April 27, 2023 at 8:05 a.m.
Edge co-op to dissolve, join Northland Pines
Edge co-op to dissolve, join Northland Pines
The WIAA Board of Control approved on Tuesday a co-op agreement that will see the Northern Edge co-op merge with the neighboring Northland Pines co-op for the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years.
The move comes as the Edge co-op - despite drawing from Rhinelander, Lakeland Union, Antigo, Three Lakes and Wabeno high schools - was in a position where it believed it would not have enough participants to field a team in 2023-24. After graduating five seniors from this year's squad, the Edge was projected to have only 10-12 skaters for the upcoming season.
"Our numbers are pretty low right now," said Brain Paulson, activities director at Rhinelander High School, which was the lead school in the Edge co-op. "To be sure these kids had a team and these girls had an opportunity to play - and try to play a full schedule on top of it - (we needed to co-op). It's one thing to play 12 games but some of these girls that want to play, their goal is to be able to have a full schedule. I think this way is the best way to give us the opportunity to have a full schedule, kids to be able to play and get a great opportunity to participate."
It also comes only four years after the Edge absorbed the Lakeland/Tomahawk co-op. Tomahawk subsequently bowed out, having a handful of girls play on its varsity boys' team instead, and Lakeland's girls participation has plummeted to the point where it is projected to have only one player on next year's roster - senior forward Taylor Heleniak.
"Hockey is a very skilled sport that is hard to just pick up and play," Lakeland activities director Emily Wisner told our sister paper, The Lakeland Times, this week. "We want to give our female student-athletes a ton of credit for going the extra mile to participate in practices and games. It shows their dedication to the sport."
The merger will come with the further loss of community identity for the schools that formed the Edge, which went 7-13-0 last season - including three wins over Northland Pines. The new co-op will retain the Northland Pines name, and the vast majority of practices and games will be staged at the Eagle River Sports Arena. Pines currently co-ops with a quartet of neighboring schools on the Wisconsin-U.P. border - Hurley, Ironwood, Mich., Wakefield-Marenisco, Mich., and Bessemer, Mich. - all located roughly 90 minutes from Eagle River. They will continue to do so in the new agreement.
Though the Eagles struggled mightily last year, posting a 1-19-0 record, outgoing Northland Pines activities director Josh Tilley indicated the co-op already had enough skaters for the 2023-24 season, without the addition of the Edge. Furthermore, Pines' numbers are likely to be bolstered in the future due to current strong girls' participation in the Eagle River Recreation Association youth program.
Because of that, Tilley said, Pines was insistent on maintaining its moniker and position as the lead school in the newly-merged co-op.
"Obviously the Edge was not excited about it but they also knew what else are they going to do," he said. "I wasn't trying to be a bully. I've got to look out for my community first, but I also want to help he surrounding communities by still allowing their girls to keep playing."
Tilley noted that while the majority of home games for the co-op will be played at the Eagle River Sports Arena, there could be possibilities for Antigo, Rhinelander or Lakeland to host in the event of scheduling conflicts. Citing an example, Tilley said the Western Wisconsin (Somerset) co-op is scheduled to play the Pines co-op Jan. 5, 2024 at the Lakeland Hawks Ice Arena in Minocqua. That game falls on a Friday night, when the Eagle River Sports Arena is typically booked either hosting the Wisconsin Windigo NAHL junior hockey team or the Eagle River Falcons adult amateur team.
According to Tilley, talks began with Paulson, Wisner and Antigo AD Tom Schofield around the first of the year about the potential of merging next season. Paulson indicated that he also had talks regarding joining forces with the Medford/Rib Lake co-op. Paulson said the Edge ADs "went to the possible final hour to exhaust all options" before ultimately agreeing to join Pines.
"What would Medford look like? We could co-op with Medford, but we may have to practice at Merrill, but if Medford wanted us to come all the way to Medford once a week, that's quite a ways to be able to go for the girls," he said. "Ultimately, myself and some other athletic directors and taking some advice from obviously some players that are going to be returning and their families, we explored all options."
According to Tilley, the plan was first reviewed by the Northland Pines school board in February and approved in March. Lakeland Union High School's school board signed off on the agreement during its March 27 meeting.
"The numbers are not there to be able to support it on our own any more," Wisner told the Lakeland board at that meeting. "We're looking to be able to provide hockey to our female athletes, and this is the way to do it."
