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TheHockeyDJ
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Rochester

Post by TheHockeyDJ » Tue May 26, 2015 3:43 pm

What happened to Rochester? Seems odd a city which such a large population would have such a long drought. Would be nice to see a team from there provide consistent competition in 1AA.
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SouthernMinnFan
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Post by SouthernMinnFan » Tue May 26, 2015 4:45 pm

One A team happened. Rochester use to play with two A teams for the town, South and North. AFter Bantams these funneled into three public school teams and one private school. Rochester Lourdes would typically have the best team, and depending on the year the other schools would compete for 1aa titles, or at least be relevant. Once "someone" came up with the brilliant idea to go down to one team, there were less A players available to pick from, each school would get a couple, and it wasn't enough to maintain teams that were skilled for all four programs, and since then Rochester hockey has been hurting. This years bantam team is finally a good group, since the program has gone AA and A. More kids have been playing A hockey at least, and you should start to see the programs get a little bit better. Rochester also lost numbers when there were less A spots open, that has a trickle down affect where kids don't want to play b and b2 hockey, and decide to play other sports.

O-townClown
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Post by O-townClown » Tue May 26, 2015 8:06 pm

Just a few years ago Century finished 3rd in AA.

I think. Pretty sure.
Be kind. Rewind.

boomerang
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Post by boomerang » Tue May 26, 2015 8:36 pm

Century is probably not even going to have enough for a JV team 2015-16. About half of their roster were seniors this year.

I agree it seems odd that with all that Mayo money and their population that they don't have higher numbers/better teams. Wierd.

goldy313
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Post by goldy313 » Tue May 26, 2015 9:19 pm

boomerang wrote:Century is probably not even going to have enough for a JV team 2015-16. About half of their roster were seniors this year.

I agree it seems odd that with all that Mayo money and their population that they don't have higher numbers/better teams. Wierd.
Mayo Clinic families have never been the majority of hockey families in Rochester, ever. Of the two large employers in town the hockey families largely came from IBM, IBM is now a shell of its former self in Rochester with maybe 20% of the workforce it once employed, probably less, no one really knows anymore. Also Mayo employs a lot of people without question but the majority of those jobs aren't high paying jobs, certainly not high paying enough to keep up with the rising costs of hockey for a young family. The higher end income earners at Mayo have generally gravitated towards soccer, tennis, or swimming and still do.
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The demographics in Rochester have changed as well, when Century opened in 1997 the free/reduced lunch rate in the district was around 10%, it's over 33% now and growing, the Somali population has exploded and the African-American population has grown by leaps and bounds as well. Also, enrollment hasn't kept up with the population. In 1977 John Marshall won the state hockey tournament, JM was a top 10 school in terms of enrollment then with around 1800 kids in grades 10-12, Mayo was a little bit larger. That was 3600 kids in the 2 schools with an average of 1200 per class, today Rochester has 3 public high schools with an enrollment of about 4400 in grades 9-12, 1100 per class. Rochester has about doubled in size but the public high school population hasn't really even grown.

I think the youth hockey board over the years has done some shortsighted things that have hurt or at least not let hockey grow as well but the demise of IBM has been the biggest factor in my opinion. Basketball and wrestling are growing, sports that require not only less money but less travel, something hockey seemed to lose sight of as hockey is the only youth sport where travel is required.

I don't think Century will survive as a stand alone hockey program for another 5 years, boundary changes could mitigate that to some extent but it seems only Mayo has decent numbers year after year, even Lourdes numbers, though never great, seem to be falling off. John Marshall has been living off the C programs for over a decade and those teams are drying up. Losing doesn't help things and the Rochester schools seem to be falling even farther behind Lakeville and now Farmington, the last section title game appearance for Century was in 2009, John Marshall in 2005, and Mayo in 2000.

MNHockeyFan
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Post by MNHockeyFan » Tue May 26, 2015 11:27 pm

Sad situation, but a very informative post, goldy313. I always thought of Rochester as brimming with young, upper-middle class families, but apparently today not so much. Yet another example of why successful hockey programs today are so closely tied to demographics.

nahc
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Post by nahc » Wed May 27, 2015 10:07 am

Goldy, great post..........!

elliott70
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Post by elliott70 » Wed May 27, 2015 11:24 am

O-townClown wrote:Just a few years ago Century finished 3rd in AA.

I think. Pretty sure.
2007

East Side Pioneer Guy
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Post by East Side Pioneer Guy » Sun Jun 07, 2015 8:10 am

Very interesting Goldy. I have a few follow up questions.

Typically when a district adds a high school, it's where the new housing is, and new housing means young families and that's good for your hockey program. Lakeville is an exception, but generally the new school has better hockey (and football) programs. Given that, I'd expected Century to still be doing better than JM and Mayo, even though Century is not really a new comer any more.

