Conference Changes/Realignments

[SEMNHOCKEYFAN]

It looks like there are some major Conference changes coming to the state...Mainly the south metro/ and Missota Conference. How do you guys think these changes will effect hockey around the area?

[thestickler07]

It looks like there are some major Conference changes coming to the state...Mainly the south metro/ and Missota Conference. How do you guys think these changes will effect hockey around the area?

Elaborate.

[Roy01]

Shakopee and Farmington to the South-Suburban Conference (I believe?)

I know Red Wing is considering opting out to the Big 9 as well.

[SEMNHOCKEYFAN]

Well it looks like Shakopee and Farmington are leaving the Missota for the south suburban and rumors are that Red Wing wants to change conferences also

[MNHockeyFan]

It was reported in yesterday's Star Tribune that Farmington has already been accepted by the South Suburban Conference, and it's now pretty much a formality that they will be in. This particular article did not mention anything about Red Wing or Shakopee.

[hockeydad]

sshakopee is applying to the South Suburban, and it is likely they will also be admitted.

Red Wing has been considering a change for several years, but doesn't have a lot of good options. The talk quieted down when Hutchinson left the MIssota - the schools matched up well enrollment wise, but it was a 4-5 hour round trip. Also, Chanhassen and Chaska have been trying to form a new conference since last spring, but have been having trouble getting a seventh and eight member

Another conference with a cloudy future is the North Suburban, with St. Francis, north Branch and Chisago Lakes leaving after this year. Totino and Columbia Heights don't compete in the conference in football, which leaves a 6-team football conference. Not an ideal situation.

[starmvp]

Do you think conference realignments and changes are based more on football compared to influence with hockey, baseball, etc... ?

[HShockeywatcher]

Well it looks like Shakopee and Farmington are leaving the Missota for the south suburban and rumors are that Red Wing wants to change conferences also

Do you have more information? Everything I've ever heard about the Missota is that it is a very competitive conference for everything aside from hockey.

I like the conference my alma mater is in and recognize that there are many conferences around the state that have many historical roots.
That being said, with so many conference changes lately, it may be time for discussion to be had about getting rid of them and having mandatory sectional play of some sort.
My guess is that finances are one of the main reasons this hasn't happened already. Less classes in all sports would help that, but that's another discussion.

[hockeydad]

Missota is a very strong conference in most sports. However its location on the fringes of the Metro area mean that membership can be fluid as some districts grow faster than others. In the last 25 years, Farmington left the conference because they were too small, rejoined the conference as they started to grow, and is now leaving because they have outgrown it. Over the years Burnsville, Apple Valley, Rosemount, Lakeville, Chaska, Prior Lake and now Farmington and probably Shakopee have outgrown it, though Chaska rejoined the conference after the district split into two schools. The next four schools enrollment wise in the conference, Chanhassen, Northfield, New Prague and Chaska, are also growing, though not as fast as Shakopee and Farmington. Red Wing has been losing enrollment numbers over the past five years. Chan and Chaska have been looking to form a new conference that was "less rural."

[HShockeywatcher]

Missota is a very strong conference in most sports. However its location on the fringes of the Metro area mean that membership can be fluid as some districts grow faster than others. In the last 25 years, Farmington left the conference because they were too small, rejoined the conference as they started to grow, and is now leaving because they have outgrown it. Over the years Burnsville, Apple Valley, Rosemount, Lakeville, Chaska, Prior Lake and now Farmington and probably Shakopee have outgrown it, though Chaska rejoined the conference after the district split into two schools. The next four schools enrollment wise in the conference, Chanhassen, Northfield, New Prague and Chaska, are also growing, though not as fast as Shakopee and Farmington. Red Wing has been losing enrollment numbers over the past five years. Chan and Chaska have been looking to form a new conference that was "less rural."

Which would be a great reason for section/area required games:
Every two years classes are redone.
So, in the current system, require all teams to play at least one game against their section opponents?

Or, have sixteen 9 or 10 team regions, play each in your region once; top 2 or 4 based on standings make playoffs...

[Slap Shot]

Will the Lake ever get solved? Or are they content staying with 5?

[Gov78]

Lake conference teams would love to have a larger conference but no others teams will join the lake or allow multiple lake conf teams to join existing conference. When the 4 Classic Lake teams joined the previous version of Lake all the other teams left to form their own conference and left EP behind.

