For Jason Mallum, wearing several different hats as the president of the Greenway Amateur Hockey Association is just part of the job.

“Even though you have certain responsibilities as board members, it takes a lot more than just what’s in your job description,” Mallum said in a recent interview. “Me being the president of the association, I don’t get my feelings hurt if somebody wants to do something that falls under my job description,” Mallum said. “If they want to take point on something, I’m all for it.”

Flexibility and creative thinking are the hallmarks for small towns across the country, especially when those small towns feverishly support their hockey players the way Greenway does.

Five straight state tournaments in the late 1960s, followed by a heroic third-place finish in the 2001 Class 2A tourney enrich Greenway’s hockey tradition, putting exclamation points on a caring culture.

“Whether it’s financial reasons or logistics, there are things that we can do to alleviate some of that (anxiety) for our parents,” Mallum said, pointing to an organized ride-sharing effort to enable every player to make it to the rink as an example.

“Our teams are really close-knit in the fact that the parents try to help the other parents in making sure their kids are able to make it to practices and games,” Mallum said, adding that finding rinks outside of famed Hodgins-Berado Ice Arena also presents challenges for the association and its players.

The carpools, team fundraising, venue and personal sacrifices have shown dividends felt far beyond Greenway’s 36 square miles.

Ninth-graders Ben Troumbly and Christian Miller have both verbally committed to St. Cloud State, following in the footsteps of Mike Antonovich, Gino Guyer, Andy Sertich and the other Division I players hailing from the Greenway program.

Maybe the most impressive statistic from a program standpoint is that 22 percent the Raiders’ Bantam A team has pledged their future services to college hockey.

See, there were only nine players on the Bantam A roster, with an emergency goalie added for the team’s run to third place at the 2017 state tournament after suffering a heartbreaking semifinal loss to 2015 and 2016 champion Orono.

“It’s a fantastic feather in the hat of Greenway hockey,” Mallum said. “It’s a good time to be proud of what our program’s accomplished.”