Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2016 11:58 am
Peky, it's posts like that that just give you no credibility. Read the first sentence of my post again, it clearly states that the two players are move-ins, not open enrollees.pekyman wrote:Gotz and Watkins live in Hermantown, there not open enrolled. Do you need Hermantown DNA 3 generations back yo escape your microscope?rainier wrote:In addition to the open enrollees, Gotz moved in as a sophomore and Watkins moved in as a pee wee.Jeffy95 wrote: The discussion by the HAHA board and what many of us have seen first-hand is at the Youth Level, not the High School. The kids are already there by the time they get to High School. The Squirt A team last year had quite a few and a few more at the PeeWee level. Heck, their best player on the PeeWee AA team two years ago didn't live in Hermantown or go to school there. He lived on Pike Lake (Proctor Assoc. Boundary) and went to Marshall. Not sure how they snuck that one through. I don't know who the kids are that the HAHA board is referring to as being recruited by coaches last year and this year at the PeeWee level. You would have to ask them that.
But to answer your question, the players that I know of who open-enrolled to Hermantown from last year's High School team were Wyatt Aamodt - started in Hermantown very young, Dylan Samberg - PeeWees I believe and Logan Judnick - also PeeWees. Parker Hawk was another one on the team the year before that. He went in PeeWee or Bantam. All four of them lived in the Proctor School district.
Most people have no problem with players open enrolling or a family moving somewhere because they think it is a better opportunity for their kid. The problem myself and many others have is that when faced with criticism over choosing to kick butt in A instead of playing teams at their same skill level in AA, Hermantown defenders claim they are "where we belong" in A because they only have an enrollment of 600 to feed their "small town hockey" program. They refuse to acknowledge that getting the best talent from nearby Proctor effectively makes their enrollment 1200 when it comes to hockey, and that being in a metro area of 150,000 people makes it orders of magnitude easier for a family to move in compared to most A schools.
Going to the A title game every year for a decade should be enough for any school to feel that they are good enough for AA, but when you factor in the open enrollment, move ins, AA youth teams, and AA-heavy HS regular season schedule, it truly becomes ridiculous to claim that single A is "where we belong".
It sucks to have to admit that you'd rather collect single A trophies and banners against weaker competition than take the risk of losing to a team as good as you are in the 7AA playoffs, but that's really the only logical explanation for what is going on in Hermantown.
I can't tell if you are purposely missing the entire point of my argument to redirect attention away from the inescapable fact that Hermantown is clearly a AA program now, or if your anger clouds your ability to comprehend what I'm trying to say.
All I am saying is that the narrative that you and others have put forward that Hermantown is some small town hockey program is just plain false.
There was a time when this was true, but it no longer is the case. Open enrollment, recruiting, and being a suburb of Duluth all play a major part in Hermantown achieving the level of greatness they have. And yes, it is due to the fact that Hermantown is a great program. No one denies that they are a great program, so stop responding as though we are saying that. It's fine that there are open enrollees, move-ins, and recruiting, but it belongs in AA, not A.
If you get most of the best hockey talent from Proctor, no matter how it happens, then you have effectively added Proctor's enrollment to Hermantown's.
Put it this way, if open enrollment were not allowed and Proctor-Hermantown were a co-op like they are for girls hockey, last year's co-op team would have looked almost identical to how last year's Hermantown team looked, except that you would have had an AA enrollment.
To look at it another way, let's say open enrollment were not allowed and Hermantown were located in a rural area, thus making move-ins highly unlikely. Under this scenario, Hermantown would only have players that actually live in Hermantown and thus they would truly be drawing from the enrollment of 600. This means no Aamodt, Samberg, Hawk, Gotz, Judnick, or Watkins. Even with your great program, without these external sources of talent Hermantown is just a very good A team, similar to last year's teams from Hibbing, TRF, Greenway, Apollo, etc.
It's great that Hermantown schools and hockey are so good that they draw in lots of talent, it really is. But it's not great to hide behind irrelevant enrollment numbers to justify beating down A teams that really do draw from their MSHSL-listed enrollments. That's what STA did, and you were as vocal as anyone in calling them out about it.
All I ask is that when someone asks you why Hermantown stays in A, you respond honestly and say "Because it's more fun to collect banners and trophies in A than it is to risk playing teams as good as we are in the AA playoffs."