Glen Korstrom
Northern News Services

INUVIK (Apr 30/99) - When Stanley "Woody" Kasook was 10 years old, his peewee hockey team took a trip to Edmonton to see the Oilers, sponsored by Inuvik's old RDR sports store.

"I went to the dressing room for a while, then back out to see them practise," says Kasook, who is now 25.

"A bunch of them were practising and (Gretzky) came over and just threw the stick over. I caught it and brought it home. I quit hockey after that."

But despite playing hockey and even recently losing interest in the NHL because he says he "grew up," he still kept the sacred white Titan hockey stick without ever shooting a puck with it or using it as anything but a decoration and a memento of January 1984.

With Gretzky newly- retired, Kasook decided to make a symbolic act and part with the stick by selling it to his sister for less than he might get on the open market.

"I got it for pennies considering what it's worth," says a beaming Christine Kasook as she drapes the stick across her legs with daughters Kaylee and Sarah next to her.

The stick is not signed but has the initials WG in pen at the crux of the blade and the shaft. It is also date stamped January 1984.

Christine says she has long been an Oilers fan and remembers when the team won the Stanley Cup in Edmonton one year, when she was in the city visiting relatives.

Though soon after she bought the hockey stick, she says someone offered her $5,000 to buy it. She turned him down and now says that the stick is not for sale.

She plans to put it on her wall above a photo of her grandparents Ruby and Stringer Kasook, partly because her grandfather was such a Gretzky fan.