“DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES?” OCCURRED 35 YEARS AGO: USA 4 USSR 3 IN THE 1980 OLYMPICS

The day was Friday, February 22, 1960!

During the 1950s and throughout the 1960s I did the Minnesota State High School weekly hockey ratings for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Herb Brooks starred on the 1955 Johnson High School team which won the State Championship that year. With the exception of the State Tournament games and games played in the St. Paul and Minneapolis city school league competitions, hockey was an outdoor sport then.

Some games were played in below zero temperatures, and up in the Iron Range or Northwest Minn. where the majority of the best school hockey teams played, many many degrees below zero. One winter I joined sports journalist, Ralph Reeve of the Pioneer Press to watch a game between perennial state powerhouses, Roseau and St. Paul’s Johnson for an evening game with the temperature fourteen below zero played in an unheated wooden structure built locally to protect about 1500 fans from an evening windchill, about half of the communities resident population.

Roseau is located about 300 miles northwest of the Twin Cities, maybe more.

I believe 12 of the players on the USA Miracle team were raised in Minnesota or had Minnesota blood connections. Mark Johnson’s dad, Bob, was a friend of mine as a classmate earning graduate school credits at the University of Minnesota before he became a very successful coach at the University of Wisconsin. Mark scored the last second goal of the first period of the Miracle game to tie the score at 2-2.

I was well aware then of the competitive nature of the coach, Herbie Brooks, who orchestrated the Miracle victory determined to develop a team capable of beating the Russians whether anyone liked it or not. Few people remember that Brooks graduated from Minnesota in psychology, a topic he used to his advantage, as it turned out.

At the end of the video below you will notice coach Brooks quickly leaving the shocked and thrilled American audience at the end of the game……He found a private corner alone and collapsed into tears. (Wouldn’t you?)

The team still had to play and beat, not just tie Finland a couple of days later or the Soviets would have taken the Gold to Moscow. After two heart -wrenching periods USA came from behind to beat the Finns 4-2.

I listened to the game for two periods on radio for the game was not presented to us televised. I had expected us to play well. Brooks (purposely, I am sure) scheduled a game against the Soviets in Madison Square Garden a week or so before the Olympic games had begun….and USA lost 10-3….which in football terms would be around 70-19. He had arranged for his players to take out their hate against him, who had made them pay mentally and physically dearly training for the Olympics, by focusing totally on the game and the reason they were trained to do…..beat the Russkies and win the Gold Medal.

It was in the third period of play when the speed and strength trained Americans skated almost on a par with their professional Soviet competitors, all inducted into the Red Army to play hockey professionally.

The Soviet team had been out-coached, for that special game anyway.

Their speed, stamina, and style had surprised them, some of the Russian players mentioned years later.

If you have never seen the last minute of the Miracle….take a look now by clicking below…..

http://www.syracuse.com/axeman/index.ssf/2015/02/miracle_on_ice_usa_hockey_team_to_re-unite_for_first_time_in_lake_placid_for_35t.html