by: Jeremy Pike, minotauroshockey.com
If you’ve ever enjoyed video highlights of a Minot Minotauros home game or looking at photos of the game’s action, you may not know it, but you’re enjoying the hard work of Patty and Shawn Bockoven. The Bockovens moved to Minot in 2014 to support their daughter in college, and hockey was already a part of their life. They were determined to keep it that way.
“We lived in California and we had some exchange students staying with us,” Patty said. “We took them down to Stockton to see a hockey game, and I fell in love with hockey. So I said if we move somewhere, I was going to buy season tickets.”
The Bockovens kept that promise upon moving to Minot. From there, they heard about the billet program and became a billet family, hosting somewhere around 30 players so far. The billet program is also what eventually led to Patty helping out with photography.
“I’ve always liked doing photography, but I started doing it when we had our first billet son,” Patty said. “I put a photo album together for him, and so I started taking pictures because I couldn’t find enough pictures of what I wanted for in the book. So I just started when I had a couple of other billet sons, and then I’d start taking pictures, I had a few other parents that were asking me to take pictures. So I take some more and I just published them on my own personal website, and the only other photographer decided not to do it. So Ken asked me if I could just start posting the pictures on Tank’s page.”
Hockey is such an international sport, and it’s hard for parents halfway across the world to see their sons in action. It’s part of why Patty does what she does with the photography. It’s also why Shawn took his years of experience around television and brought it to bear behind the camera at Tauros home games.
“I’m a broadcast engineer, I’ve been doing it for about 35 years,” Shawn said. “For me, I know what it’s like to have an elite athlete 1400 miles away, let alone half a world away. So I’m pretty proud of the work I do. I kind of got voluntold by my wife to go do it, and I’ve been doing it probably seven years now.”
“Patty and Shawn are a huge part of our media team,” said Minotauros Director of Operations Ken Oda. He continued, “most of the graphics work Sebastian [Machado], Coby [Brault], Grace [Sandy], and I do starts with having quality images from Patty. And our home broadcast, which I believe is the best in the league, wouldn’t be possible without Shawn’s talents running our six camera replay and switching system.”
The Bockovens fell in love with the sport of hockey, so it only makes sense to bring their talents to bear in helping the Tauros. However, it’s their lives as parents that truly motivates what they do and how they do it.
“We do this because we know what it was like when we were living in California and our daughter was here in North Dakota going to Minot State playing soccer, we do it for the parents that are not here because they can’t be with their kids,” Patty said. “So I know personally, how as many pictures as you can find or video, whatever else you that you can find of your kids, that helps bring them closer. So it’s for everybody, but it’s mostly for those parents that can’t be here. Just to have them feel a little bit closer to their kids… So it’s for the parents that can’t be there as why we do what we do.”
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the young men on the ice are human beings with families away from the ice. Yet it’s that very thing that motivates the Bockovens to work hard during and after games. You may not have even known who the Bockovens were, and that’s okay. They aren’t doing it for fame and glory.
They’re just parents who have experienced how hard it can be to follow a child far away. They want every parent of every player who comes through Minot to simply be able to see their son play the sport he loves. The rest of us just get to enjoy the fruit of that labor of love, and we thank the Bockovens for their hard work and dedication.