[blueblood]

HSHW:

Agree with you, but very difficult to do. Example: Section 2AA is made of 8 teams in 3 different conferences : Lake (1), SSC (4) and Missota (3)

SSC plays a 19 game conference schedule which leaves 6 non-conference games. Three of the non-conference games for SSC teams are in a holiday tournament (Burnsville, Jefferson and Prior Lake) leaving 3 more games for 4 teams.

[goldy313]

Section scheduling is a touchy subject and one I was for until this past year. In class A for example section 1A has 12 schools, play them all twice and that's 22 of your 25 games, playing them once eats up about half of your schedule. Even in that there are games that would serve no one involved any good in most years, does Lourdes really have to play Mankato East?

Another problem you get into in outstate areas is travel, do you really want kids on a bus from Becker to Roseau on a school night? Do you want Roseau to drop a road game with Warroad or TRF to play a section game in Becker? I admit those are exceptions but important exceptions that have to be considered if we were to move to a sectional scheduling format.

Lastly for some schools being in a conference guarentees them games, not everyone wants to travel to Worthington or Ely, giving a school a home and home or even a 2 for 1. One year when I was teaching I filled in as the AD for a year as ours was out with health problems, scheduling non conference games was a nightmare, our conference (which covered 3 classes) filled 14 of our 20 basketball dates and meant we didn't have to travel over 50 miles more than once, which was a big deal.

[HShockeywatcher]

HSHW:

Agree with you, but very difficult to do. Example: Section 2AA is made of 8 teams in 3 different conferences : Lake (1), SSC (4) and Missota (3)

SSC plays a 19 game conference schedule which leaves 6 non-conference games. Three of the non-conference games for SSC teams are in a holiday tournament (Burnsville, Jefferson and Prior Lake) leaving 3 more games for 4 teams.

What is difficult about that? So, each of those 8 teams has 7 mandatory games on their schedule; section seeding becomes easy.
If the teams that have played conference games together want to keep playing, cool. If not, fine.

The SSC has 10 teams. They could play each other team once (9 games), each section opponent once (7 or 8 games) and have 7 or 8 games less.

Not saying this is what I would like, just saying that it would, in fact, be very easy scheduling wise. I think if this were to happen, it would happen in more sports than just hockey and I don't like this for football in a system where every team makes the playoffs.

Another thing that is a legitimate concern is money. There are many city teams that wouldn't travel more than 20 miles for a game while some outstate teams would have to travel more than 100 miles for a majority of their games. Not only is this a money issue for busing but lost revenue. This is likely the main reason something hasn't changed yet.

[SPUDNUT]

Why all the wasted breath on conference changes ? Who cares what conference someone is/isn't in ? Conferences in hockey mean absolutely zilch.

[MNHockeyFan]

Why all the wasted breath on conference changes ? Who cares what conference someone is/isn't in ? Conferences in hockey mean absolutely zilch.

To the extent that conferences are aligned primarily by football considerations, and not by hockey, I agree. In football, the No. 1 determining factor for success is numbers (school enrollment). That is often not the case in sports like basketball and hockey, where a smaller number of very skilled players can have a greater impact.

In an ideal world you would have parity in every conference, in every sport, but that will never happen. For a number of reasons I don't see the MSHSL ever doing away with conferences, even though in each sport there are some good arguments as to why it would make sense.

[hockeydad]

Why all the wasted breath on conference changes ? Who cares what conference someone is/isn't in ? Conferences in hockey mean absolutely zilch.

... Said the poster whose team does not belong to a conference. Conference games are often big rivalries and mean a little bit more, especially when it gets late in the season and the conference title is on the line. They don't mean anything to you because your team hasn't experienced a key late-season game against a rival for bragging rights, nor do any of your players get a chance to earn all-conference honors.

[HShockeywatcher]

Why all the wasted breath on conference changes ? Who cares what conference someone is/isn't in ? Conferences in hockey mean absolutely zilch.

... Said the poster whose team does not belong to a conference. Conference games are often big rivalries and mean a little bit more, especially when it gets late in the season and the conference title is on the line. They don't mean anything to you because your team hasn't experienced a key late-season game against a rival for bragging rights, nor do any of your players get a chance to earn all-conference honors.

Moorhead is in the Mariucci conference for hockey, is it not?
They have some pretty good rivalry games in that conference.

Also seems to me that while it appears they may not be in a conference for other sports, they play a lot of the same teams; namely Fergus, Alex, and Bemidji.
Considering their location, almost all of their games one team had to travel far. Fergus (60 mi) and Alex (110 mi) were the closest opponents and both away games. Their away games were a total of 785 miles away; Rapids (170 mi), Tech (170 mi), Buffalo (205 mi), and East (240 mi).

