Author Archives: karlschuettler

The Strange Case of Achiever Academy

Every hockey season, it seems like there is at least one huge event that momentarily overwhelms every other story, and turns my duties on the forum into a full-time job. Whether it’s as serious as a paralyzing injury or as laughable as a team’s self-pitying backup goalie scoring on his own net before skating off the ice and flipping off his coach, something happens every year that just makes us stop and ponder it all. This season’s catalyst is the girls’ hockey team at Achiever Academy, an inanely-named, Twin Cities-based private school.

Achiever Academy, for those of you not following along, is a new player on the state high school scene. In fact, it looks nothing like any other high school with a hockey program in the state. It is a sports training academy that is attached to an accredited online high school. It offers training in multiple sports, though its flagship operation is in hockey. It is now in its second season fielding a boys’ varsity hockey team in the Minnesota State High School League, and added a girls’ team this season.

If you are not caught up in the hockey world, this may seem preposterous to you. It might seem like a thin cover for overzealous parents who toss aside academics out of their obsession with a sport. Plenty of hockey people had similar reactions, or at least raised their eyebrows. Achiever’s decision to join the MSHSL in particular came under scrutiny; as a year-round training program, they were certainly tiptoeing around the rules that clearly establish school sports seasons. As a school that drew in players from out of state, it seemed a bit odd that they were matching up with small-town public and tiny private school hockey programs in Class A, where some schools struggle to even field a team. The schooling method was naturally the subject of some derision, and charges of recruiting followed as well.

I had misgivings, but I figured the school deserved a chance. I’m very skeptical of online education—I’m young enough that I’ve had online components to a number of my classes in school, and I could count the number of times I found it genuinely enriching or comparable to a classroom experience on an amputated hand—but I think it can be of great use to kids who struggle in normal classroom settings, and indeed I heard at least one good story about a kid who was getting his getting his academic life back in order thanks to Achiever. Still, rumors about the academic program persisted, and as the season went along, it became clear that academics were only the tip of the iceberg.

Things started going sour in January, when it came out that Achiever’s financial state was far less stable than it was letting on. Their plan to purchase a financially troubled Vadnais Heights arena fell through, and the school teetered on the brink. It was rescued at the last second by a parent with deep pockets, who bought out the original owners. Several of the school’s sites around the Metro area were shuttered as the school consolidated.

On the ice, Achiever’s teams had their ups and downs. The boys’ team has been passably good; they’re not among the favorites to win their section, but they’re not totally out of the picture either, despite having to weather the departure of a couple of their players for other hockey opportunities. The girls, on the other hand, beat a number of the top teams in the state, climbed up to #4 in the end-of-regular-season Let’s Play Hockey poll, and were odds-on favorites for a State Tournament berth. They cruised through the first two rounds of the playoffs, and were set for a section final showdown with St. Paul United.

They never got to play in that game. At least six girls on the team, it turned out, were ineligible. They have forfeited their entire season.

The ensuing scandal has rocked the hockey world, with a fair amount of vindictive glee on the part of Achiever’s critics. Most of the blame lands on the Achiever administration, coaching staff, and the parents of the ineligible players: with such widespread ineligibility, it clear this was a concerted effort to flaunt the rules, not an honest mistake. It is sad for the Achiever girls who did follow the rules—some, it is rumored, were ready to walk off the team in protest ahead of the section final when they learned they’d been scammed, but before the forfeiture became  formal—but everyone else, the sentiment goes, got what was coming to them all season long.

The MSHSL is in a bit of a bind here. In most matters they expect schools to self-report issues, as they should: they are much closer to the situations, and most activities directors aren’t in the business of sabotaging its mission. It doesn’t have the resources to investigate every single player, and it might be intrusive to give it such power. But in this case, catching the culprits required an anonymous vigilante rummaging around for the girls’ residency statuses and combing through their social media accounts. And while there were rumors all season long, and I expect to learn more in the coming weeks, the timing is a bit suspect as well. One wonders if the investigation would have gone anywhere had Achiever been a mediocre team, instead of a state title contender. It’s a troubling situation, and with online education only growing, this issue will likely dog the MSHSL in the coming years. (It already happened in soccer two years ago, with the similar Prairie Seeds Academy.)

Achiever hasn’t exactly been humbled by the proceedings, either. This past week, they announced plans to pursue legal action against Minnesota Hockey, which bars the formation of U.S. Hockey-sanctioned Tier I youth teams so as to protect the state’s community-based model. This brings into the open the presumed mission of this organization from the day of their foundation: the creation of a special program focused on the truly elite players in the state, one that puts hockey above all else in life, and focuses on national and international competition for the select few. Any noble intentions the Achiever founders may ever have had are long gone, and they are left waging an ideological war against the Minnesota hockey model, using the dreams of children as their weapon. Fortunately for the model, they’re doing a rather awful job of it, though I doubt that will keep them from digging in their heels and fighting on and on.

This isn’t to say that the Minnesota model is without its flaws; most of us have our critiques, and there will always be a space for outside organizations to fill the gaps that Minnesota Hockey and its affiliates cannot. Those affiliates, however, are much better served if they try to form a cooperative relationship with Minnesota Hockey and the MSHSL, or at the very least coexist, as Bernie McBain’s Edina-based Minnesota Made program usually manages to do. (Usually.) Achiever, on the other hand, took it a bridge too far, and is learning why the torch-and-pitchfork method of revolution has never been much of a winner.

Questions on the Duluth’s 2nd District City Council Appointment

The Duluth City Council’s 2nd District vacancy drama took another twist on Wednesday night. It turns out that, according to FairVote Minnesota, the Council erred when it declared Joel Sipress the winner of the vote to fill the seat. The News-Tribune has the details here. I have a bunch of questions.

Joel Sipress took an oath of office. Isn’t that a binding action?

This is a procedural question, but it’s worth asking. Sipress said the right thing in the News Tribune article, and said he’d let the other eight Councilors decide his fate. But now that he’s actually part of the Council, can they legally do that? Without consulting the Charter, I would think that he’d need to resign his post for that to move forward. If this isn’t the case, that is a weird loophole: conceivably, the Council could revisit the appointment of a Councilor at any time, and on a whim. This isn’t like a decision to revisit some random resolution; it’s about a man who is, rightly or wrongly, a member of their Council now, and that leads into my next question.

Might not “revisiting the matter” only politicize it?

The two Councilors quoted in the DNT, it is worth noting, did not support Sipress. I trust their motives, and I would think most people would agree there was something deeply flawed with what happened on Monday. Still, if some of the Sipress supporters don’t think the matter should be revisited, it would be very easy for both sides to claim the other side is playing politics, rightly or wrongly. While it only takes a simple majority to revisit the issue, I would argue the Council needs at least 7 votes in favor of revisiting the appointment to legitimize the process. If there is concerted opposition to revisiting the matter, it will only make an ugly process look uglier.

If the Council revisits the appointment, how does it avoid ending up with the exact same deadlock?

