When Mike Modano was 8 years old, he showed signs that he might become a superstar professional athlete. He was already performing in front of a packed stadium and national television audience in the United States. The sport wasn't hockey, however. It was football.

Mike was a natioanl semifinalist for the Punt, Pass and Kick competition. More than 1 million kids of all ages participated in the 1978 competition, and among 8-year-olds Mike was one of the final 26 in the country. He even competed at the Pontiac Silverdome, home of the Detroit Lions. At halftime of a Lions game, Mike and the other kids took their turns punting, throwing and kicking the ball of a tee for distance and accuracy. That was shown on national TV.

"It was something my dad got me into," says Mike, the Dallas Stars' high-scoring center. "We were both into football- we watched it a lot. It was fun doing it in the Silverdome, doing it at halftime of the game."

Fortunately for Troy Aikman, Mike didn't pursue a career on the gridiron. If he had, maybe he would be the Dallas Cowboys' quarterback instead of Aikman. Mike went with hockey, leaving room for both superstar athletes in Dallas.

Of course, there is a reason he got into hockey in the first place.

"When Mike was in grade school he was kind of a hyper kid, so the teacher was wondering whaat we could get him into to calm him down," says his dad, Mike Sr. "A friend of mine had a son that played hockey and he said, 'Why don't you get him into hockey?' So that's how it started."

Mike began ina house league at the rink near his suburban Detroit home. From there he went to a travel team and other sports started taking a back seat. Although he played varsity tennis as a freshman at Livonia Franklin High School, hockey was Mike's focus. It could have led to a scholarship at a college in the United States, which was what his parents had hoped for, but Mike's goal was to play major junior hockey in Canada. He figured if he didn't make in the NHL, he could play college hockey in Canada after juniors (players are ineligable for U.S. college hockey if they play junior hockey in Canada).

The three Canadian junior leagues have drafts just like the NHL, and Mike expected to get drafted into the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League to play as a 16-year-old. "But the night before the draft, the team that was going to draft me called and said it had decided on a different player," he remembers. "The Ontario Hockey League draft was the same day, so they were all preparing for me to go to Quebec. About four or five days later, I got a call from Rick Wilson who asked about me coming out to play for Prince Albert (of the Western Hockey League). We happened to have a midget tournament in Calgary the same year, so there were some guys there who had scouted me."

So Mike left Detroit for Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, which is a long way from home. Although there were only a handful of Americans playing in the WHL at the time, he wasn't nervous... until he boarded the plane.

"Up until that time, I was pretty much looking forward to going," he says. "As soon as they closed the door to the plane, I was sitting there thinking, I don't know what to expect or what to think."

Mike was quickly accepted in Prince Albert and he easily settled into life there. The years staying with other families- known as billeting- while playing travel hockey made it easier to stay with a local family in Prince Albert.

"We thought it would be kind of tough for him," says Mike Sr. "But he took it all in stride because from the time he played hockey, during the summer we would take him to hockey camps for a week and they would billet the kids, and when he went away for tournaments they'd billet the kids. So when he went to Prince Albert, it was nothing to it. He went in with a family, and the high school and the rink were right next to each other, so when he'd finish with school he'd go right over to the rink. It really worked out great."

Miek finsished his last two years of high school in Orince Albert, then became just the second American ever drafted No. 1 overall in the NHL Entry Draft. Mike says he didn't know anything about the draft process until he returned from the World Junior Championship tournament and saw that he and Trevor Linden (now captain of the Vancouver Canucks) were rated as the top two players eligible for the 1988 Entry Draft. Then the attention started coming. When he was picked first by the Minnesota North Stars, it was one of his greatest hockey thrills.

"To be a part of history like that and to be American, to be in Montreal and be in the Forum (the old home of the Canadiens), witht he kind of tradition they have up there about ockey, it was exciting," he says.

That was the day his mother finally believed Mike would make a career out of his favorite sport.

"When he finally got drafted I said, 'OK, now you can say I am an NHL player.' I didn't think he would be," says Karen Modano about her youngest hild (Mike has two older sisters). "His dad would aay, 'I know he's got it in him, it's just whether his heart's in it. He's got the talent.'"

Miek has made the most of that talent in the NHL. He first played with the North Stars during the 1989 playoffs and has been witht he team ever since- including the team's move to Dallas in 1993. At 6'3", 200 pounds, he's big and speedy. He scored 50 goals three years ago and has averaged nore than a point per game in his career. An outstanding two-way player, he finished second in the league in plus-minus in 1996-97. Mike also helped Team USA win the World Cup of Hockey last sumemr, and he'll be a leader for the U.S. squad at the Winter Olympics next February in Nagano, Japan.

The hyper kid is now exciting hockey fans all over the world.

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