NPHS looking into conference switch

Growing enrollment at New Prague High School has the school looking at a new home for interscholastic sports.

Activities Director Brad Skogerboe and Superintendent Tim Dittberner told members of the New Prague Area School Board that they had begun preliminary discussions with Eastern Carver County Schools (Chaska and Chanhassen) regarding a possible move to the Metro West Conference.

Skogerboe said new enrollment numbers used by the Minnesota State High School League for section and class placement will put nearly all of the district’s activities in the largest competitive class for the upcoming two-year cycle. Waconia, which is also a member of the Wright County Conference with New Prague, is also growing rapidly, and was also included in the discussions. According to a memo Skogerboe sent to coaches, the two schools received an endorsement from the Eastern Carver Schools.

New Prague was a longtime member of the Missota Conference, which broke up following the 2013-14 school year. The district applied to the Metro West, a new conference that was forming at the time, but was turned down by them as well as by the Big 9 Conference, which includes large schools in southeastern Minnesota. They were accepted into the Wright County Conference, which went from 11 to 12 schools at that time. This is the third year that New Prague has competed in the WCC, and some schedules are already in place for next season. If a change is made, the earliest it would happen is for the 2018-19 school year.

"The Wright County Conference has been a good conference for us and I've appreciated the strong competition throughout the conference, and in all programs," Skogerboe said in a memo to coaches. "However, we are the largest school in the WCC and we are continuing to grow. Obviously, travel time is also something that has increased since joining the WCC and we have to take that into consideration as well.

"Also, so many of the schools do not have the same levels of play that we currently offer. We end up scheduling lower-level games with Chaska and Chanhassen for numerous sports."

Skogerboe said he informed WCC activities directors on March 1 that New Prague was exploring the possibility of changing conferences. "I didn’t want them to be blindsided like we were a few years back when one school told us they were leaving the Missota," he said.

Schools currently in the Metro West include....

To see more on this story pick up the March 16, 2017 print edition of The New Prague Times.