If your last name is Johnson and you played goalie for the Moorhead Pee Wee Black hockey team in the early 1980s, contact John Schultz.
As part of the Moorhead Youth Hockey Association for 37 years, Schultz has cataloged every scorebook of every team he has coached since 1968 and every roster since 1971. He has a picture of each team except one, and can list a name for every player but one - the mysterious Johnson.
Although a long shot, this weekend seems as good as any for coach and former player to connect. The MYHA is holding a reunion, featuring alumni games, open skates and a skills competition at the Moorhead Youth Hockey Arena, dubbed "Forty Years of Cheers."
"I just never threw anything away," Schultz, a Pee Wee coach turned girls varsity assistant, explained of his collection. "It just kept adding up in the basement. But I did have fun with it at one time. I'm a little bit of a history buff."
Then this weekend will be his Super Bowl.
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More than 5,000 letters were sent out to former and current players, parents, coaches and fans, according to reunion chairman Dan Geraghty, a difficult task itself because computer records date only to 1985. Yet more than 400 are expected to attend a social at6 tonight at the Courtyard by Marriott, including all five boys varsity head coaches.
The consensus is that veteran coaches like Schultz, Dennis Bushy and Terry Shercliffe, just to name a few, are the reason for the program's longevity and, now, the success. The Moorhead boys varsity team has been to the state tournament 10 times in the past 14 years - most in Minnesota - and reached the title game six times, while the entire MYHA program was home to 401 boys and girls ages 4-18 in 2004-05.
"(The coaches) are obviously the backbone of what's become one of the best programs in the state," said Moorhead product Matt Cullen, currently a center for the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes. "Without people like those guys - and the many other people you don't hear about - you don't build a program like Moorhead has. It's great there's a weekend like this to bring everyone together."
If not everyone, at least those MYHA alums who aren't currently playing professional hockey; the start of the NHL season will prevent the likes of Cullen and New York Islanders center Jason Blake from attending.
But so many others that make up the infrastructure of the program will be there, as they have been for 40 years.
"There's a lot of continuity in this program from years and years," Geraghty said, "and a lot of us look toward the (veteran coaches) as some of the reason to be involved."
Readers can reach Forum reporter Terry Vandrovec at (701) 241-5548
