Mahtomedi wins the Class A Championship in 2OT on a superb rebound effort pic.twitter.com/6uLwbVGHCu

— CJ Fogler AKA Perc70 #BlackLivesMatter (@cjzero) March 11, 2023

But midway through the 3rd period, the Zephyrs trailed 5-3 and looked as good as dead. Especially when a goal, that would have made it 5-4, was disallowed due to goalie interference, which it clearly was.

Here's the Mahtomedi goal that was waved off for goaltender interference pic.twitter.com/sT1dVhdmT0

— CJ Fogler AKA Perc70 #BlackLivesMatter (@cjzero) March 11, 2023

Undeterred, Mahtomedi got back to work in the offensive zone and it didn’t take long for them to make it 5-4, for the 2nd time. It was senior captain, Charlie Drage, who netted the one that counted. He used his celebration to make sure the referee saw the puck go in.

Mahtomedi scores and taunts the referee for the previous goal getting waved off ???? pic.twitter.com/98NaZQXvQn

— CJ Fogler AKA Perc70 #BlackLivesMatter (@cjzero) March 11, 2023

Charlie would score the game-tying goal a few minutes later too, making it a hat-trick day for the young stud and his 35th goal of the season. Warroad’s Carson Pilgrim had a hat trick of his own. He finished his season with 52 goals total.

Mahtomedi scores with 1:20 left on the clock to tie it pic.twitter.com/GYtAuNBX2Y

— CJ Fogler AKA Perc70 #BlackLivesMatter (@cjzero) March 11, 2023

Warroad was undefeated entering the championship game. It’s Mahtomedi’s 2nd state title in four seasons. They beat Hermantown to win it all in 2020.

Eric Strack | Minnesota Sports Fan

NLS lead for most of the 2nd half, until a couple of 4th quarter mistakes appeared to have cost them the game. But instead of folding up, they reached deep deep down and somehow snatched victory from the jaws of defeat.

It came via a last-second hail mary that turned into so much more, including a heads up lateral that is sure to go down as one of the greatest moments in Minnesota prep bowl history.

Here it is. New London – Spicer wins a AAA state title on a Randy Moss to Moe Williams lateral. pic.twitter.com/1nVFlyDeNG

— Minnesota Sports Fan (@realmnsportsfan) December 3, 2022

Breaking it down

With four seconds left, New London – Spicer quarterback, Blake Schultz, dropped back and heaved the ball down US Bank Stadium’s right sideline. It fell between two defenders and right into the hands of streaking wide receiver, Grant Paffrath.

And when Paffrath realized he was going down about five yards short of the goal line, he flipped the ball back to teammate, Brycen Christensen, for an easy walk-in touchdown and the most unbelievable state championship finish in recorded history.

Randy Moss to Moe Williams Reincarnate

If you’re a Minnesota Vikings fan, it’s nearly impossible for this lateral not to bring you back two decades when Randy Moss caught a heave from Daunte Culpepper and flipped to Moe Williams for a TD.

This lateral from Randy Moss to Moe Williams still blows my mind ???? #tbt pic.twitter.com/IpP353secW

— NFL Retweet (@NFLRT) July 9, 2015

Congratulations to New London – Spicer. Not only did you win a state title today. You’ll probably make highlight reels all over national TV and this moment will live forever in High School sports infamy.

Eric Strack | Minnesota Sports Fan

Woke media outlets across the country (like the Minneapolis Star Tribune) tried their best all summer to cancel pro sports, due to the Coronavirus pandemic. League by league and sport by sport, their efforts failed. Quickly, they turned their cancellation causes toward amateur athletics, especially fall football and volleyball. Blue states, including Minnesota, axed many of their high school fall sports in early August. At the college level, the woke Big Ten and PAC-12 were right alongside them.

The Big Ten came to their senses and reinstated fall football a month later. At the high school level, we’ve already seen Michigan, Delaware and Pennsylvania cancel and then reinstate fall sports, too. In total, according to MaxPreps.com, 34 states plan on playing fall football and 17 (plus the District of Columbia) have pushed it back to winter or spring. Volleyball isn’t included with the MaxPrep numbers but is hitched to football, at least in Minnesota.

Let’s Scare Some People!

Since playing football during COVID times doesn’t fit narratives within major media outlets, facts are often ignored and replaced with “scary” words and warnings.

On Monday the #MSHSL is poised to decide whether thousands of football and volleyball players can resume playing games this fall in sports deemed as recently as early last month to be too risky. Story from @pklauda https://t.co/CwPn19oEws

— Star Tribune Sports (@StribSports) September 19, 2020

From reading this headline, COVID might as well be a monster that “lurks” in your closet. Throw in the “thousands” of athletes, in caption form, and you have yourself one scary headline. That’s what they want. They want you to be scared. Don’t be.

Luckily, the Star Tribune is responsible enough to lace their hyperbole with real numbers. They don’t want you to actually look at those numbers and feel good about playing fall football/volleyball, though. Instead, they fudge the numbers and surround them with really scary verbiage from different “medical experts”, throughout the article.

