Sports

Be aware of role models’ shelf lives

By Matthew Semisch

03/17/2015

Just under a year ago, when I was offered my job at the Bottineau Courant, I excitedly accepted it.

I then quickly did the 21st century version of shouting my good news from the rooftops: I shouted from Facebook and Twitter.

One of the most memorable responses came from a journalism colleague of mine. He jokingly asked if I was to become the Courant’s new Dustin Penner beat writer.

I’m not going to lie: It wasn’t not funny.

Before I moved here, I was already well aware of Penner, a professional hockey player with two Stanley Cup championships to his name. I also knew about his amateur hockey career, part of which saw him attend and play for Minot State University-Bottineau, now Dakota College at Bottineau (DCB).

Penner is celebrated at DCB, and that’s easily understood. When you walk into Thatcher Hall, you’ll find plaques celebrating many DCB sporting alumni as well as memorabilia from throughout Penner’s National Hockey League career.

The easiest-to-see part of the Penner shrine is a large four-photo collage located adjacent to the DCB gymnasium and the offices of three DCB head coaches.

Penner has appeared for not only DCB and then the University of Maine, but also for the NHL’s Anaheim Ducks, Edmonton Oilers, Los Angeles Kings and, most recently, the Washington Capitals.
Penner played 18 games for the Capitals in the 2013-14 season just before the 2014 trade deadline.

Before going to Washington, Penner won two Stanley Cups. One of those triumphs came in 2007 in Anahiem, the other in 2012 with Los Angeles.

Those were arguably the best days of his career, but they already seem long ago now. That’s what three passing years will do to memories, but those halcyon days seem even more distant than that.

His NHL career is likely over, but his career in hockey isn’t. Or, at least, it didn’t look like it would be.

Penner had recently been scheduled to appear on Canadian sports network TSN as part of its 2015 NHL trade deadline coverage.

That arrangement fell through, though, after Penner wrote a series of ill-advised posts on his Twitter account late last month.I would quote him on what he wrote on Twitter that got him into trouble, but it’s an unfunny joke about sexual assault and I genuinely can’t bring myself to write it, even wrapped in quotation marks.

At any rate, the Twitter post went viral, hitting other parts of the Internet. Sports blogs from Deadspin and Yahoo! Sports are two online publications that caught wind of the story.

All of this led me to the reminder of something that we all need to keep in mind. Namely, it’s that role models have shelf lives.

We as a society often put star athletes on a pedestal and make them out to be what they have become as something to aspire to.

That’s not something I take issue with because many athletes have fascinating backstories and have worked hard to get to where they are.

I never watched Penner play college hockey, but I have no reason to think that he wasn’t one of those hard-workers that pulled himself up and made himself successful. He went from playing junior college hockey to playing at a NCAA Division I power to winning two Stanley Cups. That is, in and of itself, a great story.

What’s happened with him in with the Twitter scandal, however, isn’t. I don’t know him personally, but I can’t look at what he wrote and not question his character as a 32-year-old person.

I can’t imagine I’m the only one who feels this way, either. As I’m writing this, I’m also wondering to myself whether anybody at DCB feels the same way that I do.

I can’t tell them what to do with the Penner memorabilia in Thatcher Hall. I know that.

Penner ended up being one of the most decorated former junior college athletes of all time - certainly the most decored former juco hockey player - and I’m not going to demand that DCB distances itself from him. Again, it’s not my place.

At this point, though, if the college opts to do that, it wouldn’t be the worst idea.