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SPEAKER 1: Tomorrow is the 10th annual Hockey Day Minnesota, and it's fitting that Duluth is hosting the event, which features high profile high school hockey games played outdoors. It turns out Duluth is home to one of North America's last all-outdoor youth hockey leagues that has its weather-related challenges. But as our reporter Dan Crocker discovered, the kids wouldn't have it any other way.

DAN CROCKER: Wednesday night at Duluth's Portman Park the sign at a nearby bank read 14 degrees.

SPEAKER 2: 1, 2, 3.

ALL: PORTMAN

DAN CROCKER: But that didn't faze Portman's 8 and 9-year-old Mites as they took the ice against a team from Glen Avon, another neighborhood park just three miles away. As the kids zoom around the ice, parents perch atop snow-piled high alongside the boards. Nicki Siebert clutches two hand warmers.

NICKI SIEBERT: They're for my son who's the goalie. His hands are cold, so I'm going to give them to him at half time.

DAN CROCKER: But Siebert says despite the numbing temperatures, her son Ben wouldn't have it any other way. So she and other parents learned to dress for it.

NICKI SIEBERT: You don't go anywhere without snow pants, long underwear, warm gloves. We all have invested in really good warm outside gear.

DAN CROCKER: As youth hockey in Minnesota moves increasingly to cozy, but expensive indoor arenas, Duluth stands out. The city has seven independent youth hockey organizations that play at their own volunteer run neighborhood rinks.

BRETT KLOSOWSKI: We are set up in a very different way than any other organization in our state and possibly even in our country from what I've seen traveling.

DAN CROCKER: Brett Klosowski is President of the Duluth Amateur Hockey Association and a full time hockey referee who travels the country officiating college games. He says Duluth is the only city he knows of with neighborhood run teams that consistently schedule games outside.

BRETT KLOSOWSKI: You go down to Twin Cities metro there's outdoor rinks, but they're just kept up by the cities and the various suburbs and city governments, and then the kids can go skate if they want.

DAN CROCKER: But the Youth Hockey Associations, he says, don't have outdoor programs. Edina Hockey Association President Mike DeVoe says the weather is just too unpredictable, plus many kids now play year round.

MIKE DEVOE: So they're doing a lot of skating inside and they kind of get programmed. They're not as used to the outdoor skating, they're more used to indoor skating.

DAN CROCKER: But in Duluth, for kids to play outside requires a lot of work from their parents. Every night it drops below freezing, parent volunteers crank open a giant water hose and flood the rinks at Portman Park. They often stay well past midnight. Tony Maki is the volunteer rink director.

TONY MAKI: I think I have pictures as a kid of here in 1978.

DAN CROCKER: Back then, MaKI was just three years old. His parents flooded the rink, ran fundraisers, drove the Zamboni, sold concessions all so he could play hockey.

TONY MAKI: And so I figure I have to do this now because I owe it to the rest of the people that did this all for me when I was growing up, and I didn't realize how much work it was.

DAN CROCKER: Playing outside also makes hockey more affordable. Indoor ice time in Duluth costs around $200 an hour. Outdoor hockey, when parents maintain the rinks and the city pays for water and lights, is largely free. But that's not to say there aren't challenges playing outdoors. Coach Quentin Roth describes a game at Portman last week that started in pouring rain and finished in snow.

QUENTIN ROTH: The kids had fun. They went from not being able to skate and pass the puck because of the slush to not being able to pass the puck because they couldn't see the puck because there was so much snow on the rink.

DAN CROCKER: But he says teams have lost a lot of practice time this year because of the warm weather and the previous two years when it was often too cold to skate. Still after finishing up his game, eight-year-old Wyatt Zappa says there's no place he'd rather be than Portland Park.

WYAT ZAPPA: If I miss a game, I literally start crying.

DAN CROCKER: And he says he'd much rather play outside even if he can't really explain why.

WYAT ZAPPA: I don't know why. It's just always came to me that it's better playing outside than inside.

DAN CROCKER: And with that, he turns and skates a few laps around the rink not quite ready yet to go inside the warming house. Dan Crocker, Minnesota Public Radio News, Duluth.