Eden Prairie -- Coop with Who?

[Cookster]

With Eden Prairie continuing to lose girls to local schools -- This year the 8th grade twins are going to Holy Family and the other big 8th grader (moe) going to Edina, EP's numbers continue to dwindle. There was a meeting this week to discuss Co-op possibilities, but with who?

Chaska and Chan are already a Co-Op
Jefferson and Kennedy are already a Co-op
Hopkins and St Louis Park are already a Co-op
Mound/SWC are already a Co-op

That leaves Waconia and New Prague and ?? EP I believe has around 26 players, which makes it hard to form a Co-op. And Shakopee with their old coach probably is not an option.

Anyone have ideas?

[InThePipes]

Waconia

[headsupsticksdown]

Waconia

Moe to Edina is brutal. The twins at their 3rd program in so many years. EP co-op’d with PL at 15’s a few years ago but I guess PL has the numbers to stand on their own.

[girlshockey4ever]

I think the bigger question here is what are youth programs doing to recruit girls to play. Clearly there are uphill battles to be fought with other sports requiring people to play year-round but a school that has nearly 3,000 students should be able to get 30 girls to play hockey. Yes, demographics in EP are changing, but these numbers are crazy. Why are they losing players??

[headsupsticksdown]

I think the bigger question here is what are youth programs doing to recruit girls to play. Clearly there are uphill battles to be fought with other sports requiring people to play year-round but a school that has nearly 3,000 students should be able to get 30 girls to play hockey. Yes, demographics in EP are changing, but these numbers are crazy. Why are they losing players??

I’m not sure if it’s in fact recruiting or players making a decision to go where they feel they can win. The three girls mentioned here all went to Breakaway so neither stepped foot in an EP school. But they seem to feel going somewhere where they will get more W’s than L’s is important to them and that’s their choice. A crappy one IMO but what do you do? From what I recall a staggering % of this years graduating class are overwhelmingly going private so if you want to go down that rabbit hole.

The 15B team combo’d with BJ this past season and although they chose not to the 12’s were looking at doing the same. After this group of 15’s are done EP is in a tough pickle on the girls side as well. Am sure the HS coach is looking long and hard at pulling from the 15’s to fill out the roster but talent wise there’s not much there. They seem to be marketing hard with several try hockey girls specific events which seem to draw a decent crowd but it’s been a tough pickle.