In the DNT piece, Councilor Julsrud said the Council should vote anew on its three finalists. Does anyone actually think that anyone will change their mind? Won’t we just end up in the exact same place we were on Monday night? Unless they all know that one of their number has had a change of heart, I don’t see this ending well at all.

The alternative that might—possibly—break the deadlock would be to start the process anew and take applications and conduct interviews again. Even that would carry the threat of a similar outcome, though.

How quickly can the Council change the City Charter to allow for a special election?

If we’ve learned anything from the past few months, it’s this: the Council’s attempts to appoint replacement Councilors have been unqualified disasters. An otherwise thoroughly competent and professional Council has been made to look silly twice. No amount of fine-tuning the process will fix this. The problem isn’t with the process. It’s with the very premise. Eight people should not be deciding who represents a district of over 15,000. The people of District 2 need to elect their own Councilors.

The obvious long-term solution here—as several Councilors readily acknowledged on Monday night—is a change to the City Charter to allow for a special election. They need to make it happen, and as quickly as possible. If they are worried about making a post hoc change, Councilor Sipress could conceivably remain on the Council (while ideally abstaining from everything) before resigning once the changes have been made. That would require his cooperation, but I think it’s the most sensible way forward.

What is FairVote Minnesota’s role here, and where’s the accountability?

This is a bit of an aside, but it should be mentioned: the statement from Jeanne Massey of FairVote Minnesota in the News Tribune claims that “the Duluth City Council deviated from the prescribed process” for ranked choice (IRV) elections. The Council arrived at its process, however, after consultation with people at FairVote Minnesota. This would seem to suggest that someone at FairVote Minnesota erred, and the organization should probably own that mistake.

FairVote Minnesota also claims it is “not attached to the outcome” of the vote. If this is the case, why were the City Clerk and the City Attorney calling them? The city needs to figure out what its relationship with this organization is, and should obviously not be relying on them for legal opinions if the organization does not purport to offer them.

That’s enough for now. I welcome comments, replies, and further questions…we need to sort out this mess as quickly as possible.

The Delights of Instant Runoff Voting, Plus Minimum Wage Debate: Duluth City Council Notes, 2/10/14

The Duluth City Council kicked off its business two hours early on Monday night, as it sought to fill the 2nd District seat vacated by Patrick Boyle, now of the St. Louis County Board. The Council had narrowed a field of ten applicants down to three, and brought those three before them for a second interview. Councilor Gardner, the chair of the Personnel Committee, oversaw the proceedings.

The three finalists were Ms. Kathy Heltzer, Ms. Angie Miller, and Mr. Joel Sipress. The results from the first round suggested it would be a tight race, with three first-place votes for Ms. Heltzer and Mr. Sipress, plus one for Ms. Miller, who is probably the best-known of the group; she recently completed a four-month interim term on the County Board in the stead of her late husband, Steve O’Neil. All three appeared reliably liberal, which—worries about Council uniformity aside—seemed in keeping with the intentions of the voters of District 2, who had re-elected the unopposed liberal Councilor Boyle last November.

The process was messy from the start, as the Councilors invited the three candidates up to the table to take a few questions. Four Councilors asked questions relating to the role of councilors, dealing with land use disputes, availability to constituents, and the most pressing issue facing the city (along with a solution). Instead of asking the candidates the same questions at once and rotating the person to first take the questions, they asked each individual all four questions in succession. Predictably, the first candidate to answer, Ms. Miller, was somewhat vague and stumbled through the questions, while Mr. Sipress, who went last, had plenty of time to think up precise answers and build off of what the first two had said. He was exacting and meticulous, citing the city charter in his responses on Councilor roles, and did not dither with multiple issues facing the city as the other two did. Still, it wasn’t hard to see the appeal in Ms. Heltzer, who also had very clear and sensible answers, and all three appeared thoroughly competent and had fairly similar answers. It appeared the vote would come down to the two who hadn’t supported Sipress or Heltzer in the first round, Councilors Fosle and Julsrud.

Without bothering to explain their choices, the Councilors went into the voting. The City Clerk, Mr. Cox claimed the form was “a little zealous” with its many columns for votes, but in the end, the form was rather sensible. The first vote failed to achieve a 5-vote majority, with 4 votes for Sipress (Filipovich, Fosle, Gardner, Hanson), 3 for Heltzer (Krug, Larson, Russ), and 1 for Miller (Julsrud). And so there was a second round, in which Councilor Julsrud switched her vote to Heltzer, leaving the Council deadlocked.

The Council then proceeded through two more rounds of voting, but no one blinked. It was a tedious process, with the Councilors finding humorous ways to fill the time as Mr. Cox tabulated the votes. Councilor Hanson told a bad joke, while President Krug plugged a few press conferences she’d attended; the Olympics got a mention, as did the anniversary of the Beatles appearing on the Ed Sullivan show, which had Councilor Russ reminiscing on the time she went to see them in Milwaukee in 1964, when she was 14. (She couldn’t hear a thing.) Councilor Garnder had everyone running for cover when she threatened to give a history of the councilor appointment process.

With no decision in four rounds of simple majority vote, the Council moved to an instant runoff vote (IRV; also known as ranked-choice voting, or RCV). This is a process in which voters rank candidates in accordance to their preference; the lowest vote-getter is eliminated, and people who voted for that person have their votes transferred to their second choice, and so on until the process produces a winner with the majority. The immediate question is why the Council didn’t just use IRV to begin with; the first round would have produced the same result as a majority vote, and would have spared us several rounds of electoral games of chicken. Moreover, now that the Councilors had been through four rounds of voting and knew where everyone else stood, they predictably voted strategically, as everyone who ranked all three put their top choice at #1, Ms. Miller at #2, and the other contender tied for first at #3. Once again, Sipress and Heltzer each had 4 votes. Of course, this could have happened had they done IRV at the start of the process (as I think would have been more logical–why use it only as a backup?), but there’s at least a chance that the second-place votes might have been a bit less strategic and more reflective of the actual order in each person’s mind. (Forgive my cynicism, but I doubt that every single one of them thought Miller should have been #2.)

But wait! There was more confusion. Despite Mr. Cox’s insistence that everyone should rank all three, not everyone did: Councilors Fosle, Hanson, and Julsrud only ranked their top choice, and left the rest of their ballots blank. This meant that Sipress had three third-place votes, while Heltzer only had two. There was some confusion over whether this apparent technicality really could swing the vote, so Mr. Cox and Attorney Johnson retreated to a back office and called an IRV expert at Fair Vote Minnesota for a ruling. (This is where I slip in my obnoxiously pompous comment to say that there was someone in the room who learned the details of IRV as a political science undergrad and knew what the correct interpretation was, but I suppose I’m not exactly qualified to issue a ruling on this sort of thing.)

At this point, President Krug suspended the special meeting so that the poor men from the steam plant, patiently waiting in back, could come forward for their Committee of the Whole report. The Council plowed straight on into the regular meeting, and was halfway through the citizen speakers when Mr. Cox finally emerged with a verdict: Mr. Sipress’s extra third-place vote was enough to get him the last spot on the Council. (Under standard IRV this is not correct…see the follow-up posts for more.) He took his oath and assumed Councilor Boyle’s empty seat.