Wisner stated at the meeting the Edge would have 12 skaters next season. However, she indicated this week to The Times that the team would have only 10 skaters - five from Rhinelander, three from Antigo and one each from Lakeland and Three Lakes. Paulson corroborated those numbers when contacted separately by the River News. Wabeno is slated to graduate its lone skater in the co-op, Kassidee Linssen, this spring.
The Edge is joining a Pines co-op that was projected, according to Wisner, to have 17 skaters next year - 12 from Pines, two each from Ironwood and Bessemer and one from Hurley.
Co-op applications for the 2023-24 winter sports season were due to the WIAA by April 1. Paulson told the River News the plan did not need the approval of Rhinelander's school board, though the board did sign off in 2019 when the Edge brought Lakeland and Tomahawk into the co-op.
According to Tilley and Paulson, the coaching structure for next year has not yet been finalized. Andrea Harman served as Pines' head coach last season. Northern Edge head coach Tom Roeser confirmed to the River News that, as previously indicated, he would not return to the bench next season. It is possible that some of Roeser's assistants could end up on Pines' staff, however.
For his part, Roeser said he was disappointed it has gotten to the point where the Edge co-op has dissolved.
"It's too bad something more fair couldn't have been worked out. Obviously, we don't have a bunch of cities up here. It's nice when you can travel a half hour and play games, but that's not the reality of it any more," he said. "So you really do need to start thinking about being competitive because you're going to travel and play games. You're going to be down in the Milwaukee area, Madison area, Viroqua, Hayward. You've got to combine these groups to be competitive. However, I think it would be nice if there was more equity within all the schools involved."
However one of Roeser's assistants, Brian Heleniak, told The Times there are positives to the merger.
"Creating a program here in the north to be able to compete with the teams with larger number of players was my main priority," he said. "We need options, we have always had just enough to play. This new co-op should allow us to provide a JV team as well as a varsity team."
The merger brings the number of WIAA girls' hockey programs in the state down to 27. Only one, Hudson, is a standalone program. The remaining 26 are co-ops, 24 of which include three or more schools. The new Pines co-op will have 10 schools and currently has a combined enrollment of 3,498 students, according to data from the WIAA and the MHSAA.
For the sake of comparison, the Bay Area co-op that won the 2022-23 WIAA girls' hockey state championship includes 11 schools in and around the Green Bay area with a combined enrollment of 12,715.
Tilley said the merger presents a double-whammy of sorts in terms of scheduling. Not only does Pines lose three games it had on its schedule by taking in the Edge, it loses potential home games with out-of-area teams that would typically play both Pines and the Edge during a weekend road trip.
"That's the struggle I'm running into right now, is trying to get people to play us," he said.
The merger also ends what was a 16-year run of a girls' hockey program emanating for the Rhinelander area. Rhinelander formed a standalone WIAA girls' hockey team that competed from the 2006-07 to the 2008-09 seasons. Antigo joined Rhinelander and the Northern Edge was created starting in the 2009-10 season.
"The hard part is just not being able to field that team right now," Paulson said. "That was a little bit of a pride factor there that we had to swallow and say we're going to have to join another co-op. That was tough but, at the end of the day, kids have an opportunity to compete."
Lakeland had its first WIAA-sanctioned girls' hockey team in 2008-09, and either was a standalone program, or co-oped with Mercer - a tiny school in southern Iron County - through the 2015-16 season. Lakeland and Mercer merged with Tomahawk after Tomahawk's standalone team folded prior to the 2016-17 season and then merged with the Edge prior to the 2019-20 season.
Like Rhinelander, Northland Pines began WIAA girls' hockey play in 2006-07 and remained a standalone program, despite some of the smallest enrollment numbers of any program in the state, until 2020-21 when it added Hurley, Ironwood and Bessemer.
The future of the co-op beyond the two-year agreement remains uncertain. Tilley said he holds out hope that the move could be temporary and that the Edge could be resurrected following this participation downturn.
"The ultimate thing is to help these schools get through a shortage," he said. "Honestly, I'd love to see everyone get their own, individual teams. I'd love see Lakeland have their own team, Rhinelander to have their own team. If you look at pie in the sky, it's not just going back to the Edge it's going back to every school having their own individual identity team."
However, Paulson said there would need to be assured long-term stability for both Northland Pines and the Edge if the two sides were to ever separate.
"If we're going to split apart, we better make sure we can sustain for a long time period, not just a year or two and then jump back into a co-op," he said.
Brett LaBore and Trevor Greene of The Lakeland Times contributed to this report from Minocqua.
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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