Minneapolis players were whooping it up in their locker room after a late-December victory over Totino-Grace, fully enjoying the spoils of a season that has been 27 years in the making.

“They are a fun group to be with,” Minneapolis coach Joe Dziedzic said with a grin after that game in Brooklyn Park. And that was months before reporters, photographers and TV cameras became regulars at practices and games, documenting one of the season’s great feel-good stories.

It was also long before Minneapolis beat Section 2A rival Delano 2-1 on Jan. 18 for one of the team’s signature wins of the regular season.

Of course, the most fun for Minneapolis was knocking off Delano in the game that mattered the most, a 3-1 triumph in the section final that sent a Minneapolis team to its first state tournament since Minneapolis Edison’s appearance in 1994.

Coincidentally, that’s when Dziedzic was a star forward for Edison and on his way to winning the state’s Mr. Hockey award.