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November 3, 2025
NORTHEAST WISCONSIN – Five hundred sets of footballs and kickballs donated to more than 55 schools across Wisconsin’s northeast region – that’s the total impact of just the first year of Total Energy System and the Green Bay Blizzard’s new Power Up Playground initiative.
Even though his “job is to secure sponsorships,” Ryan Hopson, the Blizzard’s director of sales, said he prefers to use the word “partnership.”
“It has to be a two-way street, and it has to be more than throwing logos on things,” he said.
In “getting to know” Total Energy’s CEO and director of sales and marketing – Chris Stiles and Bob Forstrom, respectively – Hopson said “it was evident that a name all over the Resch Center wasn’t what was important to these guys.”
“It was making an impact in the community,” he said.
Forstrom said working with the Blizzard on the Power Up Playground initiative’s first year “turned out so much better than” both he and Hopson thought it would.
“The partnership had really nothing to do with advertising for either of us – it had to do with supporting kids and schools within our community… and it’s just growing for next year,” he said. “I’m super excited for year two [now] that we have a little bit of traction. I think we can be even better at it.”
For the initiative’s first year, Hopson said schools across the region entered for a chance to win a playground set of Blizzard-branded footballs and kickballs hand delivered by a member of the team, or himself, if a player wasn’t available.
“You could sign up, and if your school was randomly selected, based on points [the Blizzard] scored, you were awarded the playground set,” he said.
Next year, Forstrom said he and Hopson are working toward building the program up to award some playground sets “at games rather than waiting until after the season.”
“You randomly draw the schools [that win], and then it would be awesome to… invite [the] principal to bring some students with [for] an awesome experience [and] the kids to come down on the field,” he said.
For now, however, Hopson said they’re both reeling in the collective feeling of having successfully helped the communities both operations call home and are supported by in a meaningful way.
Total Energy Systems history, involvement
With its extensive history in the Green Bay area, Forstrom said initiatives and partnerships that support the community, like with the Blizzard, are paramount to the company.
“Total Energy Systems [is a] family-first organization,” he said. “We’ve been around in the Greater Green Bay area for about 125 years, [as] our parent company, Morley-Murphy Company, is [located] right in downtown Green Bay.”
Forstrom said Total Energy is a “distributor of power generation equipment – a.k.a. generators” – for customers across the Midwest region.
“We work throughout North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan supplying power generation equipment,” he said.
What makes Total Energy’s partnership with Blizzard even more appropriate, Forstrom said, is the company and its leadership team’s history with football.
“Total Energy Systems has a connection to football that goes deep with a bunch of us, myself included,” he said. “A lot of people in our leadership team either played college football, coached college football or have had ties in the past to the Blizzard, whether it be playing or coaching. We’ve had people who have been part of that as well.”
Forstrom – a former kicker for the Blizzard – said Total Energy’s ties with the sport, and more specifically with the team, make the partnership a true “full-circle” moment.
Especially when considering the goal of the Power Up Playground initiative, Stiles said Total Energy Systems was happy to help however it could.
“After finding out about the Blizzard’s efforts to give back to the community by encouraging young kids to be active and participate in sports, we wanted to see what we could do to help,” he said. “With some feedback from the teachers and administrators, we found a perfect way to align and give schools something they will use and appreciate.”
How it came to be…
After an introduction by a mutual friend, Ryan Napralla – manager of group sales for Blizzard Football and director of football operations at the Sports Emporium – Hopson said Stiles sent him to Forstrom to develop a program.
“The best part of my gig is coming up with unique ways to [connect people/organizations],” he said. “So, we played on the power system thing, and [thought], ‘What if we power up playgrounds?’”
Hopson said the Blizzard Football organization prides itself on its relationships with local schools – “whether that’s reading in classrooms, interacting at recess [or] getting kids out to a game.”
“So, we went to a lot of our principal partners and said, ‘What [would] make a difference?’” he said. “[They replied], ‘playground equipment.’”
Though opportunities to attend a Blizzard game are “awesome” for kids and families, Hopson said he and Forstrom aimed for the program’s impact to be more meaningful than just an experience.
“So, thanks to the [schools], we decided to Power Up Playgrounds and started delivering green dodgeballs and footballs,” he said.
The idea of encouraging play and supporting community schools, Forstrom said, made Total Energy’s “ears perk up.”
“It wasn’t [about the Blizzard] just trying to get some advertising dollars and put our name on a dasher board or in a program or something like that – that does not interest us,” he said. “It was much more than [that] – it was a partnership to support kids in the community.”
Hopson, who’s been with the Blizzard roughly since the team was purchased by Larry and Kathy Treankler a little more than a decade ago, said the couple’s acquisition of the organization has been the fuel behind its recent growth and community involvement.
“I honestly believe the Blizzard wouldn’t be around had it not been them who bought it,” he said. “Who we’ve become in the community is why there’s now 5,000 people at a Blizzard game instead of 1,700.”
Hopson said the players are equally passionate about getting involved with the community that fills the stands at each home game.
“[There’s] just something different about the Green Bay community and the way that this town embraces the players,” he said. “You’re part of our community for those six months you play for us, and you will feel that, whether you end your football career or you end up on a different roster.”
Looking ahead to next year, both Hopson and Forstrom said the Green Bay Blizzard and Total Energy Systems are excited to expand the Power Up Playground initiative to impact even more schools across the region.
“Supporting the community – that’s what excites us and has us continuing to do this,” Forstrom said. “Hopefully, we have many, many years of building on this and making it bigger and better as we continue to grow.”
