Speaking of Sports

by John Fragodt, Sports Reporter

The Minnewaska Area dance program started only 7-8 years ago, but already has earned four state berths.

I had listed in the paper two weeks ago that the Lakers missed out on a third-straight trip to state this year when they placed fourth in the High Kick and Jazz competitions at the Section 2A Meet.  

They actually were going after their fifth-straight trip!  The Minnewaska Area Jazz and High Kick teams advanced to state in 2021-22 and the Jazz team also went to state last year in 2022-23.  Well, I neglected to mention that both teams also advanced to state in 2020-21 when the High Kick team placed ninth at state and the Jazz team was 10th.  And, the team earned its first state berth when the Jazz team advanced to state in 2019-20, going on to place 12th at the state meet.

Congratulations to the Minnewaska Area dance teams, who certainly would have qualified to state this fall if they hadn’t switched sections this year to 2A, which happens to include the two state champions from this year in St. Cloud Cathedral and Holdingford.

•  Magic numbers in basketball — I’ve had the tendency since I started working at a newspaper to look for tendencies with numbers in sports.  In basketball, I started to notice if teams scored a certain amount of points, they tended to win more often and if they didn’t score that many, they tended to lose more often than not.  For the Minnewaska Area boys basketball team, the Lakers are 2-0 when scoring at least 67 points and 0-25 when they don’t.  For the Laker girls’ team, Minnewaska is 16-1 when scoring at least 54 points and 4-7 when it’s held under 54 points.

Just for the heck of it, I thought I’d try another couple of teams.  First, I tried the Morris Area-CA Tigers boys basketball team, which my son, Joey, is the B-squad coach for.  Looking at Morris, when the Tigers score 66 or more points, they are 15-1 and when they score 65 or less points they are 3-8.  The Tigers “magic number” is 66.  I thought I’d try two other teams.  The BOLD boys team is 14-1 when scoring at least 67 points and  0-11 when not and the West Central Area girls are 14-3 when scoring at least 55 points and 3-8 when not.

Yes, sometimes teams are so worried about the other team that they forget to just worry about themselves.  If they score enough points and hit their ‘magic number’, the wins will take care of themselves.

See if you can find the ‘magic number’ for some of your other favorite basketball teams.

•  Wild rally for victory during 17-goal game — The Minnesota Wild hockey team beat Vancouver two Monday nights ago, 10-7.  The Wild trailed 5-2 before scoring six-straight goals over a 5:45 span of the second and third periods.  That was the quickest any NHL team has scored six goals since 1999 when Washington scored six in a 4:47 span during a 10-1 victory.

Four of the goals came within  a span of 2:17 and the big thing is, it came against Vancouver, which was 37-14-6 at the time and is one of the best teams in the NHL.

The 10 goals set a Wild record and Joel Eriksson Ek and Kirill Kaprizov both tied a Wild record with six points on three goals and three assists.  In addition, the seven goals in the third period is also a team record and the 17 total goals in the game is a record.  The Wild were hot for a while, moving within a couple points of earning a playoff seed, but the team has lost three of its last four games to fall eight points back of the playoffs with about 20 games to go in the season.

•  Benson continues to try to get out of WCC — I just read an article where Benson High School has officially asked to get out of the West Central Conference.  The Braves were a charter member of the WCC along with Montevideo, Appleton, Litchfield, Glenwood and Morris over 80 years ago so this would be a big deal.  BHS has been trying to get out of the conference for several years, but has been unable to find a home.  The current plan is for the Braves to try and get into the Camden Conference, or if that doesn’t work out, the Braves might try to go with an independent schedule.

Among the possible teams to take over the spot of the Braves in the WCC could be KMS High School.

I worked at the Benson paper for 35 years and also covered KMS sports.  When I first started working at the paper, Benson was much bigger than KMS and some people even thought why wouldn’t the two school districts merge since KMS was so small.  Well, a decade or two later and BHS is the one that has slipped to Class A size, while KMS is now a Class AA school.  Wow!

The WCC has adjusted well to changes over the years so this will just be another change to overcome.  And, as I’ve pointed out before, the WCC doesn’t always refer to “West Central Conference”, but instead, it sometimes mean, “We’re Constantly Changing”. 

The WCC had 18 schools in 2008-09, but is now down to just seven.  ACGC was the most-recent school to leave the conference for the Central Minnesota Conference, but West Central Area was quick to jump in.

The current makeup of the WCC is Benson, BOLD, Morris, Montevideo, Minnewaska, Melrose, WCA and Sauk Centre.  Benson, BOLD and WCA are mostly Class A schools, while the other five are mostly Class AA.  

If you’re curious, here are 25 schools that have been in the WCC for at least one year since 1935-36 (and, I could possibly be missing some) — Morris, Montevideo, Benson, Paynesville, ACGC, Minnewaska, BOLD, LQP, YME, NLS, Albany, Foley, SC Cathedral,Sauk Centre, Melrose, Mora, LPGE, Milaca, Appleton, Glenwood, Litchfield, Willmar, Alexandria, BBE and Sartell.