April 18, 2018 at 1:14 p.m.
A fight for survival
With Rhinelander/Antigo girls' hockey co-op renewed, the race is on to fill roster
A fight for survival
The extension of the current co-op between Rhinelander, Antigo and Three Lakes high schools for girls' hockey, was unanimously approved by the School District of Rhinelander board of education Monday evening, one of the final hurdles it had to clear before becoming official for the next school year.
The WIAA Board of Control is set to approve the co-op at its monthly meeting next Tuesday.
Concerns had been raised over the status of the co-op, with only nine to 11 skaters projected to compete next season between Rhinelander and Antigo. Though part of the co-op, Three Lakes has not supplied a skater for several years.
Earlier this month, RHS activities director Brian Paulson told the district's operations and strategic planning committee that, due to the team's lack of numbers, he approached Lakeland AD Don Scharbarth about potentially joining forces with the Lakeland/Tomahawk co-op but was turned down because Lakeland is satisfied with the number of skaters it has for next season.
"I'm not comfortable with that number and that's why I reached out to Lakeland and Tomahawk," Paulson said after the committee meeting. "I was not comfortable with the low numbers because, after talking to the WIAA if it comes next October and for some reason I have only six girls sitting in front of me, we cannot co-op with another girls' team at that point, because of the deadline and they cannot play on the boys' team because, technically, we already sent our co-op in."
Northern Edge coach Kevin Sandstrom, who on multiple occasions has spoken against disbanding the Rhinelander/Antigo partnership to join a larger co-op, said the work was already underway to bolster numbers for next season and continues now, in earnest, now that it's clear there will not be a merger with another program.
"With the right people and the right work, (I'm) very confident," he said, referring to the team's ability to field a sustainable roster next season. "Now that we are in that dire situation it seems like the people are coming out (to help grow the numbers) much more than they were. Which is great, which is what we needed and what we definitely need right now."
Building the roster
The Northern Edge had 15 skaters on the roster this season, but is set to graduate six seniors, with only one or two freshmen projected to join the program in 2018-19.
Sandstrom said 11 skaters is the minimum he would be comfortable with fielding a team. Due to injuries during the middle portion of this past season, the Edge was forced to skate with only 11 healthy players at times.
"I think 15 is the number with what you want to shoot for," he said. "You can survive with 11 but you risk, look at Tomahawk three years ago, they forfeited their game to us (due to a lack of players)."
Sandstrom said the answer to build the numbers is through recruiting, both current high schoolers at RHS and AHS, plus current eighth graders who may have an interest in the sport. He said he will make sure the girls' hockey team is represented at next month's activities fair at James Williams Middle School where eighth graders are exposed to sports and club opportunities available to them at RHS. He also said he hopes to use the ice time available to the team in late June at the Rhinelander Ice Arena to drum up a few players.
It's possible that any new recruits to the team may have little to no skating or hockey experience.
"You can make that work," Sandstrom said. "There's a lot of learning they're going to have to do, but we're going to have something in place where they'll learn quickly, they'll learn fast. Are they going to get anywhere near (our top players') skill level by the end of the year? Absolutely not. Are they going to be a body so that we have a team to play for? Yes. Who knows, they might find a passion and desire and you might take a girl as a freshman - again I can look at someone like my sister (former Edge defender Marie Sandstrom) who had maybe six total goals from freshman, sophomore and junior year - to someone who exceeded that total her senior year."
Maybe next year?
The reason Lakeland/Tomahawk does not want to co-op is a simple numbers game, according to Scharbarth.
"We have more than enough girls right now," he told a Lakeland Times reporter. "We don't want to get to the point where we bring 10 more girls over here and now Lakeland girls are sitting on the bench because we now have a team of 20, 24 kids."
Another reason not to co-op is to keep the Great Northern Conference alive. The GNC had eight teams - roughly a quarter of the teams that sponsor girls' hockey in the state - only a few short seasons ago but soon the Central Wisconsin (Mosinee/Wausau West/Wausau East/D.C. Everest) co-op and the Point/Rapids co-op left, Marshfield and Waupaca's programs were absorbed into Point/Rapids (rebranded as Wisconsin Valley Union) and Lakeland and Tomahawk merged.
Now the GNC has only four programs. A merger between the Northern Edge and Lakeland/Tomahawk would drop that number to three and force the conference to disband, according to both Scharbarth and Paulson.
"Teams don't want to co-op with us because we would lose the conference," Paulson said. "That conference trophy that Lakeland/Tomahawk has to defend next year, they're proud of that. It's their first one ever. Rightfully, they should be proud of it."
However, this solution may be only temporary. Lakeland/Tomahawk's numbers are expected to take a hit after next season due to graduation while Rhinelander/Antigo's numbers are expected to plateau with four players from the Rhinelander Ice Association youth ranks projected to join the team as incoming ninth graders in 2019-20.
"We're going to play it year-by-year," Scharbarth said. "My thought is next year (2019-20), if are numbers are as low as possibly projected, we may very well be part of a large co-op."
Sandstrom, meanwhile, called it a window of opportunity for both programs to do everything in their power to keep their current identity.
"The idea is that we'd put something in place to have it increase, and Lakeland would do the same thing, knowing that they're going to have the same problem a year from now," he said.
A sinking ship
While the trend of late has been for co-ops to merge as numbers across the state for girls' hockey dwindle, Sandstrom said he wants to do everything in his power to keep that from happening to Rhinelander and Antigo, adding that forming large co-operative programs of sometime in excess of 10 schools flies in the face of the meaning of high school sports.
"It's an extension of the classroom and the community," he said. "When you create a super co-op, there's no extension of community. It's extension of competition."
He's not the only one with that view. In discussing the co-op proposal, operations and strategic planning chair Mike Roberts said large co-ops are detrimental to the sport.
"For the record, I'm against those super co-ops because I think, in the long run, it limits participation for exactly that reason," he said. "You end up with just the best players in those areas playing instead of everybody who wants to."
"The more schools that co-op, sometimes that leads to only the elite girls playing because they're willing to travel the distance to all the practice sites," Paulson added. "A lot of teams are upset about these super co-ops, but the WIAA on the other side says that's up to the school administration in your area to decide, that's not up to (the WIAA). That's what we're fighting right now."
There are only a handful of exceptions. Only four standalone programs remain statewide - Northland Pines, Medford, Hudson and Superior. Even though they have a co-op, Lakeland/Tomahawk and Rhinelander/Antigo were among the smallest third of programs in the state, based on total enrollment, during the 2016-17 season.
"We're the last ones on the boat is sinking," Sandstrom said of resisting the urge to merge the co-ops. "Everyone else jumped off a long time ago. Now we're just kind of standing on the mast as the rest of the boat has already gone below the water. I'll stay on that boat as long as I could because I think it's the right boat."
Nick Sabato of the Lakeland Times contributed to this story. Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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