The MSHSL’s will return to district play in high school football in 2015.  The league last organized high school sports around district play in the late 1960's.  The district approach will replaces football conferences.  MSHSL will form districts (physical areas in the state) and set up district boards.  The boards will be responsible for setting up each district’s high school’s 8 game schedule. MSHL’s good intention is to have teams playing each other within the district and reduce travel.  The rational is to avoid teams playing out of state opponents, a search for equal competition, something that will be difficult to stop.  Some border conferences already have out of state teams in their conference.

In effect, the district approach will do the principle job that each high school’s administration currently has; the responsibility for their own scheduling of games.  Starting with 2015 each district board will divide the district into sub-districts and arrange schedules for all high schools in their district area.  The MSHSL will still keep the 7 state tourney format (9-man to AAAAAA-or 6A).  The most competitive level, 6A, had only 32 teams in 2014.

The MSHL league is stepping back to the common sense solution that they eliminated in the 1960’s when all state tourneys were based on district play, but then they had only one class and could divide the state into regions and districts.  But even in the 1960's, travel was a problem within a region.  The old Region 7 extended from International Falls to Forest Lake, a 300 mile/4 hour drive.

The MSHSL eliminated district play in the 1960’s because they had made a determination that the state tourney standard will be each student attending a high school had to be equally represented in state tourney formats.  If total high school attendance in the state was 240,000 students, each sectional had to be composed of 30, 000 students (or one-eighth of the total).  That forced each sectional division to be like a slice of pizza with the center the larger Twin Cities high schools.

Since eliminating districts, the MSHSL has constantly adjusted sectional alignment of teams and classes to arrive as some sort of parity while trying to achieve eight teams per sectional tourney.  But the moves the MSHSL made since the 1960’s are slow retreats from that student standard.  With high school football in 2015 becoming districts, they will be back to area to represent regular season play, not equal student participation.

One reason is that the MSHSL has been steadily retreating from that position is the dwindling number of Minnesota High Schools playing football.  Last season Minnesota had 373 high schools playing football divided into 7 classes.  The largest school class, 6A, had the smallest number of teams-32; 9-man, the smallest school class, had the most, 70 teams.  Despite Minnesota’s growth in population (from 5.2 million in 2008 to 5.6 million today) there are 11 fewer high schools playing the sport (384 high schools fielded football teams in the 2009-2010 season).

At YHH, the real question is what effect the district format will have on high school hockey in the state.  It will likely have to be addressed because high school conferences are there for all of a single high school's sports.  The MSHL will face multiple problems when it comes to hockey.

The revenue gained through the state high school hockey tourneys by the MSHSL goes into a pot and every August; all high schools that participate in any of the state tourneys get reimbursed for their participation out of that pot.  Hockey has to be one of the major sports that earn money to allow the MSHSL to reimburse schools that sent cheerleading teams or swim teams to state tourneys.  Messing with high school hockey to the extent that it drives down participation will have a chilling effect on other sports.

Another problem is the move by Minnesota Hockey on the youth level (an experiment in 2013-2014) that opens Minnesota youth hockey teams to participate in USA Hockey National tourneys at the U16 and U18 levels.  The U16 and U18 teams are high school aged teams, but are formed via a hockey organization.  Players from anywhere in the state can try out for an organizational U18 or U16 team and are not constrained by the high school they attend.  The Minnesota Blades in an example of an organization.  Shattuck-St. Mary’s is another example.  The Sabre’s Prep team (reigning U18 national champs) draw players from all over the USA.

In 2009-2010, 157 high schools played boys hockey.  Last season, 154 high schools fielded boys hockey teams.  The interest in the sport remains strong.  Areas like Luverne, New Prague, and Farmington will have high school teams in the news along with Warroad, Roseau, Duluth East, Lakeville North and Edina this coming season.  That is good for hockey.  But hockey conferences are continuing to change.  The Missota is gone, the Metro West is new, and the Metro East is new (but really the old Classic Suburban) are just some of the conference changes that have forced the MSHSL to make decisions on where high school football teams play.

A move by MSHL to hockey districts in 2015-2016 could be a natural evolution since conferences are really alignments for all sports.  The stronger hockey teams, like football, are searching for competition and will go outside Minnesota.  But are districts really the best for hockey?  A wrong decision by the MSHL could impact the hockey finances affecting other less popular high school sports.

The view at YHH is that the MSHSL and Minnesota Hockey provide stewardship to the sport of hockey within Minnesota.  Minnesota Hockey’s position, as a district member of USA Hockey, has been to foster growth within the state and link youth development to high school hockey.  MSHSL view is that high school hockey, though important, is just another high school sport that has to be treated equally with other high school sports.  That view tends to downgrade the true impact of high school hockey on the high schools themselves; just ask St. Thomas Academy, Benilde-St. Margaret’s, Breck, or Blake.  All these private schools understand the importance their participation in hockey means to the well-being of their high schools.

The Minnesota State High School League is the one that is faced with a changing hockey environment.  There is a parallel, albeit at the national level, that occurred in college basketball in the 1950’s.  The NIT tourney was the big draw.  It was played at Madison Square Garden every year.  All the college teams aspired to play the NIT and go to the Garden.  At the time, the NCAA tourney was considered second rate and the NCAA deliberately scheduled its tourney to be played after the NIT opened so that early NIT losers could be invited by the NCAA to play in their tourney.  Now it is the reverse, the NCAA no shows play the NIT.  Poor MSHSL stewardship could turn Minnesota’s State Hockey Tourneys into what the NIT is today.

Minnesota Hockey’s stewardship has been has been honest to the state.  At YHH, we may not always agree with their decisions, but we respect their leadership.  Minnesota Hockey recognizes things are changing and tries to do the “right thing”.  The experimentation this year with opening participation of Minnesota U16 and U18 teams to national tourney participation is an good example of trying to address change.  But it sets up a potentially "different path" for Minnesota High School hockey, one that could significantly impact the high school sport.  The MSHSL change, by going to districts in hockey in a few years, does nothing to recognize that “different path”.