On April 3, the Minnesota High School League modified the teams in Park’s section for the 2025-2026 and 2026-2027 seasons. The section is different from our conference. We play conference games or matches during the regular season to win the conference championship. While that is very important, the section tournament is a bigger deal because the section winner advances to the state tournament. The changes in the section are due to changes in the student population in the past years.
The first team is the football team, whose last state appearance was in 2017. They had previously lost to Robbinsdale Armstrong the past four years in the section playoffs. Now with the new section, they are gone, as well as Cooper. The new teams in the same section as Park are Bloomington Jefferson and Bloomington Kennedy. This new section heavily helps Park’s chances of making the state tournament because historically the schools that we have struggled against, like the two Robbinsdale schools, are no longer in our section. Also, in past years, we have played well against Blomington Jefferson and the Minneapolis schools teams, going 2-1 against them, having only lost to Washburn last year in a nail-biter.
Another sports team to have its section changed is boys hockey. The girls hockey section hasn’t changed since they combined with Hopkins. To make sure schools with the same student population play each other to keep it fair, the sections are divided into A and AA. AA is the largest 64 schools in Minnesota by student population. Park was an AA school last year, but we dropped below the threshold, so we went down to A. Some of the teams in Park’s new section are Orono, Minneapolis, Waconia and Hutchinson. I believe this will be a game changer for the chances for Park to make the state tournament because they no longer have to play hockey powerhouses like Wayzata, Benilde St. Margaret’s and Edina. The section has been historically called the “toughest hockey section in the nation.” The Orono Spartans won this section last year, who earlier in the season Park held a 3-2 lead going into the third period, even though Park lost. This highlights the increased odds of us doing well as we don’t play Edina, whom we lost 7-1 to last year.
These are just some of the new sections that Park will begin playing in at the beginning of the 2025-2026 school year. With moving sections and going down to A, the sports teams have higher expectations for upcoming years than in the past. It should be exciting to see these teams play next season and hopefully have a deep run in the section and maybe the state tournament.
