ROCKVILLE, Md. — If you don't know high school hockey, just know Georgetown Prep vs. Landon High School is what a rivalry looks like.
"I think it's probably one of the biggest rivalries in the DMV," said Landon's Reid Pehrkon.
It's a game with its fair share of physicality. Plenty of shoulder checks.
"I'd say one of the best rivalries in high school sports," said Prep's Dillon Moneypenny.
But Friday night, Dillon and Reid let their guard down to lead their teams in a different kind of check.
"Obviously brought up some feelings just from the past," Pehrkon said after the game.
Less than two years ago, their mutual friend and fellow hockey player Hayden Thorson died by suicide. Hayden's father says he and his wife kept getting the same question from Hayden's friends.
"Who's going to do what Hayden did for us now that Hayden is gone?" Rob Thorsen said his son's friends.
"And it led us down a path where we realized the truth about who Hayden was and what he did in his life...he was a guy who put his hands on people's shoulders," and checked on them, Thorsen said of his late son.
Hayden's parents created a foundation in Hayden's name and started a new kind of shoulder check in his honor. One where players put their hands on each others shoulders to check in on them.
"We want to make kindness a contact sport. And we came up with our line, reach out, check in, make contact," said Thorsen.
Friday, Moneypenny and Pehrkon brought Hayden's style of a shoulder check to the ice before the game in a circle of the two rival teams, and at a meeting with both schools the night before where they spoke to fellow students about the value of checking on each other.
"I feel like a lot of teenagers today are kind of, you know, scared to talk to people or ask for help or to really, like, come out about their feelings because they're kind of worried about the reaction that they're going to get," said Moneypenny.
"You never know what they're going through," Pehrkon said. "Even if you think everything's all right, you really don't know someone's head."
"Dylan and Reid bringing these programs forward and bringing our program forward and being vulnerable in front of those people that are their peers is the most amazing proof point of what this is like," said Thorsen of his son's friends. "I'm so proud of them."
"Something that's greater than the rivalry and really, you know, just to be there for each other," said Moneypenny.
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