Historical Section Tournament Structure

[karl(east)]

Has anyone ever laid out a whole history of this? It would be great to see what the major changes were made by the MSHSL, chronologically by year (backdoors, regions, districts, sections, etc.)

The example cited by greenway1969 is classic...

I wouldn't be able to do districts, but I do have region playoff records going back to the very early days. Give me a week or two and I might be able to make a timeline. (Most of this comes from the book LPH put out some years back on the history of the Tourney.)

Greenway1969...so did the District 25 teams just not compete in Region 7 at all? I doubt it would've ended well if they did, but I have zero record of them there. Interesting to learn that the Range was two districts; I just assumed it was only one. So some quality teams might not even have made Regions in some years...

For most of the time when the Duluth-area teams were in Region 2, they actually divided the teams into 3 separate playoff brackets. The 8 Metro teams had their own playoff, with the winner making the final. The St. Cloud and Duluth area teams also played off against each other, with the winners of those two brackets meeting in another semifinal. (The St. Cloud teams only won this once.) The Metro and outstate bracket champions then met in the final.

In the first few years and the last two years, they combined the Duluth and St. Cloud area teams, and pitted the two remaining outstate teams with the two Metro teams in the semifinals. As wbmd said, the section tourney site rotated.

[elliott70]

Then you have to throw in the parochial (private) state tourney with great teams/players.

[alcloseshaver]

The size of the region is what intrigues me most. Did all the regions have the same number of teams? It just seems that the geographic proportions were off. Was Apollo the St. Cloud winner?

[karl(east)]

The size of the region is what intrigues me most. Did all the regions have the same number of teams? It just seems that the geographic proportions were off. Was Apollo the St. Cloud winner?

Yeah, it was Apollo in 1984.

Looking through the Hill-Murray website's archives, it looks like the sections/regions had more than 16 teams most years, but that the outstate ones tended have more teams than the Metro area ones. It seemed like they pretty much stuck to geography from 74-91, not moving the boundaries based on the number of teams.

In that context, the northern back door in the early years makes a lot more sense. Regions 4 and 5 were pretty much just the St. Paul and Minneapolis public schools, whereas Regions 7 and 8 covered huge swaths of area, and a lot of small towns that don't have programs anymore fielded teams. There was probably a big imbalance in the number of teams.

[greenway1969]

District 25 consisted of small, mostly farming communities at that time like Pine City, Moose Lake, Rush City. Lindstrom-Center City, Willow River, Sandstone, Barnum and Forest Lake the largest one. None of them had hockey teams. I might be mistaken about Forest Lake being in District 25, but I remember them being in Region 7 for wrestling. Maybe someone from Forest Lake can tell when Forest Lake fielded its first hockey team, but I don't think they had one during the 60's. If they did, they weren't in Region 7.

[East Side Pioneer Guy]

I can speak only very little about what happened pre-1975. After that, most sections had about 18 teams. I think most started with a round of 16, but had one or two play-in games as numbers dictated. Later, more sections had some teams seeded into the quarterfinals. So some teams would have had to won five games to win their section. That never happened.

The section2 of that era was due to the inherent geographic imbalance of HS hockey in Minnesota. The north had enough teams for 2 1/2 sections. Central Minnesota had not enough for even 1/2 a section. So we had this odd section that went from the northern (mostly eastern) Metro up to Duluth. The championship alternated between the Coliseum and the DECC. But I recall one year I saw the bracket sheet for sec. 2 and the final could also have been at St. Cloud. That may have been an attempt to find a nuetral site. Unfortunately, I don't recall what the stipulations were as far as how it was determined which site would host the championship.There was quite a stretch where the home team won every year. After Irondale's three year run ended after 1981, no one repeated for a long time.

There was some chatter for the Duluth to be added to section 7, but that didn't go too far. it would have had about 22 teams.

At that time, section 3 had Hill, NSP, Stillwater, etc., but also Osseo, Park Center and may be one or two more from the north west suburbs. This Roseville, Mounds View and Irondale being in section 2 and between the bulk of section 3 and it's western members.

I think it stood this way from 1975 until the late 80's, maybe a little longer.

[slacsap]

When Hill-Murray won its first state title in 1983, their four section games were against Chisago Lakes, Totino Grace, Stillwater and North St. Paul. That's a pretty good range geographically. I remember them playing section games against Osseo when Trent Klatt was there as well. Ah, the good old days of one class hockey

[paulsonj72]

In Section 1 there were 26 teams in 1980. In 1981 they moved some teams out dropping the section (at the time) down to 20 teams. The most notable schools that moved out of Section 1 for the 1981 season were the Bloomington schools who moved into section 5 with the Minneapolis City schools. A bloomington school(Kennedy or Jefferson) represented Section 5 every year from 1981-91.(Lincoln closed after the 1982 school year)

[Froggy Richards]

No, they still used Regions through the 1980s and into the early 90s. It was sometime in the 90s when they did away with Regions and Districts and went to sections and subsections in many of the sports.... around the time, but maybe not at the same time, that they went to two classes in hockey.

Not in hockey - maybe in other sports, but not in hockey.

You are correct. Sections and Subsections were around in the 80's for hockey.

[wbmd]

No, they still used Regions through the 1980s and into the early 90s. It was sometime in the 90s when they did away with Regions and Districts and went to sections and subsections in many of the sports.... around the time, but maybe not at the same time, that they went to two classes in hockey.

Not in hockey - maybe in other sports, but not in hockey.

You are correct. Sections and Subsections were around in the 80's for hockey.

And like I said earlier, Sections replaced Regions for the 1976-77 season in hockey.

[old goalie85]

Doug Peltier started the Forest Lake program in 1974.

[greenway1969]

Thanks for the info on Forest Lake. I remember that Ron Peltier, Doug Peltier, and Russ Zahradka were on Johnson's first line in the '67 state tournament.

[hockeydad]

Not in hockey - maybe in other sports, but not in hockey.

You are correct. Sections and Subsections were around in the 80's for hockey.

And like I said earlier, Sections replaced Regions for the 1976-77 season in hockey.

I stand corrected. They did it for other sports in 1992, I believe.

[karl(east)]

I finally got around to making a (longish) timeline. Here ya go:

http://apatientcycle.com/2014/01/31/a-h ... urnaments/