Only One Type of “Expert” Matters in 2020

Reminder, before you read this excerpt: There are very serious consequences (beyond COVID) to taking away youth sports. Those consequences range from deteriorating mental and physical health, to family dynamics to social interaction. How you were “feeling” mentally was deemed extremely important before the pandemic. Now, feelings don’t matter. We ONLY care about the opinions of epidemiologists and disease experts, whose jobs are to worry about viruses, disease and pandemics year-round.

You will find ZERO quotes from psychologists or family doctors whose answers might not fit this “everyone run and hide from COVID” narrative.

It’s Halloween Season at the Star Tribune

During the health department’s presentation, Griffith said, “We cannot say anything is safe. We aren’t able to exonerate any sport during a pandemic.’’

Later Ehresmann said she sees “no difference now in risk from earlier in the summer when the MSHSL decided to wait on these sports.’’ What’s new is data from the start of school sports shows “evidence of transmission,’’ she said. “We continue to see a high level of community transmission.’’

Malcolm noted that “outdoor venues and outdoor sports appear to be less risky than indoor sports’’ but added that sports with high levels of contact, such as football, “just do have a risk.’’

Dr. Ruth Lynfield, the department’s medical director, acknowledged the “complex issue’’ of balancing the amount of virus in the community with people’s activities.

“This is not a cold,’’ she said. “There are some people who do fine with this, but there are others, including young people, who don’t do fine. Along with the sports there are coaches, there are other people who may have underlying conditions, and would have a severe illness if they were to be infected.

“We’re only beginning to learn about potential complications that occur in young people,’’ she said, noting a recent report from Ohio connecting the virus to college athletes and concerns about a heart condition known as myocarditis.

“We really don’t have a sense of all the things this virus can do,’’ Lynfield said. “We just have to be aware.’’

Star Tribune

Just Fudge the Numbers!

The agenda of the Star Tribune and other major media outlets around the country (especially in blue states) comes out crystal clear in articles like this one.

Specifically here, the Star Tribune includes adult/college-league COVID numbers, even while the article is supposed to be about youth spread. Almost all active participants in high school sports are under the age of 18… so why are we including those numbers? Because, if the Strib were to take these non-youth numbers out, they’d find it a lot harder to show that COVID kills everyone.

Instead of dropping the issue when they run into non-narrative fitting facts, woke news outlets just add a few irrelevant numbers here and some extra groups there… and BOO! Are you scared yet? Don’t be.

12 of these 62 were adult "breakouts". Wanna know what a "breakout" consists of?

TWO people. TWO people getting COVID is considered a "breakout". lol. pic.twitter.com/y8c9THu4xe

— Minnesota Sports Fan (@realmnsportsfan) September 20, 2020

The length the Star Tribune went to, in order to scare youth parents and MSHSL board members before they re-vote on fall sports come Monday, is disgusting. The timing is so obvious, even, that they had to admit it.

Front Page Living?

This story will sit on the front page of tomorrow’s paper, that’s a guarantee. It’s a last-ditch effort to halt the momentum that fall football has gained over the last couple weeks. Don’t fall into the trap.

I seriously implore the MSHSL to look at this situation with open eyes. All five states around us are playing football in the fall and our COVID numbers in Minnesota have consistently been lower than over half the states in the US.

Kids and adults will play sports and resume their regularly scheduled lives with or without the Minnesota school system. That’s already evident. Sports like baseball, softball and basketball are still being played statewide at all ages. Shutting down fall football and volleyball will do nothing but cause a bigger political division across the state. That’s what the media wants.

The list of states that are playing vs those who aren’t is divided completely along political party lines. It’s sad that we’re allowing politics to get between our kids, physical activity and social interaction.

Dear @MSHSL, make sure you actually read what the Star Tribune wrote in tomorrow's paper before you cower in COVID fear and re-cancel fall sports. https://t.co/O6nV0BA79r

— Minnesota Sports Fan (@realmnsportsfan) September 20, 2020

Eric Strack | Minnesota Sports Fan

The Coronavirus Cancelation Campaign is dying in the midwest. I wrote about this possible domino effect last week, when Michigan reversed course on playing fall sports and rumors of fall football were already blazing in Big Ten circles. Now, the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL) will meet on Monday to discuss doing the same thing on their canceled fall football and volleyball seasons.

News alert: Board President Blaine Novak has called a special meeting of the @MSHSL Board of Directors for Monday, Sept. 21 at 9 a.m.

— MSHSL (@MSHSL) September 16, 2020

The MSHSL will have a special meeting on Monday in regards to football and volleyball. https://t.co/0oGjIr5VkM

— Brian Mozey (@BrianMozey) September 16, 2020

According to the Star Tribune, the earliest these sports can start up is October 2 for football and October 22 for volleyball. Each sport would start practices on September 21 and October 12, respectively.

When the season postponement first came down, Volleyball and football teams were granted three weeks of fall practice time, that started on Monday. That means most schools around the state have probably started practice already and could use that time to help ramp up to a surprise fall start.

