Matt Tjaden kept his excitement in check when Lewis-Palmer hockey coach Scott Bradley first bragged to him about the annual Palmer Lake Outdoor Classic.

“I grew up in Minnesota. We played on ponds. We have pond tourneys up there. So I was like, ‘Oh we’ll see what to expect with how good they can make it. But this blows anything out of the water I’ve ever seen in Minnesota that I’ve been a part of,’” he said.

Hockey is special for Tjaden who jokingly said he “sat on the bench” during his playing days in Minnesota. Even so, he has three kids who play, and the fact that Colorado had more to offer than his former home of Texas in terms of high school hockey influenced his decision to move to the area in 2023.

His son plays goalie for the Rangers and much like many parents, he found a way to support Lewis-Palmer and the community at large. Tjaden designed the jerseys that all four teams wore.

Like his days of playing pond hockey were memorable, Tjaden wants the same for his son and all the athletes.

“I always want to be different. I don’t just want to throw something together that is what they want, I want to find something meaningful and deep and impactful and they can look at it 10 years from now and be like, ‘that’s us,’” he said. “Palmer Lake is super easy to look at that beautiful lake and the mountains are behind and they have a star that stands super bright, so I can use that in the design.”

Last year’s design featured the mountains and the Palmer Lake star. For this year, Tjaden took inspiration from the last two places he’s lived: the scenery around Palmer Lake in Colorado and the iconic star Jersey from the NHL’s Dallas Stars.

“The star jersey has always been one of the big popular ones and I didn’t want to copy it and so we flipped it,” he said. “It has the star … if you cut up the jersey and open it all the way up you’d see the star from looking down on it. Then there’s an actual picture of Palmer Lake from history books I looked up and found. That’s sitting in the bottom part of the star so you can still see Palmer Lake.”

Each team received jerseys in their school colors, commemorating the event.

Tjaden is a creative soul. He started his own business based on the names of his children, called C&L, or Cee and Elle, Sports. A longtime soccer and hockey coach himself, Tjaden created soccer and hockey-specific notebooks and other coaching tools that he sells. For the jerseys, he works with X Jerseys.

He designed Lewis-Palmer’s regular-season and warmups as well. For the Outdoor Classic Jerseys, Tjaden estimates each one is worth between $50-$70. But the pride he has in creating them and the memories he hopes they invoke are invaluable. He loves seeing his work shared on social media or seeing a player wear a jersey he designed.

“My boss always tells me, ‘Don’t worry about it, doesn’t really matter as long as the customer is happy,’ there’s a lot of pride for me in seeing stuff that I made, and I’ve seen people share them on (social media), but some of the bigger Instagram ones that will pop up, they don’t say who designed it, but X Jerseys made so-and-so jersey and it’s like, ‘ that was me,’” he said. “That’s what makes it all worth it more to me than getting a paycheck for the design is I have somebody that really, truly enjoys what they have.”