What's up with Lourdes this year?

Mite-dad · Post by **Mite-dad** » Fri Jan 30, 2015 9:35 am

Curious what is going on with this perennial top 10 program??? Have they fallen on hard times or is there a nice pipeline of players coming? Not used to seeing them struggling so much.

stromboli · Post by **stromboli** » Fri Jan 30, 2015 10:16 am

It's a good question, and one I had been wondering as well.

Season - Wins (from My Hockey Rankings): 2010 - 19W; 2011 -25W, 2012 - 21W, 2013 - 21W, 2014 - 7W, and this year.. 3 so far?

Just a temporary drop from which they'll rebound?

urban iceman · Post by **urban iceman** » Fri Jan 30, 2015 1:27 pm

Maybe somebody figured out how to keep players at their local neighborhood high schools!

TheSiouxSuck · Post by **TheSiouxSuck** » Fri Jan 30, 2015 1:35 pm

Rochester hockey is in a tough place. The town is 100,000 people trying to support three AA hockey teams and one A team. They also fail to draw from their surrounding area anymore as almost all those kids end up in the Dodge County program. There are also a change in demographics based upon who Mayo hires and IBM employing 50% of the people it did 10 years ago.

Lourdes was excellent from 2010-14 because they had two outstanding talents in Samuelson and Funk. Funk migrated from Winona. The best player in the Rochester system (Tyler Vesel) ended up leaving in Bantams and going to play for Shattuck (Where he led their prep team in scoring). Their PeeWee AA State runnerup team has some talent, but again their best player off that team is headed to Shattuck, and the rest will get split up between four high schools. In 2012 the top 16 Bantam players all got pulled up to various high schools to fill out their Rosters. At that level thats pretty much their entire Bantam AA team.

Hopefully the DMC project will help them rebound in about a decade.

rainier · Post by **rainier** » Fri Jan 30, 2015 1:38 pm

Does most of the Rochester talent usually go to Lourdes? It would seem a city with 3 high schools and a private school would end up having one team that the best players would flock to.

goldy313 · Post by **goldy313** » Fri Jan 30, 2015 4:51 pm

Lourdes was pretty young last year and West and New Prague were both very good and experianced so Lourdes being down last year wasn't that unexpected. This year they had a couple of kids in the Elite league, had a couple of kids that were very good football players skip football to concentrate on hockey (their football team were state champs) so they were pretty much expected to be the class of 1A. I don't know what happened, maybe it's their tough schedule hurting their confidence somewhat. Lourdes depth doesn't seem to be what it once was either, in A hockey having 2 good lines makes you better than about 80% of the teams you play and I'm not so sure they have that advantage anymore.

Overall Rochester hockey is down this year, it will get worse before it gets better....if it ever does. Century has 15 seniors out of 34 kids with 11 of the other 19 being 8th or 9th graders. I don't know how they'll field a JV squad next year. Mayo has 11 seniors, JM is fairly young yet though. There are still some very good players, the depth behind them just isn't there.

As someone above said, the loss of IBM can't be overstated, while Mayo is a good and large employer, I think by and large the bulk of really good players came from IBM families over the years.

TheSiouxSuck · Post by **TheSiouxSuck** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 11:43 am

rainier wrote:Does most of the Rochester talent usually go to Lourdes? It would seem a city with 3 high schools and a private school would end up having one team that the best players would flock to.

It depends. The Chapmann kid is pretty good and goes to Lourdes but Haskins plays for Mayo and the Zmoleks play for Century. The talent is just so spread out.

grandmeadowhockeyfan · Sat Jan 31, 2015 1:44 pm

Dong forget checco and Dahl on John Marshall. These two are very good also.

grandmeadowhockeyfan · Sat Jan 31, 2015 1:46 pm

In my hometown of duluth they closed central due to declining numbers. This has made the remaining schools much stronger. Maybe the day has come to close one of the big three in rochester? Probably won't happen with destination medical center coming in the near future.

hockeydad · Post by **hockeydad** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 2:34 pm

The fifference is that duluth is declining in both population and enrollment. Rochester century opened about 15 years ago when enrollment was growing rapidly. Population growth has slowed and enrollment has stabilized, but is not go down significantly, and is likely to go up with DMC coming

TheSiouxSuck · Post by **TheSiouxSuck** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 4:29 pm

grandmeadowhockeyfan wrote:In my hometown of duluth they closed central due to declining numbers. This has made the remaining schools much stronger. Maybe the day has come to close one of the big three in rochester? Probably won't happen with destination medical center coming in the near future.

Enrollment has leveled off a bit, but its most their hockey numbers just arent high enough to support 8 HS teams (Varsity and JV).

I know someone mentioned that Century is going to have serious problems with numbers in the near future and they were looking at co-oping with another school as a possible solution. Any word on if thats still what they're leaning towards or have they redistricted some of the new developments back to Century?

rainier · Post by **rainier** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 4:47 pm

hockeydad wrote:The fifference is that duluth is declining in both population and enrollment. Rochester century opened about 15 years ago when enrollment was growing rapidly. Population growth has slowed and enrollment has stabilized, but is not go down significantly, and is likely to go up with DMC coming

Given that Rochester has just one youth hockey association(correct?), it seems strange that the top kids wouldn't all go to the same school after being teammates all those years.

In Duluth, loyalty to the west side does keep a few top players from going to East or Marshall; Are there geographical loyalties in Rochester that keep the best players from all playing for one of the high schools?

I would imagine that if all the best players from Rochester went to the same school they would be at least a top 20 team every year. There is history of high-level success with JM and Mayo making significant runs (and Lourdes in A), so it is surprising that the area hasn't been more of a factor over the years.

TheSiouxSuck · Post by **TheSiouxSuck** » Sat Jan 31, 2015 5:53 pm

rainier wrote:
hockeydad wrote:The fifference is that duluth is declining in both population and enrollment. Rochester century opened about 15 years ago when enrollment was growing rapidly. Population growth has slowed and enrollment has stabilized, but is not go down significantly, and is likely to go up with DMC coming
Given that Rochester has just one youth hockey association(correct?), it seems strange that the top kids wouldn't all go to the same school after being teammates all those years.

In Duluth, loyalty to the west side does keep a few top players from going to East or Marshall; Are there geographical loyalties in Rochester that keep the best players from all playing for one of the high schools?

I would imagine that if all the best players from Rochester went to the same school they would be at least a top 20 team every year. There is history of high-level success with JM and Mayo making significant runs (and Lourdes in A), so it is surprising that the area hasn't been more of a factor over the years.

They did this back in the Early 2000's when all the best players went to Lourdes. Im fairly certain that they have pretty strict transfer policies in terms of you going to the school that your neighborhood is zoned to. I'm not 100% on this, but didnt their youth association used to be Rochester North/South?

I know currently they divide a lot of the youth teams based off which HS they will be attending (The AA teams obviously being the exception).

Mite-dad · Post by **Mite-dad** » Mon Feb 02, 2015 11:03 am

It sounds like a similar situation to what St. Cloud goes through. One youth program feeds three high schools. Most of the time Cathredral gets the most and best talent. I do hear there is talk of a Tech and Apollo co-op in the future though. Could make for a nice public program in St. Cloud.