This is part 4 of what was to be four posts on this site covering the Select 15’s. Because Part 4 was becoming a long post, YHH has decided to divide the post. Part 4 covers select 15 players going to St. Cloud by high school sections 5A, 6A, 6AA, and 7AA. The new Part 5 will cover Sections 7A, 8AA, 8A, and Shattuck-St. Mary’s.
Both posts are focused on northern Minnesota. Part 4 covers the sections in eastern and northeastern Minnesota. Part 5 covers the sections in western and northwestern Minnesota.
At a rink last week, YHH mentioned writing a post about northern Minnesota. A person listening asked why YHH was writing about his hometown. Evidently there is a Northern, Minnesota. And of course, it is just north of Bemidji.
Note: If a player is a freshman, sophomore or junior on the junior varsity, the size of the senior class will likely affect his chances of moving from jv to varsity the following year. That would seem obvious to most people. What is not obvious is that most high school coaches consistently will fill their roughly 18 skater varsity roster with 14 seniors and juniors and not draw bantams and jv freshmen beyond four or so unless there are exceptions.
In these posts we are talking about players evaluated by Minnesota hockey who have made the top 100 or so 15 year old players in the state. They are the potential exceptions usually playing last season as eighth or ninth graders. Those select players have to overcome the tendency for varsity coaschs to select returning varsity players (sophmores/juniors) plus players from the previous season’s junior varsity to fill out 14 the varsity skaters. Openings for the 4 to 5 of last season’s eighth and ninth grade players on the varsity team is tough to make.
Since YHH is on the topic of bantam numbers, in the 2011-2012 season, Wayzata Association evenly split their peewee A’s and both peewee teams had good seasons. Two years later (this fall) Wayzata is abound with bantam aged talent on their high school team and they skated eight bantam teams at the youth level totaling around 120 bantams.
Last season Wayzata went to uneven split (AA and A) and had about 120 kids playing on 9 peewee teams.
Hermantown had 43 bantam players last year. About 20 players will move to the high school team. This has been a regular stream from the association. The varsity coaches have been managing the incoming bantams well resulting in almost all of their varsity players the last few years coming from the association. They take advantage of their limited resources and even use Hermantown’s zip code in their press briefings.
Wayzata and Hermantown Associations have two contrasting approaches. It will be interesting to watch how these two high schools (Wayzata and Hermantown) do in the next year.
One quirk (there is always a quirk), the Trojans and the Hawks wear the same colors and have very similar uniforms. That drives the YHH camera mad.