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There are good and logical reasons for a sports team to hold a reunion, mainly after a fair amount of time has passed, from the date of a significant championship. That’s what makes the gathering of the guys from the 1983-84 UMD hockey team in Duluth last weekend special. This team reunited to celebrate a team that DIDN’T win the championship.
And you know what? It just didn’t matter. That 1983-84 team lost an excruciating four-overtime NCAA final to Bowling Green at Lake Placid, but in the process, it pushed UMD around the corner into big-time college hockey, the transition from pretender to contender, which made the Bulldogs a program that had to be taken seriously. Forevermore.
Looking back, that team had a lot of outstanding players. Consider the first line was arguably the best forward unit in the country, with tall and slick Matt Christensen centering gifted scorer Bill Watson and the vastly underrated Tom Herzig. They were so good, they obscured a herd of other eager forwards, such as Mark Odnokon, Bob Lakso, Skeeter Moore, Jim Toninato, and various others.
But as with most stellar hockey teams, the Bulldogs had the true strength of one of the most outstanding defensive corps ever assembled.  The first defensive pairing was Tom Kurvers and Norm Maciver, both of whom went on to play over a decade in the National Hockey League, and the second unit included Jimmy Johnson -- another long-term NHLer -- and Bill Grillo, backed up by Guy Gosselin, Brian Johnson, and freshman Jim Sprenger. In goal was Rick Kosti, arguably the best goaltender in school history.
But more than their galvanizing skill level, they were all good people. Solid citizens. When Gus Hendrickson, assisted by Mike Sertich, recruited some of them, and then Sertich, assisted by Glenn Kulyk and Jim Knapp, recruited the rest, there was no assurance they’d all be such good people. It’s easier to figure out prospects have outstanding talent and potential than it is to learn they have the character and willingness to subvert their own egos to bond together as a cohesive group that can fly above any individual objectives.
The reunion started as a few random e-mails, that spread until it encompassed the whole team. When they got together to tour UMD’s new facilities at AMSOIL Arena, then moved over to a private room at Grandma’s Sports Garden, the partying seemed about over when Tom Kurvers summoned everyone to sit in a large circle around some pushed-together tables. Kurvers then went around the room, designating who had to get up and make a statement recalling this team’s performance, 30 years earlier. Some of the comments were priceless. Some of them realized the magnitude of this team, but all of them stressed what being part of such an amazing group had meant to them as they went on through life.
“We’re like outliers,” said Gosselin. “We created a culture here.”
Maciver, now assistant GM with the Chicago Blackhawks, recalled being hurt at the start of the season, and watching the Bulldogs fall behind 5-1 at Wisconsin in the season-opener, but then rising to win 6-5. That could have been a turning point for a successful season.
But it took Jimmie Levine, the student manager, to underscore the true turning point. “I remember we were playing the Gophers and one of their guys came in and was called offside,” he said. “He took a couple steps, the took a shot at Jon Downing.”
The shot was probably out of frustration at being called offside, but still, shooting hard and on goal after a whistle is a definite no-no. The Gophers at that time, however, seemed to play as though they could make up their own rules. But after Downing shrugged off the shot, the fun began.
“As the Gopher skated around behind the net, all of a sudden he just got blasted,” Levine said. “It was Mark Odnokon, who skated after him and just hammered him. A large melee started because of that, but the key thing was that the Gophers usually intimidated other teams, but with that response, Odnokon was saying ‘F-You, Minnesota!’ ”
With players like Kurvers, Maciver, Jimmy Johnson and others, some might be surprised that Mark Odnokon was captain. But not if you knew him, and the team. Ozzie, as he is still called, couldn’t make it to the reunion; he was being inducted into the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey Hall of Fame. But the feeling within the team was unanimous.
“Ozzie wasn’t a star, but he was the guy,” said Maciver. “It didn’t matter who we were playing or where, Ozzie gave the whole team swagger -- a confidence. And he did not let up in practice. If you were out there when he was, you kept your head up.”
Odnokon refused to accept losing, and he refused to allow any teammate to consider accepting losing. If any other player had been given the “C,” Odnokon still would have been the captain, in fact.
The Bulldogs went on to win their first WCHA championship in that 1983-84 season, and then they won their first WCHA playoff championship. But that took some doing. Since UMD had never advanced that far, the people who operated the DECC felt comfortable scheduling a conflicting event, some boat or RV show. So UMD reached the final, and couldn’t play at home. So they worked out a deal and got the use of Williams Arena in Minneapolis. The players still recall having whipped Wisconsin 6-3, 9-0 in the semifinal total-goal series, and then playing before over 7,000 UMD fans in the Gophers building, against a North Dakota team that had beaten Minnesota 4-3, 5-4. UMD won 8-1, and lost 5-4 to take the series 12-6.
“We win by seven, and in the second game, we were down 2-0 in the first two minutes,” Maciver recalled. “I wondered if we could possibly blow the series after winning by seven. We were probably on for both goals...”
“I had my guy,” said Kurvers.
In the first round of NCAA play, UMD beat Clarkson 6-2, then had a narrow-escape second game, losing 6-3 to hang on for the 9-8 total-goal victory. At Lake Placid, UMD beat North Dakota 2-1 on Bill Watson’s overtime game-winner in the semifinals, then came the monumental Bowling Green final. UMD was in command, with a 4-2 lead halfway through the third period. But Bowling Green got a goal, and it was suddenly a 4-3 nail-biter.
With less than two minutes to go, Bowling Green dumped the puck up the right boards. It appeared to be a clearcut icing, so Kosti, who never left his net to set up the puck, went behind the net to retrieve the iced puck. But the puck hit a seam near the Zamboni door and caromed directly out to the slot, where the first-arriving Bowling Green player had the equivalent of a 6-inch putt to tie the game 4-4.
Then it raged back and forth, until the fourth overtime, when Gino Cavallini scored for Bowling Green. It was a crushing loss for the Bulldogs. But, 30 years later, watching those players come together again, and laugh and heckle each other, it was easy to reach one conclusion.
This was a truly special group of people, the best single team UMD has ever had. That wouldn’t have changed if they had won that four-overtime classic. And in a way, it says more for their character that they gathered together without that big trophy to brag about.

