All Things 2022 Minnesota High School Football Thread

Donate To GopherHole
Go Gophs said:
District football has ruined MN high school football outstate. It is great for the metro, but it has really put a hurting on the mid-size and smaller schools.
We have teams from AA to AAAA in our district.

Not sure how it does any good to let these AAAA schools beat up on the rest all year. Especially when some of them are a better hour and a half drive. Funny because our conference was always largely competitive and nothing further than a half hour. Some of the bottom feeding teams have had their once proud programs completely crushed and most are having trouble getting enough to fill rosters. It makes no sense, yet here we are.

Glad for Eden Prairie and the like though.
Click to expand...
If true, schools schools change it within their district. Districts are not fixed and change every two years. The schools can make the request. There was change two years ago and will be again this year according to coaches. Howard Lake Waverly and Watertown Mayer benefits far more than Eden Prairie. Ask them.
 

Looking at NFHS released football numbers. Participation is down nationally significantly from 5 years ago. Minnesota HS been relatively consistent. Small town Minnesota schools are by and large in trouble with declining enrollment.

Knuckleheads like Dolphins management will not help with parents allowing their kids to play football.
 

State of Football said:
Looking at NFHS released football numbers. Participation is down nationally significantly from 5 years ago. Minnesota HS been relatively consistent. Small town Minnesota schools are by and large in trouble with declining enrollment.

Knuckleheads like Dolphins management will not help with parents allowing their kids to play football.
Click to expand...
I imagine that's true of small towns almost everywhere.

I still say a big part of it is specialization. AAU and club sports year round make it difficult if not impossible to play a single-season sport.
 

Go Gophs said:
District football has ruined MN high school football outstate. It is great for the metro, but it has really put a hurting on the mid-size and smaller schools.
We have teams from AA to AAAA in our district.
Click to expand...
I thought it was said earlier in this topic that schools can't play outside their enrollment class. Which is it?
 

El Amin Fan said:
I love the D3 thread and figured a MN HS football thread (non recruiting) would be fun as well. Most of us follow MN high school football as well.

I live in Plymouth and follow Armstrong, Wayzata, Maple Grove the closest.
Click to expand...
F-A-L-C-O-N-S
 


Just got a text from my old boss (retired). His daughters went to Hopkins and he's at the Hopkins - Forest Lake game. I wish I'd known FL was at Hopkins, since I live about ten minutes at most from the school. Apparently FL is absolutely destroying them. This is such a remarkable turnaround.
 

Former Gopher Parc Williams D holds Lakeville South to 7 in a 10-7 Rosemount win tonight at south.
 

Rosemount is very good. And they were helped by LS's coaches. Carsen Hansen is the best player on either team and he only carried the ball 13 times.
 

xyz1 said:
Rosemount is very good. And they were helped by LS's coaches. Carsen Hansen is the best player on either team and he only carried the ball 13 times.
Click to expand...
I could be wrong but I think Hansen was not 100%. Couple times he seemed to be moving kind of slow getting back to the huddle and just didn't look comfortable.

Rosemount D has played great all year. Doesn't really have any standout individual players (at least from a D1 standpoint) but they keep teams out of the EZ. 38 points allowed through 5 games will win you a lot of football games. And it isn't like they have been playing bad teams either.
 



Playoffs this year could be really interesting. Rosemount clearly has a well-coached team with a swarming defense. Eden Prairie bounced back with a dominating win against previously unbeaten Prior Lake. Maple Grove looks very impressive. Shakopee hanging in there. Stillwater is unbeaten but hasn't played the likes of Rosemount, EP, or Lakeville South. Good high school football at the 6A level.
 

Forest Lake 72.
Hopkins 7.

Wow.
 

Forest Lake vs Stillwater next week in a battle of unbeaten.
 




