Parade time: Huskies hockey to celebrate Wednesday in Eagle
Celebration starts at 6:30 p.m.
Broadway in New York City is also known as the Canyon of Champions, whether it’s a parade for New York title squads or a salute to national heroes like Charles Lindbergh, Amelia Earhart, Jesse Owens or General Dwight D. Eisenhower after the World War II.
Battle Mountain hockey’s parade will also go down Broadway and eventually Capitol ending at Eagle Ranch on Wednesday, starting at 6:30 p.m.
And hold the ticker-tape. Even newspapers, not mention all those brokers along Broadway in the Big Apple, have gone digital.
“It was actually a parent who started the idea,” Huskies coach Derek Byron said. “They did some work, started talking to the town, and got the town and Eagle County Health on board.”
And so the Huskies will parade.
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Not only should there be a parade — how often does a team playing a sport with a projectile win a state title? Not often locally. Battle Mountain soccer in 2012 is the last — but the location is apropos.
Yes, it‘s called Battle Mountain hockey, but it’s team United Nations. Throughout the history of the program, “Battle Mountain” hockey has been a mix of all four schools — Devils, Saints, Gore Rangers and Huskies.
Yes, in the early days of the team, the Battle Mountain-Eagle Valley divide did not make prospective Devils to the team welcome. The program is happily past that silly stage.
This is a county championship and having a parade in Eagle is apropos because it’s the county seat and because, yes, though the sweaters are Battle Mountain black and gold, Eagle Valley Vail Christian and Vail Mountain are a big part of this.
Celebrate everyone.
Presumably heralded by some fire trucks and the Colorado Highway Patrol, the parade starts at the intersection of U.S. Highway 6 and Broadway, heading south.
The route goes down Broadway, which will we now call Eagle County’s Canyon of Champions. When Broadway hits the park, the parade shifts one block to the right and onto Capitol and goes the rest of the way toward and past Brush Creek Pavilion and eventually ends at Sylvan Lake Road, roughly at the Eagle Ranch Golf Club.
While this is rightly a festive occasion and gnerall happiness is be encouraged, there is still a global pandemic happening. The team’s wearing masks. Spectators must wear masks as well and distance socially if outside one’s household group along the route.
Coach Byron’s email announcing this parade came on Thursday, the two-week anniversary of the Huskies edging Crested Butte, 5-4, on an overtime goal from Hunter Davis down in Loveland.
That win avenged a loss in the regular-season finale to those same Titans that, at the time, seemed to eliminate the Huskies from the smaller COVID-19 4A playoffs.
But when given a second chance as the state’s only wild card team, the Huskies never looked back, erasing a 19-year history of postseason frustration, which Huskies fans are allowed to forget forever, thanks to the 2021 team.
