A legend in hockey has died
Former Eveleth High School state champion, Olympic silver medalist and eight-time Minnesota state high school championship coach Willard Ikola passed away Monday night at age 92.
During an interview with WDIO in 2019, Willard Ikola said, “They always used to say about Eveleth, you know, if you’re born in Eveleth, you’re born with a hockey stick in your hand.”
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Ikola got his start as a goalie at Eveleth High School when he was a freshman. His team lost in the semifinals in 1947, but he never lost a high school game again. With Ikola in goal, Eveleth won state championships in the next three years.
He played goalie for the University of Michigan, where he won two NCAA national championships. He later went on to win a silver medal in Cortina, Italy, with the 1956 U.S. Olympic team, alongside other Minnesota hockey legends like John Mayasich and former Gov. Wendell Anderson.
From 1958-1991, Willard Ikola was the head coach at Edina. He earned a 616-149-38 record during 33 years of coaching, with a record eight state high school hockey championships with the Edina Hornets. Ikola was named Minnesota High School Hockey Coach of the Year six times.
After retiring in 1991, he became a scout for the New York Islanders.
According to Hubbard’s KSTP records, Ikola’s 33-year career at Edina was so long he started coaching the team on outdoor ice on the old Edina campus off Highway 100. They used to practice on nearby Lake Harvey. One of his favorite stories was about how they knew when the ice was safe to skate on. He would send the biggest kid on the team out to check it out.
Willard Ikola was inducted into the United States Hockey Hall of Fame in 1990 and the Minnesota Sports Hall of Fame in 2019.
“I really like Duluth. In high school, we used to play Duluth East quite a bit. And when I was playing for Eveleth, we played Duluth quite a bit there both in region 7,” Ikola told us in 2019. “So you know they both had to get through us to get to the state tournament. So I always enjoyed Duluth.”
Willard Ikola passed away Monday night at age 92.