What’s the deal over at Hopkins? They had a long time coach retire and I thought that they had good potential. Hopkins has a 46% minority demographic and they hired what i thought was a good young energetic black coach but apparently something is going wrong. They have terrible numbers with only 21 Juniors and Senior out. Forest Lake is the epitome of mediocrity over the years as the team has won 14 games the last 11 years yet the Rangers have very good numbers and always fill the stands every week.
 

timj5304 said:
What’s the deal over at Hopkins? They had a long time coach retire and I thought that they had good potential. Hopkins has a 46% minority demographic and they hired what i thought was a good young energetic black coach but apparently something is going wrong. They have terrible numbers with only 21 Juniors and Senior out. Forest Lake is the epitome of mediocrity over the years as the team has won 14 games the last 11 years yet the Rangers have very good numbers and always fill the stands every week.
Click to expand...
HC is only in his second year. New AD this year also seems young, energetic, minority and motivated. I think give them some time.

It’s been like what’s been discussed in this thread- most of the football kids who don’t want to get beat down every night have transferred or just don’t go out for the team.
 


disco said:
I thought it was said earlier in this topic that schools can't play outside their enrollment class. Which is it?
Click to expand...

OK - the regular season schedule is based on Districts. A district may contain teams from different classes. Most districts are divided into sub-districts for purposes of scheduling, so generally, the larger schools will be in their own sub-district, etc. But, it's possible for teams from varying enrollments to play a regular-season game, depending on the schedule, such as an AA school playing a AAA school, if they are in the same District. some of it has to do with geography - not wanting to make teams travel too far for regular-season games.

the post-season is based on Sections. Sections are set by class, so all of the teams in a section must be within the same class.

every 2 years, the MSHSL checks enrollment and assigns teams to sections and districts. there is a process by which schools can petition to opt-up (move up a class) or opt down (move down a class) for purposes of competition, but it has to be approved by the state.

some people, like me, think it would be a lot simpler if teams just played their regular-season schedule based on their Section and get rid of the districts, but the HS league has opposed that. travel is a big issue - in some sections, there would be a lot more travel under that system.
 

GopherPharmaBiz said:
HC is only in his second year. New AD this year also seems young, energetic, minority and motivated. I think give them some time.

It’s been like what’s been discussed in this thread- most of the football kids who don’t want to get beat down every night have transferred or just don’t go out for the team.
Click to expand...
you need more than being energetic and motivated to be successful as a high school football coach


Personally I think their football coach was a horrible hire. He had almost zero high school coaching experience. He did have college experience. Knowing football and running a high school football program are two different things.
 

Couple other items about Hopkins - not sure how relevant they are.

Hopkins is one of the last districts in the metro (maybe the last) that still uses a junior high model.
K-6 as grade school, 7-9 Jr. High, and 10-12 Sr. High. Pretty much every other school has 9-12 at the high school now, so the coaches are seeing the freshman teams at those schools.

Hopkins also doesn't start youth tackle until 6th grade. the other schools in the LMAA (Edina, Wayzata, Minnetonka, Maple Grove, and St. Louis Park) start in 4th. With the trend toward specialization at younger ages, those Hopkins kids may already be in year-round club sports.
 

Hopkins is a weird district.

The city has like 15k people, vs SLP has over 40k people. But then the high schools are opposite, I think SLP probably has 300-ish kids per class while guessing Hopkins is more like 500 per class?


So, Golden Valley city all goes to Hopkins. (They had their own district and high school years ago, that is now the site for Breck School)

And then a big eastern chunk of city of Minnetonka is covered by Hopkins district.

Same way as big chunk of eastern Plymounth is covered by Robbinsdale district (Armstrong HS).

Go figure, right? Fewer kids living in the city of Minnetonka go to Minnetonka HS than go to Hopkins HS. Now granted, I don't know how it works out with open-enrollment. Maybe anyone with money can get into Minnetonka district?
 

disco said:
Couple other items about Hopkins - not sure how relevant they are.

Hopkins is one of the last districts in the metro (maybe the last) that still uses a junior high model.
K-6 as grade school, 7-9 Jr. High, and 10-12 Sr. High. Pretty much every other school has 9-12 at the high school now, so the coaches are seeing the freshman teams at those schools.

Hopkins also doesn't start youth tackle until 6th grade. the other schools in the LMAA (Edina, Wayzata, Minnetonka, Maple Grove, and St. Louis Park) start in 4th. With the trend toward specialization at younger ages, those Hopkins kids may already be in year-round club sports.
Click to expand...
Also Hopkins as a resident population is more difficult to capture than some other districts.
The higher percentage open enrollment you are the harder it is to capture those disconnected potential players early. You can have the best youth program in the world but if you’re 30% open enrollment your youth program is only coaching 70% of your future.
 

