For once in my life I felt like Craig Ferguson this morning. I woke up to a tweet and emails telling me that Buffalo Lake – Hector – Stewart was moving to 9-Man in a couple years. This move does explain why the Mustangs were placed in the district that they were. It even crossed my mind that Renville County West was 9-Man but I assumed their rise and not the fall of my beloved high school. Despite me getting it wrong, in my previous posting, the Minnesota State High School League still got their districting wrong.

In 9-Man football in the state of Minnesota there are the guys way up north and there are the guys that are so close to Iowa that sometimes you have to pray for them not to be swallowed up by the children of the lot of corn. It doesn’t take a geography major, or maybe it does, to tell you that BLHS and RCW are a lot closer to Iowa than to Canada.

The Mustangs shouldn’t be taking on Hancock or Underwood for the homecoming game, but Fulda or Nicollet or Madelia. Welcome to the South District.

The West District currently has 21 teams with all but four of them being south of Mankato and Rochester. West Lutheran High School is in the north suburbs (they get screwed over wherever they get placed), Randolph High School is just south of the Minnesota concrete jungle and there is Cleveland and Nicollet which are virtually just north of Mankato.

The two teams based around the Twin Cities screw up the natural split of the district. There is an obvious east and west division coming with one going from Albert Lea/Austin to La Crosse and the other from Mankato to Sioux Falls. BLHS, RCW and possibly MACCRAY should all be in the Mankato to Sioux Falls subdistrict.

In the last post I pointed out that Rothsay is the furthest away in the obvious subdistrict being 164 miles from Hector. The longest travel in the subdivision the Mustangs would be in the South is 150 miles to Hills-Beaver Creek. Hills – Beaver Creek is by far the team that is the furthest away and is still closer than Rothsay.

Like I mentioned earlier, the two schools that are in the Cities makes the split a lot tougher to find for a subdistrict, but a common BLHS football schedule would be: Cleveland, Nicollet, Madelia, Granada – Hutley – East Chain/Truman, Mountain Lake Area and then a combination of the Cities schools and Westbrook – Walnut Grove and Fulda, the hometown of Patrick Reusse.

It’s becoming clear that BLHS was placed in their new district based on enrollment more than anything. BLHS has the fourth highest enrollment in their West District, but would be number one in the South according to the State High School League’s numbers.

Not by much though, Mountain Lake Area claims 140 for their enrollment while BLHS sports 147. A handful of other teams are in the high 130’s and 120’s.

It is 147 miles from Hector to Austin. It is 139 miles from Hector to Brainerd. The problem in those eight miles is that BLHS fans should never have to travel to Austin with the subdistircts, but BLHS will be traveling consistently to the Brainerd area

The South District simply makes a lot more sense for BLHS and RCW. We’d much rather play the Iowa Hawkeyes than the Winnipeg Blue Bombers… Mainly because the Hawkeyes are a college team and the Blue Bombers are a Canadian pro team, but that’s beside the point. They are weird up there. Haven’t you seen Fargo?

Here’s the map of the Mustangs’ new West District.

Here’s the map of where they should be playing in the South District.