Bernie Gerl Returns to Visit Wade Stadium

As a little kid, it was always fun to go to Wade Stadium and watch the old Duluth Dukes play. It was a long time ago, but refuted by the clarity of the memory, when I watched a tall, lean, professor-like catcher for the Dukes step into the left-handed batter’s box. More graphic is the memory of watching that white baseball disappear into the black sky between the first and second light standards, above the right-field fence.
That’s how I remember Bernie Gerl best. I was too young to completely understand all he went through to return to play baseball, after narrowly surviving that legendary Duluth Dukes bus crash on July 24, 1948.
Bernie doesn’t remember much of it, either. He liked to sit in the aisle on the busrides, as he did on that bright day when manager George Treadwell drove the team bus from Eau Claire to a series at St. Cloud. As they passed through the northern suburbs of the Twin Cities, a truck suddenly veered out of the oncoming lane and into the west-bound lane, hitting the bus in a horribly tragic collision.
Treadwell and four players were killed. Fast work by passers-by rescued the rest. Gerl was the last to be pulled from the burning wreckage. He was burned significantly over much of his body, and he was unconscious in the hospital for several days.
“I woke up in the hospital,” said Gerl, who turns 88 in another week. “My dad had come up to visit me, from Joliet (Ill.), and he was leaning over my bed. I was burned, inside and out, and I couldn’t breathe. I could only say one word at a time, and I said, ‘I’ve...got...to...get...out...of...here...I’m...in...a...slump.’
“There were six of us in that ward, and I was the only one without broken bones. Nobody would tell me anything, but one nurse kept trying to get me to walk to the rest room. I finally made it, and when I looked in the mirror, I was horrified. I had bandages all over me, and my face looked like a breaded pork chop.”
Once 190 pounds, Gerl said he was 120 when he finally got to go home from the hospital. He worked hard, determined to return to the game he loved. He had married his wife, Bernadine, and they had their first of two sons, but two seasons later, in 1950, he got another chance, signing with the St Louis Cardinals to play for their farm team in Montgomery, Ala. But he hit .298, he recalls, but he also knew he couldn’t make enough to support his young family, so he quit. He and his brother opened a bar in Joliet, and baseball became a thing of his past.
“In 1952, we were going to go on a fishing trip to Northern Minnesota,” Gerl said. “We stopped in Duluth, and I went out to the ballpark. I was sitting there, and Ken Blackman (Dukes general manager) came and sat with me. As we talked, he said they needed a catcher, and they had an opportunity to make the playoffs. I turned around and drove the family back home, and came back to Duluth.”
Gerl caught for the Dukes through the rest of the 1952 season, and returned to play in 1953, before retiring for good. It’s an incredible story of determination, and Bernie Gerl, 87 going on 35, doesn’t mind telling about it, or about the priceless memories still rampant from those Northern League days.
 He sat behind home plate and watched the Huskies play last Thursday -- the 66th anniversary of the bus crash -- and Friday. They were surrounded by fans young and old, and well-wishers who have heard his incredible story.

Cruelty of Double Elim

The District 8 American Legion baseball tournament may have seemed endless with its double-elimination format, but then suddenly it was over. But not before some outstanding games.
Lakeview defeated Grand Rapids 5-4 in a strategic gem, with coaches on both sides changing pitchers to save innings for the added games to come. Winner Nisswa got past both Lakeview -- 11-10 -- and then Grand Rapids 8-7. That Rapids loss eliminated them. With such close games exhausting their pitching, Lakeview lost 18-5 to Hermantown.
But go back to that Lakeview-Grand Rapids clash. It was tied 4-4 in the last of the ninth, and Chris Olson, who had pitched part of the game for Lakeview, and whose clutch single drove in a run to break a 2-2 tie earlier in the game, rocked the first pitch over the center-fielder’s head for a leadoff double. Elliot Kuberra sacrificed him to third. At that point, Grand Rapids coach Bill Kinnunen made the decision and Rapids intentionally walked the next two hitters to load the bases and set up a potential force play at the plate.
Connor Gunst hit a grounder to shortstop, and the Rapids shortstop made a brilliant play, catching the ball and tagging Nat Shuman going to third, before spinning off and firing to first. It would have been an inning-ending double play, but the throw pulled the Rapids first baseman just a step off the bag, and Olson scored the winning run. Excellent play, high drama, ending in Lakeview’s 5-4 victory.
There was similar action in the Division II competition, with International Falls winning the title with a 9-3 victory over Two Harbors. Falls had beaten Two Harbors 9-4 earlier in the double-elimination play, then things unfolded quickly, as Ely eliminated Esko 4-2, then Two Harbors eliminated host Ely 5-4 to set up Sunday’s final. But International Falls was too tough and claimed the title.

John Gilbert has been writing sports for
over 30 years. Formerly with the Star Tribune and WCCO. He currently hosts a daily radio show on KDAL AM.