One of the big attractions in the Hopkins district is apparently the Chinese immersion program. So much so that they've added classes to the program. We have friends who live right by Wayzata high school and have their kid enrolled in that program.
 

Some guy said:
Also Hopkins as a resident population is more difficult to capture than some other districts.
The higher percentage open enrollment you are the harder it is to capture those disconnected potential players early. You can have the best youth program in the world but if you’re 30% open enrollment your youth program is only coaching 70% of your future.
Click to expand...
Minnetonka's open enrollment is about that high as well.
 

disco said:
Minnetonka's open enrollment is about that high as well.
Click to expand...
Yeah. But Minnetonka is 3400 kids
So even with that Minnetonka is a top 12 biggest high school by neighborhood kids only. If they’re 35% open enrollment they’re still 2200 by neighborhoods.
If Hopkins is 1600 (pro rate it to 2200 to add 9th grade)….they’re 1400-1500 by neighborhood. And they’re 1400-1500 by neighborhood is less affluent than Minnetonka’s 2200

And Minnetonka is attracting open enrollment from chanhassen, Eden prairie, waconia…

I would say I believe open enrollment is part of why Minnetonka doesn’t match the success of Eden Prairie and wayzata historically. Different animal with demographics. Hard to compare Hopkins to Minnetonka. Just totally different situations.
 

Gophers_4life said:
Hopkins is a weird district.

The city has like 15k people, vs SLP has over 40k people. But then the high schools are opposite, I think SLP probably has 300-ish kids per class while guessing Hopkins is more like 500 per class?


So, Golden Valley city all goes to Hopkins. (They had their own district and high school years ago, that is now the site for Breck School)

And then a big eastern chunk of city of Minnetonka is covered by Hopkins district.

Same way as big chunk of eastern Plymounth is covered by Robbinsdale district (Armstrong HS).

Go figure, right? Fewer kids living in the city of Minnetonka go to Minnetonka HS than go to Hopkins HS. Now granted, I don't know how it works out with open-enrollment. Maybe anyone with money can get into Minnetonka district?
Click to expand...
Most GV kids go to Armstrong. Some go to Hopkins, but most do not.
 

TruthSeeker said:
Most GV kids go to Armstrong. Some go to Hopkins, but most do not.
Click to expand...
It’s all pretty predictable.

Hopkins, Burnsville, osseo are the new park center, Richfield, Bloomington

You can still win at some of these places but due to demographics it is going to be extremely difficult to be consistent. And for that same reason it is going to be harder to attract and keep assistant coaches
 

Some guy said:
It’s all pretty predictable.

Hopkins, Burnsville, osseo are the new park center, Richfield, Bloomington

You can still win at some of these places but due to demographics it is going to be extremely difficult to be consistent. And for that same reason it is going to be harder to attract and keep assistant coaches
Click to expand...
Correct. All you have to do is look where the biggesr growth is in the biggest districts. That's typically where the best teams are.
 

No matter where you go you #1 need a coach who wants to be there. Look at Mound Westonka and Fridley for example. I am sure Nick David and Justin Reese could land one of the big school jobs if they open up but they seem to be all in at the respective programs that they lead. On the flip side look at a coach like Lambert Brown who went from Fridley for a few years, Chaka for a few years, Maple Grove as AD for a few years and now Wayzata for about 5. History isn’t on his side for staying til retirement or getting bored with a said job
 

timj5304 said:
No matter where you go you #1 need a coach who wants to be there. Look at Mound Westonka and Fridley for example. I am sure Nick David and Justin Reese could land one of the big school jobs if they open up but they seem to be all in at the respective programs that they lead. On the flip side look at a coach like Lambert Brown who went from Fridley for a few years, Chaka for a few years, Maple Grove as AD for a few years and now Wayzata for about 5. History isn’t on his side for staying til retirement or getting bored with a said job
Click to expand...
Lamker was a good coach but moved around until he went back to Augsburg.
 

He was the head coach at Osseo for 11 years, before that the OC(don’t really count assistant coaching stops as they move around a ton). 3 stops in 20 years
 

You must log in or register to reply here.



Top Bottom