Hockeytown Indiana

 My town is known for a few things. Just like yours, I suppose.

My town, Fort Wayne, is known for That Street With Three Names Thing, in which one of the main north-south arteries through town goes by three different names depending on where you're driving on it. It's a byproduct of one of our other civic mottoes, Fort Wayne: Just Messin' With Ya.

My town is a purplish oasis in a red sea of Trumpers, which is why our congressional representative is the always lovely Jim Banks, R-Certified Loon. But we're also known for having one of the best minor-league ballparks in the U.S. ... and a growth-spurt downtown dining and arts scene ... and a rich historical tapestry that includes not only the city's namesake, Mad Anthony Wayne, but the guy he shoved aside: The great Miami chief Little Turtle, patriarch of the major Northwest Territories trading hub named Kekionga that was Fort Wayne before Wayne showed up.

Philo Farnsworth, inventor of television, once lived here. And the very first National League baseball game was played here between the Fort Wayne Kekiongas and the Cleveland Forest Citys. 

Oh, yeah: And this is a hockey town, too.

The Fort Wayne Komets of the ECHL, after all, are in their 72nd season, making them one of the oldest minor-league hockey franchises in the U.S. And from their example has spread an immense youth hockey network that feeds the best high school hockey in the state.

That latter's not just a brag, by the way. It's fact.

Maybe you missed, because high school hockey in Indiana is not an IHSAA sanctioned sport and therefore doesn't get the pub football and boys and girls basketball and every sanctioned sport does, but this weekend they held the Indiana hockey state championships. And the Fort whupped everyone.

Three Fort Wayne-area teams won state titles in three different classes. And did it the hardest way possible, in sudden-death overtime.

Homestead beat Westfield 2-1 in  one overtime in1A.

Leo beat Lakeshore St. Joe 3-2 in extras in 3A, rallying from an early 2-0 deficit.

And the Fort Wayne Vipers held off Columbus in two OTs, 4-3, for the 2A title.

Three teams, three state titles. And you wonder why they call this Hockeytown, Indiana.

OK. So maybe it's just me who calls Fort Wayne that.

But it sings, doesn't it? It sings.