Despite the bizarre tiebreaker, no one protested much; everyone just seemed relieved to arrive at a resolution. Councilor Hanson was all for violating the charter and having a special election to fill the seat; Councilor Gardner told him they couldn’t do that, and worried it might come to a coin toss at one point. This idea repulsed President Krug, though there was consensus that, after two straight messy Council appointments, a change to the city charter appears necessary. In a case such as this one, with nearly two full years until the next Council election, a special election seems by far the most sensible choice; as frustrating as it may be to constituents, in short-term cases such as the one this past fall, it may make more sense just to leave seats vacant. This is one case in which the stakes are high enough that no process at all may be better than a bad process. At any rate, this process did—stumblingly, haltingly—deliver the candidate I considered most qualified, based on the brief interview I saw.

***

The meeting itself breezed by. Among the citizen speakers, Ms. Alison Clark was back to again demand the construction of the Lakewalk around Beacon Pointe, while a man told a long story of bureaucratic red tape surrounding his fire-damaged home, which Councilor Gardner and CAO Montgomery offered to look into, if only to find some resolution. Former Councilor Boyle came forward to reflect a bit on his four-plus years on the Council, talked about how far the city had come since 2009, and offered continued support from his new position across the way in the St. Louis County Building.

The only issue on the agenda to generate any debate at all was a resolution supporting a statewide push to raise the minimum wage. There were single speakers for and against the resolution, and Councilor Gardner mustered a reply to the critic of the measure. She cited polls suggesting 70 percent support for an increase and explained that giving poor people money was a sure way to get the money back into the economy, as they’d spend it on fairly basic needs. She noted that wages have been stagnant despite increased productivity over the past thirty years, and said the measure was important despite its symbolic nature, as it started a conversation and showed the Council’s priorities. Most of the rest of the Council, flexing its liberal muscles, repeated her points, with a few additions: Councilor Larson explained that the proposal would index the minimum wage to inflation so as to prevent drastic shifts, and Councilor Sipress suggested that higher a minimum wage would help taxpayers, as it would lessen stress on government safety nets.

As expected, Councilor Fosle was the lone dissenter; he proudly claimed the conservative mantel and worried that the measure would backfire, and have an especially heavy effect on people on fixed income who might not be getting more money relative to inflation. Councilor Gardner countered this claim, saying people on fixed income have seen more adjustments for inflation over the past 30 years than people working minimum wage jobs. After President Krug’s endorsement of the resolution as a judicious use of symbolic resolutions, it passed, 8-1. The Council wrapped up its business with a few minor ordinances that passed unanimously, and everyone welcomed Councilor Sipress to the fold. He will, hopefully, be the last Duluth City Councilor appointed by his peers, and not chosen by voters.

Why We Travel

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, my winter reading in Duluth often involves adventure stories set in places that are not currently buried in snow. As this winter has been a particularly harsh one, my impulse for vicarious travel has only grown stronger. And so the three works of non-fiction I’ve read over the past month (plus a work of fiction, though I’ll leave that out for now) take place nowhere near an iced-over Lake Superior.

The first book was The Lost City of Z by David Grann, and it’s the sort of book that made me think I was born a hundred years too late. It’s the story of a British explorer who fulfills many of my childhood fantasies in his explorations of the Amazon for the Royal Geographic Society. It was an era of glamour in mapping and exploration, with genteel Brits trotting about the globe to its empty spaces and painstakingly mapping them, risking life and limb to do ethnographies on previously uncontacted tribes. Nowadays, geographers sit fly over things in planes or around in front of computers, and we’re rather lacking in untouched earthly frontiers. Even as we read the words, it’s hard to process the fact that it isn’t one great big romantic adventure: the hero of the book, Colonel Percy H. Fawcett, became consumed by his search for the mythical city of Z, and vanished without a trace into the jungle. We all want to be adventurers, but we also want to be the ones who came back, and it would be nice if we got a book deal out of it, too.

Next, I read a book by the closest thing to a modern-day Fawcett out there: Shadow of the Silk Road, a mid-00s travelogue by Colin Thubron, a Brit who set out to trace the old trade route from China west to the shores of the Mediterranean. It is perhaps the best travel book I’ve ever read, beautifully crafted and overflowing with sharp insights about the people the author meets on his adventures through Central Asia. Like his predecessors, Thubron aims to see the world as it is, but for entirely different reasons: he has no aspersions of fame and riches, nor does he see himself as the vanguard of the civilized world, venturing into the backlands to establish contact and pave the way for future discovery (or perhaps colonization). While there are a few moments of self-examination, with Thubron speaking to an imagined Sythian trader trying to understand why he has undertaken his journey, his story takes a back seat to his exquisite observation skills.

And so his readers are given windows into the souls of the nations he visits. Central China, modernized in stunning fashion over the previous two decades, with questions emerging as to what comes next. The ethnic Uighur Chinese province of Xinjiang, its people clinging to a fading identity as waves of Han Chinese migrants pour in, with only a few outposts of culture left. The former Soviet Stans, populated by people without a history, their ethnicity invented by the Soviets and new national myths manufactured to hold it all together, uniting all on the surface but failing to pull at the nomadic core beneath. Afghanistan, crippled by war, thus rendered even more fractured and tribal. The Iranians, so fearful of Western smut yet disdainful of their authoritarian regime, the myths of the mullahs long dead. The Kurds, brashly proclaiming their identity at one moment, but beaten into submission when among their Turkish overlords. In the end, Thubron finally comes to the Mediterranean coast near Antioch, alone, and his return to the West is no homecoming: instead, the dark clouds remind him only of his restlessness, his reality as a wandering soul unable to find home in any single place. He can dabble in any place, visit old friends in China or Uzbekistan, share in a delightful night of vodka and yogurt in Kyrgyzstan, but he is still some other, forever the solitary soul on his lonely path.

The lonely path is a theme in my last book as well, A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. Bryson’s infectious humor dominates every page, and as an out-of-shape recent returnee to the United States, he’s among the least likely hikers of the Appalachian Trail. Yet he endures long marches up and down mountains through brutal weather, mocking his fellow hikers and Americans in general with his delicious snark. He celebrates the environment preserved along the route, yet maintains a certain distance from the solitude of the Trail, and he captures the contradictory relationship so many wilderness adventurers have with their surroundings. I can relate completely. I go hiking or canoeing just about every summer, and the actual experience usually involves a lot of grumbling about why we’re abandoning our comfy beds to exert ourselves and do all these chores in the woods. I’ll admit it, I’m hardly an outdoorsman; my trips are rarely more than a long weekend, and I possess an unfortunate talent for staying awake all night for no good reason when sequestered in a tent. But yet, somehow, the trips are always a delight in retrospect, and memories of blissful afternoons in a hammock or staring at the stars through a tent screen always overpower those of the sleepless nights.

