Floor Of Ball Hockey Dreams 

Tears of victory and defeat in the eyes of exhausted fourth and fifth graders were a testament to what physical education teacher Jason Keniston has spent five years building.

Keniston, after receiving a One Roof Foundation donation of sticks and jerseys, has transformed the co-ed floor hockey program at Maplewood Heights Elementary in Renton into a part of the school’s very fabric and culture. This week, in a gymnasium packed with roughly 200 parents and students looking on, the two best teams from that program battled it out in the championship game for a replica Stanley Cup and all the emotion that comes with it.

“We had already done floor hockey in PE before the Kraken donated,” said Keniston, who is also a U.S. Army chaplain and captain. “But once they brought in jerseys and equipment, that took it to a new level with things we didn’t have. I thought it gave us an opportunity to make hockey possible for all kids.”

And a possibility for Keniston and some staffers to use additional creativity to take their six-team Little Kraken Floor Hockey league to a level rarely seen in any public elementary school.

Dozens of folding chairs were lined up in multiple rows for spectators attending the championship game between the undefeated Krushing Little Kraken and the once-beaten Hi-Tech Little Kraken. The national anthem was sung pregame while an overhead scoreboard displayed “Fan Cam” video footage taken of the crowd- many of the fans holding up homemade signs on cardboard and iPads to cheer on their favorite team.

Between periods, a teacher drove a floor scrubber machine back and forth across the playing surface to simulate a Zamboni ice cleaner. And when the game finally ended, another teacher wearing white gloves, dubbed “The Keeper of The Cup,” brought the covered-up, polished and cleaned trophy out in a velvet case to the middle of the floor for an unveiling and distribution of gold and silver medals to the finalists.

“We’re here to create this huge game for them and make it feel just like any other paid program would where they get to play for something,” Keniston said. “They’re going to win medals. They’re going to be celebrated. They’re going to get photos.”

The Seattle Kraken Fan Development Team runs a Power Play Ball Hockey after-school club, operating in 11 schools across four districts with more than 300 participants. The program is supported by the One Roof Foundation (ORF), the charity arm of the Kraken and Climate Pledge Arena, and sponsored by Virginia Mason Franciscan Health. ORF supports the program through Ball Hockey Kit Donations and has donated more than 10,000 sticks and pinny jerseys to 235 Title 1 Schools statewide, along with training for 163 schoolteachers.

Capturing the Maplewood Heights championship and replica Cup was no easy task this year in a back-and-forth affair, the Hi-Tech squad won 7-6 in sudden death overtime. The Krushing team, which had handed Hi-Tech its only regular season loss, overcame a 3-0 early deficit, took a 4-3 lead, and then gave it back up before a see-saw third period ended with the score even.

Goalies were removed for the sudden-death overtime session – in a bid to hasten an ending – but defenders from both teams made spectacular stick saves amid screaming spectators hovering on the edges of their sideline seats. When the winning goal finally went in, the elated Hi-Tech team leaped up and down in front of parents and students doing the same from the crowd while the emotionally drained Krushing players wiped their eyes or buried their heads in their hands.

There was good reason for that outpouring of emotion: Students at the school wait all year for a chance to win the coveted Cup – which is kept in the victorious squad’s classroom by their teacher and team captains for viewing but, in keeping with NHL tradition, cannot be held by any students other than those on the championship team.

“We keep it in our room, and we keep it safe,” said teacher Ros Penk, the latest Cup keeper, whose students won last year’s title. “And we also use it to get students excited about playing next year.”

Penk described how students will enter her classroom daily hoping to see the Cup. The winning team writes their name in marker on the trophy, but it gets touched so often by students that Penk said all the signatures have been rubbed off it.

The Cup itself is a fairly large and hefty replica, looking almost proportional to the real thing when held by the young students as opposed to NHL players. Each winning player gets presented a gold medal taken from the Cup bowl in a postgame ceremony by their captain and then gets to hold and pose for a photo with the trophy.

“Mr. Keniston does a really good job of teaching them about sportsmanship,” Penk said. “You know, they get sad when they lose, but still, they are just so excited to play. Everybody wants to do it.”

Enrollment at the diverse school has declined significantly in recent years, but signups for the hockey program have risen.

“That’s just a testament to the kids loving the sport,” Keniston said. “They love the program. They love all of this and the opportunity to be part of this.”

Keniston grew up a hockey fan in Michigan and Ohio and often longed for that type of attention to detail when playing public school sports. He remembered one of his elementary school teachers in Salem, Ohio, doing something similar by going the extra mile on detail with a flag football program.

“That teacher did it for free,” he said. “He did it for families like myself that could not afford to be in actual clubs and things. And his big thing was, he just wanted kids to have fun and experience something that they would never get to experience.

“And I never forgot that.”

Keniston hoped to emulate his former teacher by starting his own flag football program at Maplewood Heights. But the games kept getting rained out, so he closed that program down and diverted all energies to the indoor floor hockey league after the ORF donation came through.

And with continued tweaks, his goal is for the league – and especially its championship game - to look and feel more and more like an NHL contest and give students a chance to partake in something truly unique. Something they already covet as part of “a great tradition” within the school’s fabric.

“They want to win the trophy,” Keniston said. “They love having healthy trash talk…they want the trophy. They want to win it for their family, their friends, they want to win it for the teacher who gets to keep it for the year.

“And the excitement grows. Everyone knows about it. The teachers know about it. The community knows about it. And yeah, every year it seems to get bigger and bigger and everyone’s fired up.”