North American Pond Hockey Championship to host last tournament this weekend

The puck drops at the 2023 North American Pond Hockey Championship this weekend in Excelsior.

Hundreds of hockey players from around the world will be on Lake Minnetonka for the annual charity event, but after 10 years, organizers say this will likely be the last run for the tournament.

Tim Jenzer is the ice director for the Pond Hockey Championship. He says the ice will be ready for games on Friday despite challenging conditions on the lake since early January.

“The worst ice we’ve ever seen to work with and the worst conditions,” Jenzer said. “A lot of snow on top of 7 to 8 inches of ice. It all sank and it created a lot of slush.”

That slush froze into a chunky lunar-like landscape that initially prevented the ice in Excelsior Bay from getting thicker.

“Jan. 20, we were pretty sure we weren’t going to pull this off,” Jenzer said. “Then we got a cold snap, which took care of a lot of problems.”

Despite this week’s warm weather, the ice depth grew to about 19 inches. So the games will go on, and probably for the last time.

“We’re getting older. We don’t have the drive that we once had to keep going, but never say never,” Jenzer said. “Maybe some group will come in and take over and keep it going.”

The nonprofit group formed to run the tournament is calling it quits. Since 2013, the tournament has honored Dave Bigham, who died of a heart attack in 2012 at age 41.

“We feel like we made a difference in Dave’s name, which is really what we set out to do,” said Jenny Mattiacci, one of the tournament’s organizers. “We never thought we’d be here 10 years [later].”

With sponsors like Cambria, Youngstedts and Maynards covering the cost of running the tournament, volunteers have raised $2 million for causes benefitting disabled athletes, inner-city hockey programs and ALS and cystic fibrosis research.

This year, Bigham’s family and the family of a player who died of a heart attack during the tournament in 2015 had a request.

“Both families asked that that this being our last year would we consider doing something that had to do with heart healthy,” Youngstedts owner Steve Youngstedt said.

So this year the tournament will raise money for Play for Patrick, a charity named after a youth hockey player who died of an undiagnosed heart defect.

And after 10 years, hundreds of hockey games, thousands of volunteer hours and millions of dollars raised, many tournament volunteers might trade ice for sand.

“It will be very bittersweet, emotional. But I think we’ll all stick together,” Youngstedt said. “Maybe next year at this time we’ll all be in Mexico.”