(Editor’s note: The following letter is in response to a letter from the “Sartell Squirt C Hockey Team” that was published in the Jan. 15 Newsleader. The controversy began when a Sartell hockey team was accused of raucous behavior on a weekend in December at a Best Western hotel in River Falls, Wis. The authors of the following letter had written a letter published in the Jan. 8 Newsleader. Then, in the next issue, the letter from Hopkinsons was totally refuted by the hockey team. The Newsleader is publishing this letter to give the Hopkinsons a chance to refute the contention they were inaccurate in their first letter. On Jan. 5, the Newsleader checked with the motel, and the night clerk there said that it was definitely the Sartell team that had caused the trouble.)
Scott and Sue Hopkinson, Woodruff, Wis.
The suggestion’s been made in the letter from hockey folks that we (hotel management, patrons, news media, my wife and I) are all confused or mistaken – that they were someone else other than the kids wearing blue-and-white Sartell jerseys, whose photos, matched the kids in the hallway that were displayed on the hotel room doors in picture frames. There is no question who these kids were or where they were from. We asked them where they were from and they said, ” Sartell, Minnesota. We won the division.” Their jerseys said “Sartell Hockey” on them.
Contrary to the Sartell hockey team’s letter to the editor, the kids were definitely playing hockey in the hotel hallway. When the nets were taken away from them, they used foldable luggage holders and pillows as nets. As patrons, we and others had to duck and dodge as they slap-shot balls in the hall. That was done in the Sartell hockey team’s hotel hallway in front of their rooms.
The doors to these rooms were propped open and kids wearing Sartell jerseys were constantly going in and out of these doors.
Apparently, the parents of team members have used harassment in an effort to contradict or drop the accusations that their kids behaved poorly.
The hotel has been harassed to the point where they don’t want to take any more of these calls. We have endured enough – not just from that day – but in an effort to inform the Sartell community how they behaved, we are further being harassed.
Rather than teaching the kids discipline, pride and appropriate behaviors, the parents have chosen a different path – to negate, mislead, besmirch. What is this teaching these kids?
The hotel should not have had to discount or refund other patrons of the hotel. The hotel should not have had to endure the extra expenses of having their elevators checked for safety or hire additional staff or endured the numerous phone calls. Simply put, the Sartell hockey team should have taken responsibility and apologized for their behavior and ensure the kids don’t behave this way again. Shame on you, Sartell hockey. It is not the hotel’s or hotel patrons’ responsibility to babysit.
My wife and I are not friends or family of other hockey teams that were staying at the hotel, and we have nothing to gain by complaining about the Sartell team. To what benefit would we have to make this stuff up?