Maderia Activities Director Paul Carpenter said the consolidation of the Tomahawk Conference and Valley Conference, effective starting with the 2024-25 school year, began as a response to a decline in the number of schools in both conferences.
Sports played in the division are volleyball, boys and girls basketball, softball, and baseball.
Your division will be the conference you are currently participating in.
Cross country, track and field, wrestling and golf could be combined with other schools through a merger.
However, at the end of seasons such as basketball and baseball, championship games are held between the leaders of each division.
The Minnesota High School League allows extra games for that purpose.
“Both Valley and Tomahawk were losing their schools.” Carpenter said. “The Valley lost St. Clair and Lake Crystal Welcome Memorial because they were going to be in the brand new Class AA South Central Conference and Minnesota Valley Lutheran Church was also going to be in the new conference. Because he left Tomahawk in . [MVL] They thought it was in their best interest. ”
Carpenter said merger invitations were also sent out to Mountain Lake Area, Sibley East, Lesser-Henderson and United South Central.
“Butterfield-Odin is in the process of building its athletic programs to the varsity level.” Carpenter said. “So, there were actually quite a few offers to join the Valley. But Mr. Sibley East and Mr. LeSauer-Henderson also chose to join the new AA conference.”
Carpenter thought the Tomahawk Conference would have been more willing to accept a school closer to the Valley Conference.
“But we [Valley Conference] I didn’t want to completely disband.” He said. “We didn’t have many options, and they [Tomahawk] I was in the same situation. Our new conference is all Class A teams, plus Tomahawk/Valley is nearly all Section 2A schools in all sports. Additionally, there are already a number of crossover non-conference games in all sports. This was easy to implement and made sense in a way. ”
Carpenter said travel was initially an issue.
“We tried to make sure that travel wasn’t a big issue, so we took the existing schools in Tomahawk and Valley and separated them into their own divisions for certain sports, so we could have them within their own divisions. The concept was to travel only in the United States, so it would be integrated into a big megaconference for cross country, track, golf and wrestling.”
New Ulm Cathedral Activities Director Alan Wojtas said the Valley Conference is moving closer to the Tomahawk Conference, with fewer teams in certain sports.
“We had a similar need.” Wojtas said. “We thought it would be best for some of the athletes in these sports to have a little more teams in the conference.
“We and the MVL work together in track, but since we are no longer part of the Tomahawk Conference, we only had three track teams able to participate in conference competition. Adding Volleyball will increase the number of track teams. That’s doubled. In cross country, Sleepy Eye Public and St. Mary’s will be combined. In cross country, I think Springfield and Cedar Mountain may be combined. In this type of sport, teams There weren’t that many, but they haven’t been like that in the last few years, so we combined these activities with volleyball to give the kids a better experience and encourage them to compete in these sports. We felt we could do better.”
Wojtas said the Tomahawk Conference reached out to some area schools when MVL left, but there was no interest.
“There are some outlier schools where you don’t know where Lester Prairie will be placed.” He said. “They petitioned the high school league to join the conference. We should know within a week as to where they will be placed. They could potentially become members of this new conference.”
There are currently eight schools in Tomahawk and seven in the Valley.
“But the important thing to remember is that in basketball and baseball, we still play in the Tomahawk Conference. It’s not a huge impact.” Wojtas said. “Really, it just adds a crossover championship game between the two sides. But it gives us more flexibility to enhance the competition against other sports.
“The Tomahawk Conference has been strong for many years and will continue to be strong. That’s the goal.”