Hale-ing a Mother’s Advice

By Lucid Thomas

Published June 11, 2022 at 7:00 AM CDT

9/6/2017:

The 2001-2002 season was a rough one for the UND hockey team. It was the first time since 1994 that they played a losing season, and the first time in five years that they did not make the Western Collegiate Hockey Association’s final five tournament. Many factors played into this, such as a large number of rookies. However, there was also the rough patch for two of the players – brothers Ryan and David Hale.

Ryan and David were from Colorado Springs. They were good hockey players. When Ryan first arrived for the 1999-2000 season, he was on the team that won North Dakota’s seventh NCAA national championship. Brother David joined the team the following season, but only played eight games with his brother before Ryan suffered a shoulder injury and had to sit out the rest of the schedule, watching from the sidelines as David and the rest of the team lost in overtime to Boston in the championship.

Then a month later, David’s luck took an unfortunate turn when he developed a kidney condition that affected his play. But the biggest struggle for the brothers was the loss of their mother. Jennifer Enoch died on this date in 2001 after an eight-year struggle with breast cancer.

Encouraging words she wrote a year before addressed the family’s challenges:

Turn …

Adversity into adventure

Criticism into compassion

Trouble into tenacity

into positives

into opportunity

Slump into success

Sorrow into support

Mistakes into miracles

After their season of hardships, the boys took on leadership roles as the team rebounded with a winning record of 26 and 12.

Dakota Datebook written by Lucid Thomas