Finland | USA Exchange

It all started in 1998...

That year, the Rinta-Panttila family had moved from Helsinki, Finland to Philadelphia and Antti Rinta-Panttila played his first season for the Haverford Hawks PeeWee B team.

At Christmas break, the Rinta-Panttila family hosted one of Antti’s Finnish hockey friends for the holiday week. The boys, along with several other Haverford Hawks players, played in a local school tournament. While watching the tournament, Hawks’ parents John Wert and Pertti Rinta-Panttila wondered what it would be like to invite Antti’s entire team, the Viikingit Hockey Club of Helsinki, to the U.S. for the Hawks’ annual end-of-season tournament.

25 years later it is still going strong!

In 2024, we celebrated our 25th anniversary of the Finland | USA Exchange. The Viikingit team came to Havertown not only for a 3-day hockey tournament, but also for fun activities like visits to downtown Philadelphia and New York City, a Flyers game (even getting to skate on the ice before the game), bowling, some even went to school with our Hawks players, lots of eating and of course, MORE HOCKEY!!

Host families from the Haverford Hawks have 2-3 Viikingit players stay with them during their time here. These young hockey players learn not only about how Finland plays hockey but they learn about their culture and the Viikingit players learn about how we do hockey in Delco and our culture, like Wawa and cheesesteaks.