ROCHESTER — With a simple social media post in late April, a three-decade holiday tradition in Rochester was put on pause.
“After 31 successful years, there will be no @KiwanisHckyFest during the 2025-26 Boys Hockey season,” the post on the X (formerly Twitter) account for the Kiwanis Hockey Festival read on April 30.
Whether the Festival returns or not in years to come is uncertain. What is certain is that all parties involved — the local Kiwanis members who organize and volunteer to run the tournament, as well as players, coaches and fans — would like to see it back on the local calendar.
The cancellation of this year’s tournament is due in part to the difficulty of attracting quality teams — or enough teams — to put together a competitive bracket (and one that is acceptable to all teams) in recent years. And with a limited number of slots in their regular-season schedules, Rochester teams had indicated a desire to not play one another for a third time in the regular season.
All of those challenges added up to a difficult decision for event organizers. For the first time in 31 years, the Festival will not be held.
Local teams have taken different approaches to filling those dates on their schedules.
Rochester Mayo is using it as a chance to create an “experience” for its players; something they will remember for years, beyond just some regular-season games. The Spartans will travel to the Essentia Health West Fargo (N.D.) Winter Classic, where they’ll face Bismarck (N.D.) Century High on Monday, Dec. 29, and Fargo North High School on Dec. 30 in an outdoor setting.
“It’s right before New Year’s and one of those highlight-ish parts of our schedule,” Mayo coach Matt Notermann said. “It’s cool that our JV and varsity will get two games, and we’ll get the outdoor game experience, under the lights they have up there.”
Mayo created a third jersey especially for that trip, and it will also likely wear that jersey when it faces rival Century/John Marshall on the United Heroes League rink to open Hockey Day Minnesota week at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Jan. 17.
“I think having those things to look forward to really helped us through some of the summer (workouts and skates),” Notermann said. “As soon as we got those things on paper, it was like ‘boy, these will be fun.’ … It’s really what this is all about, to have fun and make some memories together.
“Our goal is to make the ‘work’ part of it fun.”
Century/John Marshall replaced the Kiwanis Festival on its schedule with an early-season tournament, the Fogerty Arena Thanksgiving Classic in Blaine. The tournament featured four teams that are co-ops of more than one school. And the Panthers jumped at the opportunity to play at the UHL rink Hastings, especially against their intra-city rival.
But, not having a home tournament between Christmas and New Year’s will feel different this year.
“I know it was something that a lot of kids always look forward to,” Century/JM co-head coach Matt Erredge told the Post Bulletin before the season. “Getting everyone together at the rink at the same time is always great. … I think the community is going to miss it, too, and I’d love to see it come back someday, if we can make it into something where we can play some teams that aren’t on our schedule already.”
Another idea that has been talked about casually — though no legwork has been done, and its creation isn’t imminent — is getting Rochester’s three boys teams (Mayo, Century/JM, Lourdes) and a fourth, possibly Dodge County, together at holiday time for a four-team tournament similar to college hockey’s Beanpot, a mid-season tournament that features four Division I teams from Boston.
“I’ve always said that perhaps we’ve missed out on something like that in years past,” Erredge said, “a tournament with a Beanpot-type feel, but I’m hopeful it may change in the future.”
Jason Feldman is the sports editor of the Post Bulletin. In addition to managing the four-person sports staff at the PB, Jason covers high school football, golf and high school and junior hockey. Readers can reach Jason at 507-281-7430 or jfeldman@postbulletin.com.