That’s how travel works. Every now and then, we have moments where we become truly aware of our surroundings—moments when we realize that This Is Water—but for the most part, our perceptions of things are either formed in anticipation or in memory, not in the moment. I’ve read that the process of planning a trip is often more pleasurable than the trip itself; it’s the idea of what is going to happen that captures our minds. After the trip is over, our memories pull out the most distinct moments and give them extra meaning. That’s what makes travel so powerful, for good or ill: it is so obviously a break from the monotony of daily life that it can’t help but be significant, especially for those of us whose minds are often racing into the future or lingering on the past.

There’s an underlying theme in all of these books: a sense of loss, a fear that these places are slowly being stripped of their novelty. Fawcett-esque adventurers would be laughable nowadays, and much of the Amazon he once explored is now open farmland. Thubron watches any number of people try to square their past with the march of modernity and development, whether in Chinese or Western form; most everyone thinks something is being lost, but the material gains are so great and often so necessary that no one is going to stop the process. Despite his love-hate relationship with the wilderness, Bryson fears its destruction at every turn, and is careful to educate his readers about environmental policy decisions on and around the Appalachian Trail. On the most basic level, they all fear the same thing: sameness. They worry that the world will lose some of those contours that interrupt an often numbing plain, a repetition of events that one cannot rise above—or sink below—in order to gain perspective.

That perspective is essential, and it’s why I’ll continue to go on journeys, either on my own or through the words of other people. Some journeys must be undertaken alone, and no two travel companions will come away from an adventure with the exact same conclusions. As the old cliché goes, life is a journey, and there is freedom and power to be found in taking up the mantel of the adventurer: one sets one’s own pace, keeps a record of the sights, and charts a course through the unknown.

It isn’t that easy, though. The best example of that might come from one of the most famous adventurers of all time, Don Quixote. The popular image of Don Quixote celebrates him as a knight errant, boldly going off and chasing the impossible dream. It’s admirable, to an extent. But at the end of the book, the protagonist comes home from his journey, and concedes that he never was the hero he claimed to be. We can only invent so much, and if travel becomes routine, then it too becomes a lie, a false reality from which we cannot see the contours. Life is not a progression from point A to point B; it is a cycle, in and out, forward and back, requiring both spontaneity in the moment and the cold remove of distance. This is why travel stories make such good books: they allow for plenty of both. But it can’t all be vicarious. We need to go live it too, if only for a little while. That little spark makes all the difference.

Two Losses in February

The regular season is coming down to the wire, and it’s been an adventurous week for the Duluth East boys’ hockey team. The Hounds lost back-to-back games for the first time since 2010, both by one goal, though the situations couldn’t have been more different.

Monday’s loss to archrival Cloquet was a blow to a team that rarely loses to local competition. The Hounds had won 12 straight against the Lumberjacks since a 2008 playoff upset, and while there has been a gulf in talent between the two teams for most of the years since, Cloquet usually played well enough to manage at least one reasonably tight game per season over that stretch. Cloquet coach Dave Esse’s strategy was a straightforward one, but not one that is always easy to pull off with a group of middling high school players: they trapped the Hounds, packed it in, and did all they could to slow up the East attack. They successfully turned the game into a snooze-fest, clogging the neutral zone with bodies and lulling a packed Heritage Center to sleep, but keeping East from adding to an early 1-0 lead. All it took was a single odd-man rush for the Jacks to tie the game, and momentum did the rest. Cloquet, fired up at a chance to beat East, withstood a late Hounds push and escaped with the 2-1 win.

On Thursday night, it was an entirely different story, as top-ranked Lakeville North came to town. This time the Hounds got off to an inauspicious start, as the North top line of the three Poehling brothers struck seventeen second in, and again midway through the first period. After that, though, the Hounds gathered themselves, went back to work, and played North at least even for the better part of two periods. Mr. Hockey Finalist Phil Beaulieu popped in a pair of goals, and the Hounds’ defense adapted to North’s speed and began to dictate the tempo. Things slowly came apart as the Hounds tired late in the third, but goalie Gunnar Howg made enough big saves to force overtime, and East had a few near-misses on tips in front of the North net. The Poehlings finally cashed in again three minutes into the overtime, ending a quality effort on a sour note. It was a reassuring rebound performance, but not quite the decisive statement that would have cemented the Hounds as a frontrunner in a complicated Section 7AA.

It’s hard to know what to make of the section right now. Grand Rapids finally found its stride on Wednesday in a win over Hermantown; while one game does not a season make, the 5-3 win was a step in the right direction for a team that certainly has the talent to make a run at a State Tournament berth. Andover has been on fire down the stretch, with wins over quality teams like Elk River, Maple Grove, and Centennial. They’ll truly put their winning streak next Tuesday when they visit state title contender Blaine. Elk River, on the other hand, has lost three of its last four, though all against quality competition, and may need a win over Centennial on Saturday to hold on to the top seed in the section.

The section seeding will be decided next Wednesday, when the coaches will meet at Tobies Restaurant in Hinckley and design a playoff bracket over sticky rolls. Often, the order is logical; this year, it is a mess, with plausible arguments for most any ordering of the top four. East, Rapids, Elk River, and Andover all have quality shots at winning the thing, which means they’d all have to beat two pretty good teams to win the section, but they may have preferences over who they’d prefer to meet in the semifinals. Nor are all four safe bets to escape the first round; an all-but-forgotten Forest Lake team lurks as a reasonably good probable 5-seed, and then, of course, there is Cloquet, which has obviously shown it can take down giants. The other coaches might be angling for a first-round East-Cloquet battle to perhaps knock the Hounds out of the picture, though if the Hounds take care of business in their last two games before the meeting, it would be tough to make a case that they belong at #3, which would match them up with #6 Cloquet.

So, what to make of these Hounds? We know they’re young, but play good team defense. They aren’t going to blow anybody out unless they get a lot of power plays; in fact, penalties could play a big role in their fate, as their power play and penalty kill are among the best in the state, while they have been rather pedestrian at times at 5-on-5. (Encouraging reminder for Hounds fans: last season’s team was much the same way during the regular season, but found another gear when it mattered.)

When this team runs its systems well, they can skate with anyone in the state; the North game makes that abundantly clear. If they stick to the formula, they’ll be tough to beat, especially in a section that lacks elite teams. The trouble is that the scores of most games will stay close enough that anyone will have a shot at them, and as the Cloquet game proved, it doesn’t take much to unleash a bit of momentum. How will the team react to a blown assignment, a bad call, or a strange bounce? The system work is great, but something unexpected is almost certain to happen at one point or another. East’s best playoff teams in recent years, when faced with such unpleasantness, have simply gone back to work, reasserted themselves, and kept the opposition from really feeding off of one single turn of events. Others have panicked, gone down too early to try to block shots, failed to clear loose pucks, and let the other team dictate play.  At this point, it’s hard to know which sort we have on our hands. We’ll find out in the coming weeks.

