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What happened in 1997?

04/06/2016, 10:45am CDT
By Dan Bauer

Has open enrollment put the kibosh on small school success?

In 1971 the WIAA hosted their first ever boys state hockey tournament.  It was an eight team affair, meaning that all but one of the nine teams qualified.  There was no road to the state tournament, more like a rocket ship straight to Madison.

Northland Pines, one of the state’s tiniest schools made it to state tournament 15 of the first 26 years.  Since that time, covering twenty years, Pines has been just one of the eleven small schools (those under 1,000 enrollments) that have qualified for the state tournament.  Eleven out of one hundred and sixty participants.  It is that disturbing rate of failure that has ramped up the recent clamor for a two or three class tournament.

The fear that the “Hoosiers” storybook triumph is no longer possible is disconcerting to the underdog lover in all of us.  Waving the American flag and chanting “U-S-A” at sectional finals has not been enough to stage the upsets we adore.

So the question is what has changed since 1997 that has so drastically changed the landscape of high school hockey?  That is the question I have been posing to coaches around the state.

There are many theories regarding the rise of the big schools and the demise of the small schools.  After doing my best to be a careful listener I then tried to differentiate between the legitimate reasons & the excuses.  That of course is always a subjective argument.

The one undeniable fact that immediately jumps out when examining this issue is the beginning of open enrollment in 1998.  I don’t believe it is a coincidence that this date serves as a sharp cut-off to the success rate of small schools getting to the state tournament.  The supremacy of marquee schools has grown substantially since we opened the open enrollment door.  The WIAA regulating the athletic component of open enrollment is highly unlikely.  It has created a decided advantage for certain schools in larger communities.

My disdain for the athletic open enrollment is no secret.  And I want to be clear that not all successful programs are taking advantage of that free agent pool.  Many are still producing successful seasons with their own matured youth hockey seedlings.

Tim Henningsgard of Amery, the architect of the four schools, three division, state tournament proposal feels open enrollment impacts even the small schools, “I like to think that if we had multiple divisions we would be able to show our kids we can compete, preventing them from open enrolling.   The lure of some paint on a water tower can be powerful. “

But open enrollment is not the only legitimate factor in the small schools plight to fight Goliath.  Hayward’s Rob Novak, a distinguished Hayward alumni, has fought the small school battle the past five years as their head coach.  He believes the training opportunities available and the deeper pockets of big city families have an impact.

“When a parent can drop their kid off at a hockey specific training center or day camp the kids do it,” said Novak.  “On the flip side a kid without access to this or a parent willing to drive them to, or pay for it has to go in the back yard and shoot pucks, or go in the garage and stickhandle, or go to the high school and lift weights.  This takes a lot more self-motivation than the kid that is enrolled in a program and has an adult walking them through the process and monitoring every move (don’t get me wrong, they still have to do the work).”

An accurate yet somewhat disheartening assessment of the work ethic and designed life we feel the need to provide our kids.  At the heart of this are the skyrocketing costs of hockey over the past twenty years.  It is no secret that hockey’s financial obligation is too steep for far too many families and that it impacts smaller communities to a greater degree.

It is here we factor in the specialization trend that is seen as the path to the elusive next level.  Small school coaches say their kids feel a greater obligation to play three sports and therefore cannot devote as much time and effort to a single sport.  I have witnessed the success of far too many multiple sport athletes to allow myself to buy into this idea that specialization is an advantage for big city school athletes.  Perhaps my admiration for the three sport athlete clouds my perspective.

After wading through all the arguments, most disguised as excuses, there is one other undeniable factor in the small school quandary.  A trip to the state tournament generates an indeterminable amount of excitement and good will for a program.  The absence of a small school division in hockey denies those schools and their youth programs that gold rush of growth. 

According to Novak, “Every year there are parents trying to decide what sports program they are going to enroll their kid in.  If the boys hockey team just went to the state tournament that helps lead parents to enroll their kid in hockey.  If we get four or five more boys per grade we would eventually have 30-40 kids tryout for our high school team.”

I don’t believe I have unearthed any secrets here.  The fact of the matter is we need a small school state tournament for hockey.  The growth of hockey, which should be at the heart of this discussion and the solution, is what matters most.  And there is no denying the positive impact a trip to Madison has on a community and its program.

I don’t agree with or like many of the changes we are seeing in the high school sports landscape over the past twenty years.  Open enrollment has significantly changed the game.  Some will view it as progress, I see the cup as half empty as loyalty, tradition and the value of perseverance continue to leak from the glass.  In spite of my disdain for these changes, it is clear to me that it is not 1997 anymore, and the one change high school hockey needs the most is a two class state tournament.  It is time to eschew magic numbers and the stale argument of a perceived symmetry in WIAA sports, which does not exist, and do the right thing for the game of hockey.

One thought—two divisions.

Dan Bauer is a free-lance writer, teacher & hockey coach in Wausau, WI.  You can contact him atdbauer@wausauschools.org.

 April 2016

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