the basement to see what the screaming is all about, she would find somewhere between five and five hundred boys frozen in place, staring at her in silence until she left.  Therefore, everything I’m going to tell you from this point forward has been recounted to me by the grace of Twelve.

Season 2,403 (note: sometimes back-to-back seasons happen within 12 hours of each other) of The Kosior Cup started out with the Official Picking of the League.  The league choices were juniors, college, minors, and NHL, and were determined by someone saying, “Who wants juniors?”  And all of those in favor raised their hands.  I asked Twelve if one league gets selected more often than the others and he said, “No.”  Duh.

With the league in place, the next step was the Official Picking of the Teams.  This was decided by all of the boys standing in a wide circle and Twelve flipping his baseball cap into the center.  Whomever the bill pointed to (think Spin the Bottle, but with a hat being tossed) became a Team Manager and got to pick a team in said league.  When I asked Twelve what makes one team more desirable, he said, “The logo or the colors or whatever.”  There you have it, marketing people.

The team players were also selected by hat flip, this time by the Team Managers.  Twelve told me they used to pick by tossing their ministicks in the center and then dividing them evenly between teams, but it took only one go to realize that they all had the same six ministicks and it was impossible to know which belonged to whom.

Kosior Arena was lovingly built by Twelve over a number of birthdays, holidays, and manipulations of his grandmother.  It contains a rink with plastic knee hockey boards (imagine regular hockey boards, but two feet tall), two metal knee hockey nets plus four additional to adjust gameplay as necessary, a set of knee hockey goalie equipment, a digital scoreboard, dasher rinkside advertising (the coffee table turned on its side with paper taped to it), a student section (the sectional couch), two players benches (the walls with the sticks lined up), a smoke machine for entrances, a hockey goal light, a concession stand (a pile of snacks), LED lights tuned to the color of the home team, and Eight’s old karaoke machine as the PA system.

Two teams were picked to face off in the first round of Season 2,403.  But first, Twelve queued up the home team’s goal horn on the TV (there is an entire section of YouTube dedicated to the goal horns and celebration songs for every team in the world) and the student section rifled through our costume box to find outfits appropriate for such an important event.  The most coveted costume for this particular season was a dinosaur head, which was worn by the kid with the smallest head since it was an old costume.

“How do you decide who sits in the student section and who refs?”  I asked Twelve.

He looked at me like I was insane.

“We don’t have refs,” he said.

Also, duh.

The puck was dropped, and the teams battled to the finish – not once, but twice.  After the second game ended in an OT clapdown, the student section rushed the ice.

“Tell us, how do you feel about scoring the game winning goal in an absolute bar-down takedown?”  The announcer shouted into the PA over the screams of the fans.

“I don’t care, I just wanna play hockey,” the humble athlete replied.

The games over, the players were sent first to the locker rooms (our workout room and basement bathroom), and then to the hotel (two of our bedrooms) to rest up for the following day.  The teams had a restful night of five minutes’ sleep, returning to the basement for the rest of the series.

Many games later, a ‘ship was held and a winner crowned; and The Kosior Cup (a trophy Kyle picked up at a garage sale) was presented to much fanfare and photography.

“Then what happened?”  I asked Twelve.

“You know, it was dinnertime,” Twelve said.

Somewhere around Season 2,156, one of Twelve’s friends told his parents, “I think we can use Kosior Arena until basically college.”

I tell you what: I truly, deeply wish for that to be the case.

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The photo above is of me the one and only time I was invited to play in The Kosior Cup (the beta version).

Unrelated to the photo but related to the story, Kyle asked to add a few postscripts:

1. Kosior Arena originally started out as Kosior Gardens. As of yesterday, it has been renamed North Dakota After Dark Arena because Kyle bought the naming rights (because he found the paper and did the artwork).
2. The boy mentioned at the end of the story has now upped the ante so they will now play “in college.”
3. Dinnertime at this particular series included catering, as one of moms had pizza delivered.

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This week on North Dakota Today we talked about a pumpkin patch that gives back, and a youth program doing great things on and off the field.  Check it out!  (Valley News Live)

I think I may talk about this on a future North Dakota Today segment but here it is, just in case: North Dakota is the first park system in America to offer EnChroma glasses for colorblind visitors. (ND Parks and Rec)

Wyndmere’s Desi Severance was surprised with a $50,000 check in order to spruce up her school’s welding program. (Grand Forks Herald)

Bismarck’s Ron and Karen Carlson have visited 76 Paneras, the exact right number to get them featured in a Panera ad campaign. (KFYR TV)

In very good news, the Hatton-Northwood volleyball team has returned to the court. (Grand Forks Herald)

Mayville’s Erin and Abby Freeland made it to the stage at a recent Carrie Underwood concert. (Valley News Live)

The Administration for Native Americans is hoping to spread the word about native languages. (KX Net)

As a reminder, I’ll be appearing on North Dakota Today on Monday mornings. Tune in, and send me the people and stories that are nice.  Thank you in advance!

ALSO as a reminder, Kyle now has a North Dakota hockey podcast on Pulltab Sports. It’s called “North Dakota After Dark” and he hosts it with our friends Kelly and Corey. Episode 10 with Marc Hoe is now up. Click here to listen.

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