Hockey Season Opens

The Seminary's “Hockey Season” opened on Wednesday, November 19, when twenty-four seminarians took to the ice at the Bud King Ice Arena in Winona, Minnesota for their first hockey game this year. The game lasted nearly two hours.

“Remarkably sloppy,” commented John Carlisle, a seminarian from Nicholville, New York, “but my team won.”

Hockey is a favorite sport for many seminarians, some of whom played it competitively in high school or simply with friends while growing up. Other seminarians, less skilled, can barely totter along on their skates when they first enter the Seminary, but the long Minnesota winters give them plenty of time to hone their skills.

Seminarians play hockey almost every Wednesday afternoon during the winter months. These games are not just opportunities to have fun and blow off a little steam; they prepare the seminarians for the important game, the game that will take place in February during the annual Priests’ Meeting, when the Seminary team will once again face off against the visiting priests.

The priests won that game last year, 7-6, and now possess the trophy. The seminarians who skated so intensely last Wednesday are determined to bring it back to Winona.