INTERNATIONAL FALLS, MINN. - The beginning notes of the Canadian national anthem drift up to the vaulted wooden ceilings of Bronco Arena before Falls High hosts its girls hockey games.

A team visiting this town — nicknamed the “Icebox of the Nation” on Minnesota’s northern border — might wonder why this American high school feels compelled to play “O Canada” before puck drop.

The answer? “That’s me,” Addison Brown said. “That’s us.”

Brown and teammate Lexi Wood are the last to skate onto the ice before each period, after their traditional chest-bump in the tunnel, and they’re the latest in a trickle of Canadian students to commit to many long-distance, border-crossing journeys to play for this Minnesota high school team.

Brown and Wood attend Rainy River High School, 60 miles northwest of International Falls in Ontario. They get up well before dawn and return home at all hours of the night to get to practices and games. The girls drive these miles — temperatures and time of night and U.S.-Canada political jousting be darned — to be Falls High Broncos with their teammates.

“[Teammate] Sidney Lindahl Slatinski, she stands next to me [during the anthem]. She’s trying to learn the words, said Brown, adding with a laugh: “She’s been trying to learn for the last three years.”

This cross-border co-op was born out of both opportunity and necessity.

Before the co-op formed in 2018, International Falls coaches worried that “there’ll be no more girls hockey here at International Falls,” athletic director Timm Ringhofer said, “because we don’t have enough girls coming out.”

Rainy River High in Ontario is a small school and can’t field its own team. Since the co-op was created, typically two or three girls each season have committed to being Broncos.

This setup doesn’t come without sacrifice. Brown and Wood spend 75 minutes on the cold roads just to get to the rink. From there, the Broncos — Minnesota’s most geographically-isolated high school hockey team — often log many more miles getting to away games.

Only occasionally does a win follow all that time on the road. Two years ago, the Broncos stopped a 60-game losing streak. They haven’t had more than three victories in a season since the start of the decade and are currently 2-16.

“Sometimes after a rough game, [you think], ‘What am I doing?’ ” Brown said. “It gets to be tiring. It takes a toll on you for sure.

“It boils down to the love of the sport. I think that’s what keeps me coming, too. You have to like hockey, right? I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t like hockey.”

A border and a battle

The snow was blowing nearly sideways on this mid-December afternoon, whipping across the Rainy River that carves a divide between Minnesota and Ontario.

A hush fell over the girls tucked into the Falls school bus when it came to a halt between signs that read “Stop” and, in French, “Arret.” They need to be businesslike at the border.

Teammates leaned close to compare passport photos in the light that trickled through frosty windows as first-year head coach Bryan Kershaw made his way up the aisle, collecting the documents necessary for the Broncos to cross into Canada. Brown and Wood, regulars here, didn’t partake in this half-hour process and met the team at the rink.

An incoming storm had led to school being let out an hour early. Any other road game would have likely been called off, but this Dec. 18 game was against their closest neighbor and top rival: Fort Frances High in Ontario, just around the bend of the Rainy.

A short road trip is a rarity for the Broncos. International Falls has the farthest distance to travel to reach the closest school with a Minnesota State High School League team. It’s more than 100 miles west to Warroad, south to Hibbing or southwest to Bemidji.

Fort Frances, though, is just a 4-mile drive away, and familiarity, especially in hockey, can breed contempt.

“I’m more excited for this game than Christmas,” Brown told her teammates in the locker room between their junior varsity and varsity games. Most of the 25 girls in the Broncos program play in both games to fill the lines.

Brown, age 17 and in her third season as a Broncos forward, is a self-described “country kid” with 200 head of cattle back in Stratton, Ontario. The Browns have seven horses now, too.

“It was my dad’s fault,” Brown said. “He told me no more after six, and then the seventh one was a good deal.”

Hockey was her dad’s doing, too — a fanatic, Brown said. It stuck, and when Brown made the switch from boys club hockey to join the Broncos, she said she was quiet around a new group of girls. And “I’m not a quiet person,” she insisted.

But over time, “you get into the atmosphere,” she said. “You feel like a Bronco.”

