High schoolers beat Olympic Team

Warroad, MN, has been known for their hockey teams. Their high school boys won the Class A State Championship last year. To recognize this strong heritage, the USA Women Hockey Team faced these boys as a warm up to the 2006 Olympics.

The boys didn't expect to beat one of the top ranked women's teams. Instead, they hoped simply to show their competitiveness throughout the game. With both coaches agreeing to a no-checking rule, the odds seemed even more in favor of the women.

But the young Warroad Warriors lived up to the town's long history of hockey honor, winning 2-1 by beating the women at their own game of finesse and speed.

A crowd of more than 2,000 fans packed the 1,700-seat Gardens Arena in this town of about 1,800 on the Canadian border.

Coach Ben Smith proposed the matchup last year when he asked Warroad to add the game to its schedule.

"We wanted to bring our players to Hockeytown USA," he said. "This community has a long association with U.S. national teams. This arena has portraits of six [Olympic] medalists on the wall. I don't know of any place with a higher per capita number." He added, "The waters run deep here."

When the women's team first proposed the matchup, some of the adults were more worried than the boys were. But then the adults had a novel idea. Listen to the boys. And the boys said they didn't want to pass up the opportunity to share the ice with the best women.