The Super Bowl and the Cultural Power of Football

Today is perhaps the most quintessential American holiday, a lovely blend of consumerism and pop culture and raw spectacle: Super Bowl Sunday. The day that breaks through the monotony of midwinter and gives us endless punditry, provides an excuse to drink lots of beer, singlehandedly sustains the avocado industry, and even involves an athletic event at some point in the midst of it all. People who know nothing about football will go to parties anyway, where they will complain that the commercials aren’t that good this year, and that the halftime show was bad. But they’ll still watch, just as they’ll watch again next year, and the year after that. We all love it, even if we hardly care.

On many levels, football’s success makes no sense. Its rules are arcane and illogical. While it can be adapted to suit, say, a tiny rural high school, high-level football requires a roster in excess of fifty players, more than double that of any other major sport. Yet despite the giant rosters, only a few individuals—the quarterback, the top receivers, perhaps a running back or a flashy defensive player—really get much individual attention; most everyone else toils in obscurity, never to handle the ball without a stroke of luck. The three-to-four-hour affairs amount to roughly eleven minutes of actual action. The stop-and-go nature of the sport allows for a dizzying array of possible plays, the intricacies of which are usually lost on the casual viewer. It is a sport of full-throated machismo, the only one in which women don’t have their own leagues (Lingerie Football League excepted), and while that is a draw for a certain segment of the population, it does nothing to explain football’s success relative to, say, wrestling.

It is a common denominator, something you can chat about easily even with the kindly mentally-challenged person sitting next to you on the bus who insists on talking at you, or with that relative you cannot relate to at all. The Friday Night Lights factor is real, even far from small Texas towns: it brings communities together, and football games are part of the rite of passage in high school. As much as things change, most of the school still turns out for that game and shares in one of the few vaguely universal American experiences, something passed along across generations at every level, from high school to the NFL. In college the party gets even bigger, with whole Saturdays oriented around the game, and alumni—or wannabe alumni—letting it rule their lives in a way no other sport can. Football becomes the center of so many social lives.

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My mild contribution to a Duluth East State Tournament run, fall 2007.

Call it a civic religion of sorts. Baseball, hockey, basketball, and soccer have international reach, but football remains about as purely American as is possible in a globalized world. The schedule lends itself to drama and anticipation: games are rare enough that fanaticism doesn’t require following a team night in and night out. A full week of hype makes it much easier to anticipate the key points of each game, and that is perfect for spawning that offshoot game where there is plenty of money to be made, fantasy football. It has its roots in elite east coast colleges, but it’s become a blue-collar sport, and the various positions require a variety of skill sets. While most good players come from the South—again reinforcing the Pure Americana aspect—there are strong college teams to be found in every corner of the country. Somehow, it gets everyone on board.

Yet for all of football’s triumphs, there are some cracks in the walls. The most obvious concern involves the recent revelations about concussions and brain damage that football can cause, and this has indeed had some effect on youth numbers. Football is increasingly becoming the sort of sport we like to watch other people play, but may have issues seeing our own children play. It may take a while for that to affect the upper levels or overall interest in the sport, if it ever does, but it’s looming there, and will continue to get attention in the media.

The biggest changes, however, may come in the college game, which eclipses the NFL in some parts of the country. At its best, the NCAA tops the NFL, with greater traditions, more rabid fans, lack of forced parity, and even more strategic variety. But it also is also developing in ways that may alter the sport as we know it. The traditional power conferences have re-shaped themselves in a massive money grab, a process that will only make the rich richer. Perhaps even more significantly, there is serious talk of compensating athletes now, and that story took another twist this past week when the Northwestern University team announced its intent to unionize. The football players’ concerns aren’t unfounded; they bring in millions for their universities without any compensation, have to balance intense football demands with student life, and have little ability to fight the ham-handed, authoritarian NCAA.

Compensating college football players may be the just thing to do, but I don’t think it produces a stable long-term solution. It opens up several cans of worms: other student-athletes will ask why they’re not included, and as very few university athletic departments make much money, it’s not clear where the money will come from. All of this adds up to even more pressure on the NCAA model, and I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to expect an alternative to erupt in the not-so-distant future. There’s a reason most other sports rely on an extensive system of low-paying professional minor leagues. Players specialize, abandoning the “scholar-athlete” title—one that at its best gives football players necessary balance in life, but at its worst stretches football players between two worlds—for the dream of football above all else. Once the established pipeline breaks down, when there is no clear place to look for the best talent, when good players get lost in myriad minor leagues with limited national interest, there is pressure on the whole system. It will be a slow process, but slowly, surely, football’s communal power will break down. If football players simply become football players instead of representatives of some bigger institution, the ties will start to fray. Football won’t fade from cultural prominence overnight, and the Super Bowl will likely be the last holdout. But the pinnacle of the sport must rest on strong foundations, and there has never been this much uncertainty about the foundations.

Football isn’t high on my list of favorite sports, so if this all does come to pass, I won’t really lament its fall from the pinnacle of American sports. What I will worry about is the loss of another commonality, the further atomization of American life. I don’t think that is necessarily a bad development—I’m a big defender of diversity over bland universals, after all—but it will mean change, and it is hard to know what might follow.

But for now, pass me the chips. Also, I’m taking the over on Renee Fleming’s National Anthem, the Broncos on the coin toss, and the Seahawks in the game. Defense wins championships.

A History of Minnesota High School Hockey Section Tournaments

We had some discussion on historical section tournament formats over on the forum this past week, so I decided to put together a timeline that gathers all of the information in one place. Here it is.

In addition to that thread, sources include archives at the Hill-Murray website, MinnHock, and things I once copied from the 2000 book Let’s Play Hockey Presents a Complete History of the Minnesota Boys and Girls High School Hockey Tournament, 1945-2000.

The year used is the year of the State Tournament (i.e., the 2013-2014 season would be called “2014”.) Thus most major format changes (realignments, etc.) actually took place before the season, in the previous calendar year.

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1945: first State Tournament. Records of region (now section) play are spotty for the first few years, but simply to make most regions, teams had to do well in the district tournament. There are usually several districts in each region with a pre-assigned number of spots in the regional tournaments, though the Minneapolis and St. Paul regions appear to have been limited to the schools in each city’s conference. Most regional tournaments have eight teams, though some experiment with deeper fields some years (Region 6 uses this approach the most often). Private schools are not included. Regions are aligned, roughly, as follows:

Region 1: south

Region 2: eastern suburbs (plus south after 1949)

Region 3: western/southwestern part of state, reaching into the western suburbs

Region 4: St. Paul schools

Region 5: Minneapolis schools

Region 6: central part of state (plus western suburbs after 1949)

Region 7: northeast

Region 8: northwest

State tournament opponents are determined on a rotation of sections, with no effort to seed teams or otherwise plan the bracket. Eveleth wins the inaugural Tournament.

1947: first state title for a metro area school, St. Paul Johnson.  It’s the first of three titles for Johnson, but no other metro team will win until 1969.