Wood, 15 and a defender, is the youngest of four hockey-playing siblings. Her older brothers and sister all played for Lake of the Woods boys teams, but Wood wanted to try girls hockey, a learning experience in style of play. Early on, she had a streak of seven straight games with a body-checking penalty, Kershaw said.

“They have to adapt to a different style of hockey that is done here,” the coach said.

Adapting gave them a place to play, a girls team to call their own. And their new team came with a rivalry, one that was familiar to Brown from her days coming up in boys youth hockey.

“I told my dad I’d quit hockey before I played for Fort Frances,” Brown said. “You can put that on the record.”

“It’s always exciting to see how Addie reacts during those border battles,” senior Payten Rousseau said. “She’s in the middle of everything, no matter what.”

Passing the baton

The Broncos were down in the second period of their eventual 16-1 loss to Fort Frances when Brown got sent to the box for a minor penalty. A familiar face crowded up against the glass where Brown was trapped for two minutes.

Tirzah Carradice didn’t have the water that Brown asked for, but the blue raspberry slushy from the concession stand she passed through the gap in the glass would do.

A college freshman now, Carradice was the carpool captain last year on the drive from Rainy River High School to International Falls — plus International Falls’ leading scorer with nine goals.

“It was rough tonight. It was not the best roads,” Carradice said of the drive she remembers well. She sat in the stands next to a former teammate, Lola Wade, both back from college on holiday break. “But I wanted to watch Addie play.”

Once Carradice got her license in high school, she started campaigning for Brown, a year younger, to become a Bronco and join her. The school was small enough that the pair knew each other, but not well.

“I’ll drive you,” Carradice said. “Let’s do it.”

Somewhere on the 60 miles of back roads between Rainy River High and International Falls, “we became literally best friends,” Carradice said. Brown quickly took over DJ duties. “I tried to reclaim my aux,” Carradice said. “It never worked.”

They talked about nothing, and about everything. They bonded over the adjustments of switching from boys to girls hockey. They would stop at Dairy Queen after practice — always on the Canadian side, so Carradice could get Canadian gravy with her chicken strips.

Carradice now plays on Lake Superior State’s team in Michigan and likes to livestream Falls games on her iPad in her dorm.

This season, it’s Brown in the driver’s seat and Wood riding shotgun.

“It was a little like … ‘I don’t know any of these girls,’ ” Wood said of her arrival at the Falls. “And I had just come from knowing all the boys that I had played with for years. … Just having Addie here helped.”

The pair had to meet in Stratton at 4:50 a.m. on a recent morning to make the drive east to arrive in International Falls in time to board the team bus. Sometimes Wood will sleep and sometimes a conversation will spark on the predawn drive. Brown always stays on auxiliary.

“Today was a country day,” Brown said before a December practice. “Lexi doesn’t complain.”

Late-night drives can turn into early morning arrivals back home, with Wood and Brown sometimes getting back after 1 a.m.

“Bryan always tells me, ‘We really feel for you,’ ” Brown said. “The only person who can actually feel for me is Lexi."

Broncos for life

Brown plans to continue playing hockey in college. Kershaw calls her “a good hockey player, but an even better person.”

Against Fort Frances, she scored the Falls’ only goal shortly after the Broncos escaped the penalty kill. That was the first time this senior class has scored against the Muskies, Kershaw reminded the group during intermission.

Losses aside, Brown sees big benefits in playing hockey in Minnesota.

“I think the exposure rate is much better in America,” she said of her college prospects. “I don’t think I would have got the exposure that I did if I didn’t come play in America.”

Sometimes, the benefits and bright spots are enough. Other times, silver linings can’t take the edge off their competitive frustration.

Wood and Brown don’t know whether there’s another Rainy River girl coming up to accept the baton. Wood won’t have her driver’s license at the start of the next season. Those 60 miles suddenly feel farther.

For now, though, those miles are worth it. These Broncos have made lifelong friends and they’re learning the style of the girls game on the south side of the border. There are some contrasting characteristics, though, that a love of hockey can’t resolve.

“Apparently,” Brown said, “I have an accent.”

. . .

Strib Varsity: Hockey on the border

Watch: Learn about the special border-battle in boys hockey in International Falls by watching this Strib Varsity video from Alicia Tipcke.