St. Cloud State hockey team stranded in blizzard at county jail hours after winning Penrose Cup

ST. JAMES, Minn. (FOX 9) - The St. Cloud State University Men’s Hockey Team went from raising the Penrose Cup Saturday night to spending Sunday in jail.

After clinching the NCHC regular season title in Omaha, Nebraska Saturday, the team boarded its bus home Sunday morning, hoping to sneak through the blizzard conditions that enveloped the region.

They made it all the way to St. James, Minn. when things went awry.

A series of tweets from Assistant Coach Mike Gibbons described the series of events that followed.

First, the team’s bus became stranded between two impassable snow drifts around 3:30 p.m. Sunday. It wasn’t until about 4:30 p.m. that a plow arrived to remove one of the drifts.

The team then headed toward St. James, which was the nearest town. There, they rested at the Watonwan County Jail until conditions improved.

There, members of the team posed for a picture with the Watonwan County Sheriff and the recently-awarded Penrose Cup.

As the hours went on, the team even dined on some jail food for dinner.

“Boys enjoying county jail food. Not making this up,” wrote Gibbons in a tweet around 6 p.m.

Just after 6 p.m., Gibbons updated his Twitter feed with a message announcing that Watonwan County had closed its county roads.

The team's bus was back on the move as of 7 p.m. Sunday night. 

Be sure to watch FOX 9 Sports Now Sunday night to hear from Coach Gibbons and the St. Cloud State team about their misadventures.