Minnesota State's West Coast connection

California skatin'

By Shane Frederick
Free Press Staff Writer

MANKATO — The temperature was pushing 10 below zero last week and Minnesota State women's hockey coach Jeff Vizenor was indoors checking his e-mail.

He opened a message from one of his players, Kristina Koga, who was home for the semester break.

Vizenor didn't like what he was reading. Perhaps he was a little jealous.

Koga wrote that it was 80 degrees in southern California and she just came in from the beach. She couldn't resist rubbing it in.

Koga and teammate Alycia Wilson are the only Mavericks not from the Minnesota, the Midwest or Canada. Koga, a fifth-year senior, grew up in Bellflower, Calif., in Orange County, not far from Long Beach. Wilson, a sophomore is from Temple City, a suburb of Los Angeles.

They love they ice - as long as it's of the indoor variety.

"Our home rink was in Huntington Beach," Koga said. "So we'd go to practice and then we'd go to the beach."

That's another planet compared to their college teammates.

"Either we'd go home and hang out or we went out to the outdoor rink and played boot hockey," South St. Paul native Amanda Stohr said. "Or we'd go sledding."

Stohr heard her friends' boasts about Christmas at the beach and their stories of tank tops and suntans.

Call it denial, but Stohr has decided to put a different spin on it.

"I felt extra bad for them," she said. "It's hard enough leaving home, but they had to leave the beach."

Koga and Wilson are among a handful of Californians playing Division I college hockey. Most have played for the California Selects, a team of high school-aged players that plays in national and international competition.

"All the best kids on the west coast play on that team," Vizenor said. "The kids that come out of there are real committed to be hockey players. They commute two hours for practices. It's a real level of commitment."

Both Maverick players are children of the California hockey boom that began when Wayne Gretzky was traded to the Los Angeles Kings in 1988.

Wilson began playing hockey when she was 8. She saw the movie "The Mighty Ducks" and told her mom she wanted to play. She played boys hockey until she was 14.

Koga started skating when she was 13, but she played roller hockey at first.

While playing for the Selects, both players set goals of playing the sport in college. Of course, that meant going to school in a place with cold winters.

"Minnesota is a hockey state," Wilson said. "California hockey is so small. I went from the only kid who played hockey in my school to here where everybody plays hockey."

Koga and Wilson said many people are surprised when they hear why a couple of women from southern California ended up in southern Minnesota.

They're living out their dreams by playing the college game.

Just don't expect them to stick around once their playing days are done.

"I hope to go home and get a nice job," said Koga, a marketing design major who will graduate in May. "I've been here five years. I'm a beach girl."

Said Wilson: "Minnesota's great, but I miss the beach."