1949: realignment folds Region 1 into Region 2 and Region 3 into Region 6, and the two Tournament back doors are created. The 2nd-place finishers in Regions 4 and 5 (Minneapolis and St. Paul) compete for the Region 1 berth, while the Region 3 berth rotates between the runners-up in Regions 7 and 8.

By the early 1950s, most regions have a recognizable 8-team playoff format with recorded playoff scores, though there are some exceptions. The exception is Region 5 (Minneapolis), in which the regular season conference champion received an automatic berth, and the rest of the teams held a playoff for the right to play in the Region 1 back-door game.

This is also the year of the first private Tournament, the Minnesota Prep School Tournament. It matched the state’s top four Central Catholic Conference teams against the top four in the Minnesota Independent School League (non-Catholic privates). Cretin High owned it in the early going.

1960: The Region 1 Metro back-door expands from a two-team playoff to a four-team playoff, with the second place teams in Regions 2, 4, 5, and 6 fighting for the last berth. The semifinals always pitted Region 2 against Region 4 and Region 5 against Region 6. The 1960 Tourney features the first of four state tiles by Region 3 back-door teams; Region 1 back-door teams won it once.

1962: Region 5 finally adopts a normal playoff format.

1965: A playoff is adopted for the Region 3 back-door, as the second place teams in Regions 7 and 8 face off for the Tourney berth.

Also, the first year of the State Catholic Tournament, which took the top six teams from the metro-based Central Catholic Conference and matched them up with Duluth Cathedral (Marshall) and Crookston Cathedral, both of which got automatic berths.

1968: elimination of the Region 1 back-door. Region 1 once again becomes the region for the southern part of the state, extending north through the eastern suburbs as far as North St. Paul. Region 2 shifts to cover the northern suburbs, from White Bear Lake across to Elk River. By this point, Region 6 has become the dominion of west metro suburbs, and the central MN teams no longer make it to the regional tournament.

1969: first State Tournament won by a suburban school, as Edina beats Warroad in overtime in the Henry Boucha game.

1970: first State Independent Tournament, which included all MN private schools. Given the number of participants, regions for the tournament usually involved just one or two games for each team. There were also a number of automatic berths at the start, though those had all been eliminated by the last SIT in 1974.

1975: major changes. Private schools enter the MSHSL and are sorted geographically into regions. Districts are eliminated, as is the Region 3 back-door, and the Tournament assumes the 8-region format we know today. Everyone gets a berth in regions, meaning they are very large, with as many as 20 teams in them at times, prompting a number of early-round play in games for the right to get slaughtered by the top seeds. The regions that cover large areas geographically sometimes divide their playoffs by areas; for example, the Region 2 tournament includes a Metro bracket, a St. Cloud bracket, and a Duluth bracket, with the winners meeting in the later rounds. New regions are:

1—southern MN, including suburbs as far north as Bloomington

2—awkward collection of north metro teams, St. Cloud area teams, and Duluth area teams

3—east metro

4—St. Paul schools, plus some southeastern suburbs such as South St. Paul

5—Minneapolis schools

6—western suburbs

7—northeastern part of the state (north of Duluth)

8—northwest

1977: “Regions” are renamed “sections.” First (and only) championship for a team from south of the metro area, Rochester John Marshall.

1980: Last non-Class A title for an Iron Range area school, Grand Rapids.

1981: a significant realignment, as the Bloomington schools move north into Section 5. Minneapolis public schools’ only Tourney berths since came during the failed two tier experiment.

1983: first private school MSHSL champion (Hill-Murray)

1991: last single-class tournament.

1992: creation of the two-tier system, in which the top 64 teams at the end of the season played for the Tier I title, and everyone else played in Tier II. New sections for Tier I/AA:

1—southern MN

2—SE metro

3—St. Paul/NE metro

4—N/NW metro

5—SW metro

6—W metro

7—northeast, including Duluth area; boundaries slowly shift southward toward the northern suburbs as northern teams drop to Class A

8—anything northwest of Elk River

1994: tier format scrapped in favor of current two-class system. Top 64 schools by enrollment placed in AA, the rest in A. Class A teams are allowed to opt up to AA. AA sections match Tier I sections; Class A sections are as follows:

1—southern MN

2—I-35 corridor from north metro suburbs north to parts of Duluth area

3—east metro

4—central MN

5—western metro

6—rural SW MN

7—northeast, including some of the Duluth area

8—northwest

Ever since, sections have been realigned every two years, though in most years the changes are relatively minor.

1999: first private school Class A title; privates have won 12 of 15 since.

2007: change in the State Tourney format, as the top four teams in each class are now seeded, and the rest parceled out by a random draw.

2008: a substantial section realignment in both classes, though in some cases it amounted mostly to a change in number.

1AA—southern MN, as far north as Lakeville

2AA—SW metro

3AA—SE metro

4AA—E metro

5AA—N metro

6AA—W metro

7AA—northeast, including the north metro periphery

8AA—northwest, including the St. Cloud area

1A—southern MN

2A—west metro

3A—rural SW MN

4A—east metro

5A—north metro/I-35 corridor

6A—central MN

7A—northeast

8A—northwest

2013: a slight change in Tourney format, with the top 5 teams now being seeded.

There you go…let me know if you have anything to add, correct, or if there’s anything else you think should be added.

Lurching Toward a Lakewalk: Duluth City Council Notes, 1/27/14

While much of the city shut down in the bitter cold, the beat went on in the Council Chamber this week. The crowd was fairly sparse but spirited—the clerk deputized me to close the doors on people chattering in the hall at one point—and there was also an empty seat at one end of the dais, as Councilor Boyle had tendered his resignation following his victory in the special election for a seat on the County Board. Boyle was suffering from a case of the flu and thus unable to say a proper goodbye, though President Krug said she’d invite him to do so at a later date.

In the opening comments, Councilor Gardner talked of her resolution to streamline the process to find his appointment, a necessary step following last fall’s botched effort to fill the seat of outgoing Councilor Garry Krause. She established a timeline: the deadline for applications is this Friday (Jan. 31) at 4:30; there will be interviews of February 6; Councilors will choose three finalists by February 7; the Council will interview them on the 10th; and they will then vote on the Councilor at a special meeting that same day. She also informed the public that no one has applied for the spot yet, so if you live in Congdon, around the UMD campus, or in Kenwood, your odds might be pretty good if you’re interested.

The consent agenda passed unanimously. The next three votes, all involving smallish sums of money for such items as the Sister Cities program and the Minneapolis-Duluth/Superior Rail Alliance, and an office design, passed without debate. Councilor Fosle opposed all three, and Councilor Julsrud joined him on the rail alliance. Councilor Gardner’s process to fill the vacant 2nd District seat passed unanimously after a few minor procedural questions, and a move to bestow landmark status on the Chester Park United Methodist Church, planned for reuse as a dance studio, passed unanimously.