Scheduling is an issue. Look at Wayzata for example. Something should be done. And if out of state teams are already traveling great distances, then giving teams a schedule shouldn't be an issue.

Additionally hockeydad, I doubt there is one high school athlete who would take the conference title over a trip to state, although doing this wouldn't eliminate conferences, maybe simply some conference games.

[BodyShots]

Why all the wasted breath on conference changes ? Who cares what conference someone is/isn't in ? Conferences in hockey mean absolutely zilch.

... Said the poster whose team does not belong to a conference. Conference games are often big rivalries and mean a little bit more, especially when it gets late in the season and the conference title is on the line. They don't mean anything to you because your team hasn't experienced a key late-season game against a rival for bragging rights, nor do any of your players get a chance to earn all-conference honors.

Moorhead is in the Mariucci conference for hockey, is it not?
They have some pretty good rivalry games in that conference.

Also seems to me that while it appears they may not be in a conference for other sports, they play a lot of the same teams; namely Fergus, Alex, and Bemidji.
Considering their location, almost all of their games one team had to travel far. Fergus (60 mi) and Alex (110 mi) were the closest opponents and both away games. Their away games were a total of 785 miles away; Rapids (170 mi), Tech (170 mi), Buffalo (205 mi), and East (240 mi).

Scheduling is an issue. Look at Wayzata for example. Something should be done. And if out of state teams are already traveling great distances, then giving teams a schedule shouldn't be an issue.

Additionally hockeydad, I doubt there is one high school athlete who would take the conference title over a trip to state, although doing this wouldn't eliminate conferences, maybe simply some conference games.

Your right, but when you have the East Metro All Stars in your section, winning the conference does mean something to these kids. Going to state is the icing on the cake, but there are many years where icing doesn't exist for the SEC teams.

[hockeydad]

I guess I had forgotten about Moorhead's affiliation with the Mariucci Conference, but I stand by my comments. Spudnut said conferences mean zilch in HS hockey. I beg to differ. There is no doubt that kids would rather make it to state than have an all-conference honor, but I still think the conferences mean something. I'm guessing even Spudnut would be disappointed if Moorhead had to drop Thief River Falls, Warroad and East Grand Forks from their schedule in order to play Becker/Big Lake, Northern Lakes and River Lakes from their section.

[HShockeywatcher]

I guess I had forgotten about Moorhead's affiliation with the Mariucci Conference, but I stand by my comments. Spudnut said conferences mean zilch in HS hockey. I beg to differ. There is no doubt that kids would rather make it to state than have an all-conference honor, but I still think the conferences mean something. I'm guessing even Spudnut would be disappointed if Moorhead had to drop Thief River Falls, Warroad and East Grand Forks from their schedule in order to play Becker/Big Lake, Northern Lakes and River Lakes from their section.

But why would they have to drop any? There's only three section teams they don't play right now and they play many teams multiple times.

Additionally, the only teams in their section they don't currently play are the ones that are co-oped (and having them be mandated to AA makes little sense imo).

Conferences are great. I agree wholeheartedly with that. But at the end of the day, preparing for state is the most important. Conferences should be made up of teams in your area, so sections like 6A and 5AA wouldn't have to change much.

I'm not saying what we should do, but Cloquet's coach has publicly said that the current system should be changed and others share the sentiment. If AA was cut off at 64 or 72 teams, so there was the same number in every section, that would be only 7 or 8 games mandated. If conferences played one game, with the option of playing more, this could work fine with many teams having more freedom than they do now.

[SPUDNUT]

Why all the wasted breath on conference changes ? Who cares what conference someone is/isn't in ? Conferences in hockey mean absolutely zilch.

... Said the poster whose team does not belong to a conference. Conference games are often big rivalries and mean a little bit more, especially when it gets late in the season and the conference title is on the line. They don't mean anything to you because your team hasn't experienced a key late-season game against a rival for bragging rights, nor do any of your players get a chance to earn all-conference honors.

DUH ?

Moorhead - Roseau - Mariucci - Ring any bells ?

Open mouth, change feet !

[hockeydad]

No need to change feet, I've been told I have a big enough mouth, plenty of room for both.

[BP]

I heard from a reliable source that a new conference is forming with these teams:

Jefferson
Kennedy
Richfield
Chanhassen
Chaska

There would be a couple more as well......