This meeting was moved up so the MSHSL would have time to make a decision, before it was too late. The next scheduled meeting wasn’t until October 1. That wouldn’t have allowed enough time to boot up. The sense of urgency shows how serious the Minnesota State High School League is about getting things back up and rolling.

Late is Better Than Never – Make the Right Move

It’s clear that many educational leaders around the midwest (no matter what they say), both at the high school and collegiate level, underestimated how important these activities are to the way many people live their life.

Taking away sports and other extracurricular activities is something that should only be taken into consideration when all other options are exhausted. The numbers and protocols involving COVID-19 were there and favored moving forward cautiously. That’s why most of the country is still playing. Things haven’t changed that much, since the decisions to cancel was made. That especially holds true at the high school level.

But we still have time to change our minds and avoid a huge mistake. So make the right decision, MSHSL.

Eric Strack | Minnesota Sports Fan

Welcome to the 21st Century, Minnesota State High School League. While everyone else has been streaming their sporting events free, for about 5-10 years to those who already have a cable package, the MSHSL has joined the party. They’ve finally realized that growing their game and expanding their audience as wide as possible, is a better idea than trying to charge people to watch teams they probably haven’t followed all year long. 

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As you plan your week around #TheTourney19… you know every game airs live on @Prep45Sports / @kstc45.

BUT… if you're out of town or stuck in a cubicle Wed-thru-Sat … for the very first time games will live stream *FREE* on https://t.co/aVJrrzVZ8n!https://t.co/BRVwofypie

— Chris Long (@ChrisLongKSTP) March 4, 2019

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While college and professional sports leagues (and those affiliated) continue to rake in money by taking advantage of the ravenous populations around the world with an appetite for sports, high schools around the country continue to see their sports’ budgets cut and crowd sizes deplete.

Only one of the three levels are publicly funded…. Only one struggles for money….

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via GIPHY

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Eric Strack | Minnesota Sports Fan

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Saturday Night’s state title game between Cretin-Derham Hall (“CDH”) and Apple Valley for Minnesota’s Class 4A crown was an instant classic. Once the ultra entertaining back-and-forth battle was all said and done, Daniel Oturu and his CDH teammates walked away with a 79-78 victory.

The astonishing contest all but ended when, with less than a second remaining, the 6”10’ Oturu completed the back-end of a perfectly executed alley-oop:

Cretin-Derham Hall wins the Minnesota 4A State Championship at the horn! #SCtop10 pic.twitter.com/vxzG39HrF6

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) March 25, 2018

As if a state championship-winning dunk isn’t enough, the Gopher commit’s final high school field goal marked his 60, and 61st points, of the tournament (that’s 20.7 PPG). He also averaged 9 RPG and 6.3 blocks over the impressive three-game stretch. Obviously, there’s a reason Richard Pitino & Co. are so excited to see Oturu’s immense talent don the Maroon and Gold:

With all of that said, when the stud big man’s name was left off of the Class 4A All-Tournament Team, the omission turned some heads nearly snapped some necks. When it came to on the court play alone, there isn’t an ounce a milliliter of doubt that he should have been selected to that team. All tourney long, Oturu and Apple Valley’s Tre Jones were both absolutely dominant.

Naturally, the Minnesota State High School League (“MSHSL“) was peppered with inquiries surrounding this decision. In response, the MSHSL’s Tim Leighton provided this information:

Although Leighton doesn’t directly refer to any particular play, in my eyes, that’s irrelevant. If you can add two plus two, you can find that this is the root cause of the “sportsmanship” issue:

Here’s the scrum involving former Pulley teammates, Daniel Oturu (#Gophers signee) and Tre Jones (Duke signee). Referees are Jon McLean, Tony Rodriguez and the pride of Golden Valley, Matt Dalle. Game had been chippy for a while leading up to this: pic.twitter.com/seYBtcg7Ks

— Darren Wolfson (@DWolfsonKSTP) March 25, 2018

First and foremost, considering the PC world in which we live, I understand why the MSHSL made this decision. By leaving Oturu off of the all-tournament squad, the organization avoided the dreaded backlash. Regardless of my understanding, this isn’t the direction I would have gone. The way I see it, his heat-of-the-moment action was probably a mistake. However, the perceived blunder was far lightyears away from egregious.

There’s a reason an individual needs two technicals to be ejected. Basketball player’s getting T’d up always has, and always will be, part of the sport. Personally, I love Daniel Oturu’s passion. When you’re an athlete of his prowess, having the right amount of piss and vinegar flowing through the veins can be a blessing. When considering the future Gopher’s big man, his intensity meter seems to be at absolutely ideal levels.

Whatever, though. It’s the championship that counts, right? Per Oturu’s below Tweet, that appears to be his mindset:

No matter what you say about me and my team, you can never take away the fact that we are champions ? #RGOD pic.twitter.com/hahPbxYM0P

— GTM DAN ??? (@oturu65) March 25, 2018

Johnny Minnesota @TheJohnnyMN
Minnesota Sports Fan MinnesotaSportsFan.com