Next up was the main event of the evening, a resolution authorizing a grant application for the completion of the Lakewalk between 21st and 23rd Aves. East. (This is the stretch between the parking lot at the east end of the Lakewalk and its resumption at the corner of 23rd and Water St., in front of the Beacon Pointe development.) The measure, pushed by the administration, would create a Lakewalk on the north side of Water Street opposite Beacon Pointe. There were four citizen speakers, two for and two against. The supporters were with the Friends of the Lakewalk organization, and cited safety concerns with heavy trail-use traffic on Water St. and a survey of their twenty members that indicated widespread support. The two opponents reminded Councilors that the plan for the cross-city trail had insisted upon a trail along the lakefront, not a street separated from the lake by a row of condos, and suspected a bait-and-switch. They recommended the tabling of the measure.

CAO Montgomery opened the discussion by saying that tabling would effectively kill the bill, as the city would miss the grant application deadline. This was enough to sway Councilor Julsrud toward support, and she said the city could always reject the grant if it later decided it didn’t like the plan. Councilor Gardner, on the other hand, was not at all swayed. She was especially worried by the Second District vacancy on the Council; as this part of the Lakewalk goes that district, residents’ voices were perhaps unheard. Councilor Russ agreed, saying “something went terribly wrong” in the process; she complained of the developers’ apparent encroachment on the lakefront, the lack of quality signage, and said the new proposal was “really just widening the sidewalk,” and would do nothing to keep bicyclists off the road. Councilor Filipovich echoed these general sentiments and added that there would be more opportunities to ask for money later; CAO Montgomery said the city couldn’t rely on future federal grants, while Councilor Gardner said there certainly would be future opportunities.

Councilor Larson and President Krug, on the other hand, expressed support. They thought any safety-improving measure was commendable and cited the Lakeside neighborhood Lakewalk as an example of a successful path away from the lakeshore. Councilor Gardner, after pausing to stare down the whispering Councilors Hanson and Julsrud, reiterated many of her critiques, called the whole process “very disturbing,” and questioned the current composition of the Friends of the Lakewalk. Councilor Fosle, meanwhile, shared some history with the rest of the Council, digging up resolutions from 2007 and 2008 establishing the initial intent to both widen the Water St. sidewalk and build a trail along the lakefront. Councilor Filipovich worried about a possible loss of political will for the lakefront trail if the Council were to pass only the sidewalk portion. “There’s a lot of despair already,” Councilor Gardner agreed, and both she and Councilor Filipovich wondered why the administration was pushing this during the week of the deadline.

As it became clear the Council did not have the votes to pass the measure, the reason behind the whisperings of Councilors Julsrud and Hanson came out, as they introduced an amendment to reassert the intent behind the original 2007 and 2008 resolutions. There was then a very long stretch of confused but ultimately productive wrangling, as the Councilors offered different wordings for the amendment and even toyed with waiting until a later date to clarify their intent so as to not be too “sloppy,” in the words of Councilor Larson. Councilor Gardner expressed qualified support for the amendment, and they finally settled on three points, as laid out by Councilor Hanson: a reaffirmation of the 2007 and 2008 resolutions, a public meeting to discuss the plan, and a commitment to “concurrently” find solutions to the situation. “We’re finally going to vote on something!” President Krug celebrated, and the amendment passed, 7-1, with Councilor Fosle in opposition.

After that the Council moved to consider the resolution proper, and Councilor Fosle explained his opposition: these sorts of promises are easily forgotten—the 07 and 08 resolutions would have been, had he himself not gone and dug them up earlier that day—and may come to nothing. He was also the lone vote against the resolution, which passed, 7-1.

The rest of the agenda passed relatively quickly. Councilor Fosle was the lone vote against a change in street and sidewalk obstruction fees, and was joined by Councilor Julsrud in a protest vote against Armory culvert repair (see here for the original details on this debate). Councilor Fosle amended a resolution that accepted a grant for emerald ash borer testing in Duluth trees to clean up its misleading language, and also celebrated the timing of a water utility improvement project; both passed unanimously. Councilor Gardner got a good laugh with her shock at the fact that the city was paying for the added costs of the harsh winter with excess revenue (“We have excess revenue?!”), and Councilor Hanson was pleased to hear these measures would have no appreciable impact on the general fund. Finally, the Council pushed back the months for its sprinkling credit to May through September, with Councilor Russ laughing that the city may as well start the credit in June, what with the weather Duluth has had lately.

It was an efficient night for the Council outside of the Lakewalk debate, and even there, they got things done after some spirited debate. There were powerful criticisms, a decent defense, and, ultimately, a sensible compromise. Even Councilor Fosle, who was having none of the whole affair, deserves praise for dispassionately providing information for everyone else, and reiterating the worry about political will. The Councilors who opposed the resolution as initially written must keep up the pressure to make sure the lakefront path isn’t lost in the shuffle, but if they do, there is a good chance the initial vision for the Lakewalk will still come to fruition. As Councilor Hanson said, they need to roll up their sleeves and get to work.

Hockey Parity Run Amok, Plus Gary Thorne!

There are only three weeks left in the Minnesota high school hockey season left, but for all of the games played so far, we are no closer to finding an obvious favorite.

A simple attempt to run through the frontrunners in each class is a mess. Among the big schools in Class AA, perennial favorites Hill-Murray and Edina are near the top of the rankings as always—ranked second and third, respectively—but both have shown more vulnerabilities than usual, and neither is a safe bet to come out of their section: Edina’s loss to Burnsville earlier this month was their first section loss in years, and Hill needed overtime to get past archrival White Bear Lake two weeks ago.

Instead, the new AA top-ranked team is a total surprise out of Lakeville North. The Panthers have are unbeaten in their last sixteen, and are the best team to come out of 1AA—normally the state’s doormat—since a one-loss 1997 Rochester Mayo team, if not ever. They are carried by a top line made up of the three Poehling brothers have no obvious shortcomings, and have a star-in-the-making freshman goalie, but they’re also a very young squad, and we have yet to see how they’ll respond to have a target on their backs.

There are plenty of serious threats beyond those top three teams. #4 Wayzata has allowed the fewest goals of any Class AA team, and are playing the dominant defense we have come to expect out of teams coached by Pat O’Leary. Fifth-ranked Burnsville is very much in the picture, as is an Elk River squad that must confront some sudden adversity after the defection of forward Andrew Zerban to the USHL. Blaine has looked as good as anyone when they’re on their game, but the consistency hasn’t quite been there; likewise, a young St. Thomas Academy squad showed off their superb top-end talent in a win over Hill this past week, but has been on the short end of a number of close games against top teams. Add in some decent Duluth East and Eden Prairie teams to round out the top ten, and the AA field is as wide open as possible. Even Section 8AA, which had appeared to be the weak link in the class, picked up a quality win when Roseau knocked off Holy Family 3-0 on Friday night.

Class A isn’t much different. This class has been owned by three teams in recent years—St. Thomas, Hermantown, and Breck—but with St. Thomas moving up to AA and relative down years from the other two, the field is wide open. Section 8A has as good a race as any going, along with a superb contrast in styles; East Grand Forks is the best defensive team in Class A, while Warroad relies on the firepower of one of the state’s most explosive lines. The Warriors slipped by another top five team, Duluth Marshall, on Friday night; while they were outshot in the game, their disciplined defense and timely scoring made all the difference.