So what are the demographics more specifically for each of the 3 public high school? Free/reduced lunch is a good and handy measure for this.

Another factor can be city/suburban split. Rochester is certainly a good sized city, but not near MPLS/St. Paul. How does the city/suburban split play out in Rochester. For good or for ill, if 3M transfers a mid level executive to it's Maplewood campus, that family will more likely end up in Woodbury, Afton, or somewhere like that than in Saint Paul. How would something like that play out in Rochester? Are the more well off families more likely to settle in Rochester proper or outside the city?

greenway1969
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Post by greenway1969 » Sun Jun 07, 2015 8:37 am

Rochester schools will never be competitive again. Their decision to go to one A bantam team ensures the demise of the programs. North St. Paul is another school that combined its youth program and will no longer be relevant either. The former coach destroyed that program. Demographics are changing at North, but if someone had taken charge of the youth program it could have survived. The two examples of communities that put in a great amount of effort to revive their youth programs (Greenway and St. Louis Park) are seeing the benefits of that now. Once you give up on the youth programs, you've sealed your fate.

TheSiouxSuck
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Post by TheSiouxSuck » Mon Jun 08, 2015 3:19 pm

greenway1969 wrote:Rochester schools will never be competitive again. Their decision to go to one A bantam team ensures the demise of the programs. North St. Paul is another school that combined its youth program and will no longer be relevant either. The former coach destroyed that program. Demographics are changing at North, but if someone had taken charge of the youth program it could have survived. The two examples of communities that put in a great amount of effort to revive their youth programs (Greenway and St. Louis Park) are seeing the benefits of that now. Once you give up on the youth programs, you've sealed your fate.
Rochester has a AA and a Bantam A team. I cant speak for whether or not this is still the case, but when I coached there the 16 of the Bantam Aged players had moved up to the various high schools. Assuming those that most who moved up were among the most talented, thats basically your Bantam AA team (players 1-15) so now your Bantam AA team will be filled with (16-32) which would have probably have been quite a strong A team and so on down the line.

goldy313
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Post by goldy313 » Sat Jun 13, 2015 4:00 pm

East Side Pioneer Guy wrote:Very interesting Goldy. I have a few follow up questions.

Typically when a district adds a high school, it's where the new housing is, and new housing means young families and that's good for your hockey program. Lakeville is an exception, but generally the new school has better hockey (and football) programs. Given that, I'd expected Century to still be doing better than JM and Mayo, even though Century is not really a new comer any more.

So what are the demographics more specifically for each of the 3 public high school? Free/reduced lunch is a good and handy measure for this.

Another factor can be city/suburban split. Rochester is certainly a good sized city, but not near MPLS/St. Paul. How does the city/suburban split play out in Rochester. For good or for ill, if 3M transfers a mid level executive to it's Maplewood campus, that family will more likely end up in Woodbury, Afton, or somewhere like that than in Saint Paul. How would something like that play out in Rochester? Are the more well off families more likely to settle in Rochester proper or outside the city?
There is some new housing where Century was built, not much though and in fact the East side of Rochester hasn't been developed much since the 1960's. There are some new (last 5 years) high end housing areas and some "retirement" type housing out there though. By and large the city has grown to the Northwest. Initially the newer Northwest developments went to Century which made no sense, but was a political decision, since then that area moved to John Marshall. Most of Century's current boundary probably closely resembles Tartan's; homes built from 1950-1970.

The Free/Reduced lunch rates for each school as of 2013-2014 year from the MDoE:
Century - 24%, John Marshall - 35%, Mayo - 31%
the f/r rate for each schools middle school:
Kellogg - 35%, John Adams - 45%, Willow Creek - 46%

Rochester doesn't really have a city/suburban split, it's hard to explain. Rochester has grown to the West where it abuts Byron, Byron is growing and so is the next town to the West, Kasson. I think it was the Census Department that earlier this year put out data showing in the 9 counties that make up Southeast Minnesota only Rochester, Byron, and Kasson had gained any population since 2010. On a map the Rochester school district has a lot of land to the Northeast of the city, almost 20 miles as the crow flies, in all other directions it already buts up against the surrounding school districts making growth hard. The Mayo physician families will settle in Rochester, they always have and probably always will, after that....I don't know, I'd guess they start out in Rochester but move (there were problems with the former superintendent that drove families away, the f/r numbers are growing and I'd bet many that can leave will...Byron has a f/r of 15%, Kasson 16% while as shown above Rochester's is nearing 50%) Rochester is trying to build it's center with high density, high end apartments but those don't attract families. Rochester has a very high singles population, a very high DINK's population, a very large baby boomer group, and a growing underclass. You're not going to get hockey players out of any of those 4 groups.

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