Mankato West Boys Hockey Team Have Sticks Stolen in Duluth

DULUTH, Minn. – You may have heard about it…the Mankato West Varsity Boys hockey team had to forfeit one of their games in this past week’s Heritage Holiday Classic because someone stole their hockey sticks.

Fox 21’s Lucretia Free called Head Coach Nate Olsen to get his thoughts on the matter and to measure the team’s mood.

After the postgame of their Friday game, Coach Olsen says they were able to confirm the stick bag was put on the bus by security video, as well as it being apparently being removed.

“We were like holy cow that thing got on the bus,” says Olsen, “and so effectively you know we found out a couple of hours after we weren’t going to play. We were going to file a police report and hopefully have them do some work to identify what happened sometime between two and six am where they went missing where they went missing and what will happen.”

When asked whether it was an option to have the game postponed, Coach Olsen say the timing was not in their favor. “We were the first game of the day at 8 am the next game started at 10:30..the officials assigned to our game were reffing another game at 10:30. We had a window effectively at 8:30 or 8:40ish was our cutoff time if it was put on a different team’s bus and we got them here. On a Sunday nothing was open at 9:00 anyway.

Coach Olsen said the way they teach hockey is that it is also about managing life’s disappointments. “Frankly this is one of those times. It’s one that I never ever thought would happen, I could see one stick going missing but an entire bag…that’s just kind of mind blowing.”

When we reached Coach Olsen Sunday afternoon for an update, he says about 30 of the hockey sticks have been found by police. This is still an open and ongoing investigation, so we’ll keep you updated.