Former Spud girls hockey players gathered to celebrate the 30th anniversary. (Photo/Teresa Norwig.)

Nancy Edmonds Hanson

Today’s hockey fans have plenty to cheer about, with Moorhead High’s boys and girls teams both going strong at mid-season. The Spud girls, though, have something extra to celebrate – the 30th anniversary of female teams being sanctioned by the Minnesota High School Sports League.
The cheering rocked the rafters on Saturday, when the Spuds varsity team triumphed over perennial rival Warroad, 4-3. But the real victory goes much farther than a single winning game. For all female athletes who play hockey, the most significant victory of all took place back in 1994: The debut of sanctioned girls hockey competition in Minnesota, followed by rapid growth and exceptional staying power.
“Before then, there were no programs for girls,” recalls Jim MacFarlane, who coached the team for 11 years throughout the 2000s. “A few girls played with the boys in Youth Hockey. But when the MHSSL finally sanctioned girls teams in 1994, plenty of people doubted there would ever be enough interest to sustain them.”
That question was settled in 1992. When the MHSSL surveyed its member schools to assess which sports high school they were most interested in playing, 8,000 girls spoke up: They would love to play high school hockey, they responded, if only it were offered.
They got their wish. In March 1994, the Minnesota league voted to become the first state high school association in the country to sanction girls’ ice hockey as a varsity sport. Twenty-four varsity teams took to the ice in the inaugural 1994-1995 season. On Feb. 24, 1995, with the eyes of the nation upon them, the puck was dropped in the first-ever State High School Girl’s Hockey Tournament in the country.
“We organized our team in 1995-96, the second year,” MacFarlane recalls. “There were 48 teams by then. By 2003, there were 140 teams – fairly close to the boys’ level.” He notes that Moorhead Youth Hockey also developed programs for girls from Squirts and Pee Wees through high school, helping shape the talent that now excels on the ice.
MacFarlane, who still teaches English at MHS, was one of three coaches who laid the foundation for the Spud girls’ success. The others: Mark Jensen, who coached the first four seasons (now the superintendent of Detroit Lakes Public Schools) and John Schultz. The three “Godfathers of Spud Hockey” were honored during Saturday’s game against Warroad, along with alumni of the very first team and members of the 2000-2001 squad, the first to reach the state tournament. (The Spuds beat their perennial rivals, 4-3.)
Ryan Kraft, the former Spud hockey stand-out who has coached the girls’ team since 2019, launched the idea of celebrating the sports anniversary five years ago during his first season. “I’d originally thought we should focus on the 25th anniversary, but then COVID came along,” he says. The timing shifted, then, to the 30th. Former player Megan MacFarlane, he adds, handled much of the organization of the reunion event staged at the TAK Venue in Dilworth after the game.
Thirty-four girls from MHS and Park Christian School – sophomores, juniors and seniors – make up this year’s Spud squad. Kraft says, “They’re working hard, showing up, having a lot of fun.” They convene six days a week, typically for four practices and two games.
Their season, which launched Oct. 28, may run all the way through Feb. 22, the coach suggests. That’s the day of the state championship. “We like our chances. I like where this team is headed.”
Kraft, who graduated from MHS in 1994, played at the University of Minnesota and in the NHL. He was living in Lakeville, where he ran skating and skills camps and coached his sons’ teams, when he got word that Moorhead was looking for a girls coach. “I always wanted to be back in Moorhead so my kids could have the same great experience I had,” he says.
He soon turned around the losing record the team had racked up in the preceding decade, taking them all the way to the Region 8AA championship in 2023.
“We had to rebuild how the girls viewed hockey,” he observes. “To be good, you have to raise the expectations. Every year, we’ve gotten a little better. Now there’s nowhere to go but up.”
During his first season, the team’s statistics were 8-17-1. By the 2020-21 season – the COVID year – they achieved their first winning season in six years at 11-8-1. That was followed by 20-9 in 2021-22; 22-9 in 2022-23; and 24-3-1 in 2023-24, when they won the Region 8AA championship. So far this season, the record stands at 9-3-1.
“I want everyone who plays to know they’re going to have a really good hockey experience,” he asserts. “And winning is more fun than losing.”