It’s unanimous: Hutchinson changing leagues
Posted on January 28th, 2009 – 2:26 PMBy John Millea
The nine members of the Wright County Conference voted unanimously today to admit Hutchinson as a new member of the league, effective with the 2010-2011 school year. Hutchinson will leave the Missota Conference,
Hutchinson, which is one of the smallest schools in the Missota, will become the largest in the Wright County. Its enrollment of 875 students in grades nine through 12 ranked only above Red Wing (869) and Holy Angels (862) in the Missota.
Waconia is currently the biggest school in the Wright County Conference with 859 students. The smallest is Watertown-Mayer with 491.
“It’s going to be a great move and a great fit for us, and we’re excited,” Hutchinson athletic director Paul Szymanski told me a few minutes ago.
Hutchinson sought membership in the Wright County mainly for geographic reasons. The costs of traveling to the Wright County schools will be much less than the Missota.
18 Responses to "It’s unanimous: Hutchinson changing leagues"
Football just got a little easier in the Missota.
Finally! I never understood why Hutch was in the Missota. 80 miles to Farmington, 95 miles to Northfield, 120 miles to Red Wing. It was ridiculous! I’m a Farmington parent, and we HATED making the trip to Hutchinson, just because of the distance. I can only imagine how much they dreaded all their conference road games…
So is there talk of the Missota adding another school to replace Hutchinson? What about the Classic Lake schools?
How’s this for a new conference:
North/West Division: Hopkins, Wayzata, Edina, Minnetonka, Holy Angels
South/East Division: Farmington, New Prague, Shakopee, Prior Lake, Northfield, Red Wing
Are you crazy? I’m an Armstrong Alum and we had a tough time competing with Hopkins, Wayzata, Edina, and Minnetonka and our school is enormous compared to holy angels. Holy Angels would drown in that conference.
As for the future of the Missota, I talked to Missota executive secretary Tom Rolloff today. Here’s what he said:
“The other seven schools have stated they’re willing to go with a seven-team conference. Another thing that’s positive about the Missota is that if there are some other schools who come to us and say they’re interested, we would certainly be open to listening to them.”
Hint, hint … Chaska and Chanhassen might be future members of the Missota.
Sean, that will never happen. Hopkins, Wayzata, Edina and Minnetonka are 5A schools in football, the remaining missota teams are mostly 4A.
There would be way to many one sided games in many sports.
I still think the MSHSL is going to have to step in and place at least a couple of the Classic Lake schools in with current Lake conference schools.
Prior Lake, Shakopee, and Farmington are 5A. What should happen is those larger missota schools merge with the remaining classic lake schools, then new prague, northfield, and red wing join the big 9 and become the big 12, MN style.
If you don’t remember Chaska was apart of the Missota.There’s no way Chaska and Chan would go back to the Missota after leaving the conference back in 1994. The MSHSL has a lot a work ahead of them to change these conferences and put teams in the right spot.
We Hutch people hated the road trips as well! Loved the competetion but hated the drives. SO LONG MISSOTA! Now we need to change the name of the Wright County since like 2 teams actually reside in Wright County.
Something to remember about the MSHSL…it has no power to make changes in conference lineups. It can make suggestions, but that’s it. In this process involving Classic Lake schools, all the MSHSL can do is place those schools into existing leagues.
That is why it is vital for representatives from schools and conferences to study all the possibilities now. They need to think about creating a lineup of conferences which will have slots open for the Classic Lake schools.
If nothing happens, the MSHSL will just plop the Classic Lake schools into existing leagues, likely the Lake and Northwest Suburban.
Now, can we get rid of Red Wing?
Holy Angels will drown!! Good one!!
The current makeup of the North Suburban Conference with (8) Metro schools, Chisago Lakes, St. Francis and North Branch needs to be reassessed. Travel between the schools from North to South - West is absurd. A One hour+ trip at rush hour traffic to get to these sites is difficult. Mid-week games between these schools result in student athletes getting back home after 11:00 PM. No natural rivalries and no reason for these teams to be in the same conference, makes no sense at all. In basketball, home and away schedule means (20) conference games out of (26) total regular season games. Nothing against the (3) northern schools, just not a great fit for all schools involved.
To answer Sean, who asked why Hutch was in the Missota. If memory serves, Hutchinson, Shakopee and Chaska joined the Missota in 1990 when the old Suburban West Conference broke up. Those were by far the biggest three schools in the suburban west. (after Eden Prairie left). Benilde was in the MIssota at that time too, so there was more of a west-metro look to the conference than there is now.
A correction…I forgot that Buffalo was in the Suburban West also….They were bigger than those three at the time.
Red Wing will be happy to get rid of Hutch. It’s a 2 hour trip one way no matter how you cut it. I agree with Ralph, Red wing should join the Big 9 and call it the Big 12.
What about Watertown-Mayer how are they going to continue to compete especially in football. Is there any talk of them moving to the MRC? Holy Family would be a good fit in the Missota they are getting too big for the MRC anyway and will be 4A in football soon enough.
Holy Family and Watertown could switch conferences. Holy Family is not yet big enough for the Missota. It would be interesting, however, if they were to go to the MIssota, along with Chaska and Chanhassen, as rumored.
Also - is it time to rename the Wright County Conference? How about taking a “classic” approach and renaming it the Suburban West. Glencoe-Hutchinson-Waconia-Orono and I think Mound were all members of taht conference before it split up.