Marshall may be the deepest team in Class A, but their road to State goes through Hermantown. The Hawks have dropped three games against quality AA teams, but they remain undefeated against Class A opposition, and they’re still scoring in bunches despite their relative youth. But Class A goes beyond those top few this year; New Prague and Mankato West are neck-and-neck in a race for Section 1A, and while they haven’t played any of the top teams, scores against common opponents suggest they’ll be able to compete. Breck recently lost to Totino-Grace, one of two 4A frontrunners along with Mahtomedi; and even 3A, normally a sure quarterfinal win for their opponent, has an intriguing team in undefeated Luverne. The Cardinals are untested against the state’s elite, but unlike most of the teams to come out of their section in recent memory, they do have a few legitimate top-end players, and will be worth a second look down the stretch.

The end result is relative parity. We don’t have any runaway favorites this season that will be remembered among the state’s all-time greats, but that isn’t any great loss: instead, we two wide-open fields where no one is safe. This should make for a thrilling run over the next few weeks.

Minnesota hockey fans were given a real treat on Sunday as well, when the news came out that longtime ESPN and ABC front man Gary Thorne will call play-by-play at this year’s AA Tourney. Thorne is widely regarded as one of the two elite hockey commentators of the past twenty years (along with the delightful Doc Emrick), and called some of the NHL’s greatest moments in the 1990s and early 2000s. Since NBC took over rights to the NHL playoffs about a decade ago, Thorne’s hockey duties have been limited to the NCAA Frozen Four and a bunch of video games. (While living in DC, I also got to enjoy his regular calls of Baltimore Orioles games on the Maryland Area Sports Network; he is among the easiest commentators to listen to for any sport.) Thorne couples his famous calls with a warm, lighthearted personality that would seem a good fit for a high school tournament.

Thorne’s arrival is a coup for the Tourney. It’s had its share of memorable voices over the years, from icons like Howard Cosell to Minnesota favorite son Wally Shaver in the 1990s. The lead men in recent years have been capable, but none of them quite had the flair for the dramatic of the greatest commentators, nor could they match the gravitas of their color partner, the timeless Lou Nanne. The prospect of a Thorne-Nanne combination is almost enough to make me want to stay home and watch, though I’m sure that urge will go away when it’s time to head down to St. Paul. I’ll have to settle for a recording, and perhaps a few words in the press elevator. His presence is one of those many little things that add up to make the Tourney into the cultural keystone that it is.

Duluth Citizens in Action Forum

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of spending the day at the Citizens in Action 2014 forum in Duluth, an event put on by the League of Women Voters and a host of supporting organizations. I went on a whim, having received a flyer earlier this week; these sorts of events can be hit-or-miss, depending on the quality of the organizing effort, invited guests, and degree of political neutrality. In the end, it was a day well-spent: the planning committee did a thorough job and reeled in many local politicians, and while a majority of the attendees were certainly on the left side of the political spectrum (no surprise in Duluth), there was some variety, and a pleasant lack of harping on causes. The food was good, too.

The keynote speaker was Minnesota State Representative Rena Moran, who in her second term serving a St. Paul district in the State House. Rep. Moran’s story was a compelling one: in July of 2000, the single mother of seven decided she needed to leave Chicago and move to a state with good schools and a strong community for her children. So she told them to leave most of their possessions behind, piled them all into a van, and drove to Minneapolis. Her family spent a few months in a shelter, but before long she was on her feet, and eventually found a home in St. Paul’s historically black Rondo neighborhood. It all snowballed from there, as Moran became involved in local affairs. As a representative, she highlighted her legislative successes during her first term, when the Republicans held the majority in the House and she needed to build relationships across the aisle to get anything done, and told of bringing her colleagues with her to show them reality inside inner-city neighborhoods. Rep. Moran stayed for the entire conference, joining panels and sharing her experiences.

After that we broke into groups, and I attended a panel discussion entitled “Young Adults in Action.” The panel included Rep. Moran, two Duluth Denfeld students involved in the Native Youth Alliance of Minnesota; two 20-something members of the board of the Clayton-Jackson-McGhie Memorial, which aims to remember and continue dialogue about the 1920 Duluth lynching of three black men; and two Duluth East students and members of the group Students for the Future, which organized to give students a voice in Duluth schools during Red Plan restructuring talks some five years ago and lives on today. (Full disclosure: I was out of high school when the group was founded, but know a number of its original members, and played a minor consulting role in its formation.) A couple of moderators guided them through a series of questions, and while the forum could have benefitted from a somewhat looser format, it delivered the goods.

Two candidates for the soon-to-be-vacant Minnesota House 7A seat on the east side of Duluth were in the room, and one of them asked the panel perhaps the most pressing question: just how do we get people involved? With young people, getting them through the door often seems to be half the battle. It’s an especially big problem nowadays, when college and high school students are bombarded with daily information on countless groups they can join; it can be easy to miss the best options, and many are reluctant to take a leap and join something unless they have a group of friends with them. A single cause or candidate might inspire some excitement, but it can be hard to inculcate a sense of civic responsibility in those who weren’t raised in that sort of environment to begin with. And, as one of the Denfeld students explained, sometimes they quite simply don’t have enough time to take on anything else.

What is undeniable, however, are the potential benefits for those involved. The two East students, when asked what they’d gained from their experience, succinctly said two things that, while not unknown, took me four years of college to fully internalize. (I paraphrase. Student One: “I wanted to study international relations, but now I’ve realized how easy it is to have an immediate and lasting impact just by working in my community.” Student Two: “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet, but I know I can do other things in life but still be very involved in politics.”)

After lunch, we were sent to rooms in small groups to meet with local politicians, who rotated through to meet us in groups of two or three. There were sixteen on hand, including two state representatives, two county commissioners, the St. Louis County Attorney, and a whole bunch of the city council and school board members whose names often grace this blog. We got brief but productive opportunities to share our stories and most pressing concerns, and the officials took diligent notes and replied as time allowed. There was a pleasant diversity of topics brought forward by the other citizens in attendance. Being a big picture person, I settled for telling my own story and some shameless blog plugging, and was pleasantly surprised by the response. (Thanks, readers!)

I’m afraid I did run off when we got to the singing at the end, but for the most part, it was a quality event. In the grand scheme of things, it probably didn’t change much—the people who came are mostly the sorts who would have made their voices heard in some way anyway—but face-to-face contact never hurts, and getting people together to talk about political engagement can be rejuvenating. And while I make a big deal out of the stories of people who are not usually vocal in politics being overlooked, not everyone can be constantly engaged, and it’s up to those who can to be aware of them and pick up the slack. A healthy community needs its activists and campaigners, but it also needs its caretakers and critics; those who can step out of the hectic world of politics from time to time. Reality tells us there are plenty who simply don’t have the interest, whatever their reason. As long as they aren’t forgotten, it all works out in the end.