Last Updated on Wednesday, 22 October 2014 15:52
By Kevin Hartzell
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist
Being out at the Elite League a weekend ago, I again heard a lot of discussion about the status of high school hockey in our state. This discussion has been raging for many years now. With the 40-plus players skipping some part of their high school career, what is the effect on the high school game? Everyone seems to have an opinion. I have heard a wide variety of opinions from pro and junior scouts, and high school coaches themselves. I really don’t think there is much of a consensus out there.
My opinion is what it has always been. High school hockey is good and even great for the vast majority of its participants. I have always looked at it a bit different from what I seem to hear and read from others. Much of my thought comes from my own high school experience.
There is no question that as a student at the old St. Paul Washington high school, I was exactly where I needed to be. I was lucky to be part of a high school that allowed me to play numerous sports. For a while, I played football, baseball and hockey, eventually – being as undersized as I was – giving up football. I was becoming interested in golf in high school and would have loved to add that to my competitive schedule had it not conflicted with baseball. In hindsight, I wished I had participated in even more activities, especially outside of competitive sports.
Bottom line for me, I was afforded the opportunity to compete in more than one sport. While I had the most skill and ability in baseball, I loved hockey the most. The high school system allowed me to play more than one sport and continue to grow physically and emotionally, both socially and athletically in what was a relatively tight Rice Street community that looked out for its own.
I remember debating Herb Brooks back in a day who was advocating for more games to be played in high school hockey. I remember sharing with him that I thought the high school system also had to be careful about playing too many games because multiple sport athletes needed to not get too heavy into one sport over another. I thought then and I think now it is one of the real strengths of the high school experience. And not just for sports ... students also have time to participate in theater or some other extracurricular activity as well.
The first few years of the Elite League when I was coaching, it was a new conflict of sorts when we had players wishing to miss Elite hockey weekends for homecoming dances. We had discussions about how such events affected the Elite League. I was most often on the side of the players. The reason many were in the Elite League and not somewhere else was so they could engage in the total high school experience … and that included homecoming dances.
During my high school years I wasn’t ready to leave home or play a sport at a level beyond high school. Each high school year brought new challenges that I had not yet met. I could have chosen baseball as that is where my scholarship offers were coming from. But my hockey ability was growing as well. It was the perfect system for me. And junior hockey was also the perfect opportunity for me beyond high school. I needed both as do most of our young student athletes.
Now when I watch high school, which has not been a lot in the past couple of years, I see the same challenge and benefits for the vast majority of players. Our high school system continues to allow its participants the opportunity to grow in many ways, both within their respective sports as well as socially. It is one of the great strengths of our Minnesota high school system and we ought to always be appreciative of it. We ought to continue to sing its praises!
I know there are some who don’t know how much I believe in the high school system. I say the same thing year after year; that the high school system we have serves 98 percent of its participants beautifully. I would however suggest that those in the high school system collectively embrace more warmly even those few players who want to leave high school early for juniors or midget. There are a minority of players who are best served with new challenges and we ought to celebrate them as well. We should make them part of our story of success … not talk about these 40-plus players or the leagues that recruit them as some kind of problem within the system.
Let’s turn that around to a story of success that our system prepared these players and many more that stay the course during their high school years for uniquely higher levels of play. That is great and all these success in high school and beyond are part of a uniquely wonderful development model that I believe is one of the best in the world.
Kevin Hartzell was most recently the head coach of Lillehammer in Norway’s GET-Ligaen. A St. Paul native and forward for the University of Minnesota from 1978-82, Hartzell coached in the USHL from 1983-89 with the St. Paul Vulcans and from 2005-12 with the Sioux Falls Stampede. His columns have appeared in Let’s Play Hockey since the late 1980s.
