#kokkolanhermes

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The Wings of Hermes (For the Love of the Game, Part Two)

(photo courtesy of urheilukuva.kuvat.fi/)

So, not many of you know about our little town of Kokkola and its hockey team Hermes. I have written about it before here. We play in the third highest league in finland called Suomi-sarja (transl. Finland series). In the mid 90's and early 2000's the team was really succesful, playing in the the second highest league, but due to bankrupcy, the team was forced to drop a few levels down.

Since moving back to my hometown of Kokkola (summer, 2012) I was enlisted to be the DJ for our hockey team, which was (and still is) like a dreamjob, what better than to combine my two passions that are music and (local) hockey. There has been hype around the team these past few years and hopes were high for this past season, but something went wrong, mainly the coaching. Even though we were set to be the top contender this year, we barely avoided elimination and dropping a serie lower. Due to disqualification of another team (used a player who was under suspension) we, Hermes, managed to keep our position in Suomi-sarja for the 2014-2015 season, dodging a bullet so to speak.

The coach took his stuff and left and maybe some "key" players as well, but I hope we learned something from this years' mistakes and next season will be better. But no matter on what level Hermes plays, I will still support them and do this DJ stuff, that i do for free by the way. We have a group who calls themselves "Hermes Loyals" who are a loud bunch of 50-100 enthusiastic fans, who make a lot of racket in our little hockey arena. They have their place behind the away teams' penalty box and let me tell you, the penalized player is not getting away easy.

The average attendance at our games are about 300 i would say, altho the last (deciding) game of this season brought 800 people to our arena, granted, half of them out of town fans of the other team we were playing against.

I really hope that Finns and people in this town would support the team more, because Finns are suffering a bad case on bandwagonism.

Anyway, a long summer ahead and can't wait for local hockey to be back in the fall again and i thought I would cover the season here for those interested. Here below i will link a youtube video of the highlights from the last game of the season. Our team in red (white and blue). Hope you enjoyed this little piece about our little team. I will for sure write more about them in the future. Take care and enjoy the NHL playoffs, like I will do!

Hermes - MuIK; game highlights.