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Op-Ed
Source: Dan Bauer / Wisconsin Prep Hockey
Feb 26, 2025, 11:51 AM CST
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published at Wisconsin Prep Hockey. It is being republished with permission from the author.
It was November of 2016 as I headed to the Waupaca Expo Center for my first day of practice as head coach of the Waupaca Ice. Just eight short months ago I left the ice at the Alliant Energy Center, after a state tournament loss, as a coach with the Central Wisconsin Storm. Fourteen skaters stepped on the ice with me that day.
With visions of my Spooner days dancing in my head, I was back to small town hockey!
Little has changed in the landscape of WIAA girl’s hockey over the past nine years. Large co-ops still rule the dwindling twenty-seven programs and the small-town programs in Medford and Viroqua are still trying to do more with less. The Raiders of Medford, population 4,406, choose their team from 863 students. Rib Lake, which provides one player factors into that number. Viroqua, population 4,437 has a pool of 909 to pick from including the schools of Westby, Cashton and Youth Initiative High School. Every other girl’s program in the state has combined enrollments twice as high with over half the co-ops choosing from enrollments larger than the entire population of either of these two small town programs.
Large co-op programs may not have killed small town hockey, but they have certainly put them on life support. The four smallest girls’ teams, active rosters at fifteen or less, have a combined 13-45-2 record this season. That might sound like the blues to many, but for small town hockey loyalists there is more than meets the eye.
Yeah, I can be myself here in this small town
Coaches are taught to expect adversity, and every coach would tell you that their team in any given season will incur challenges or hardships beyond their opponents. Speaking from a file cabinet full of experience, I can tell you that the type of adversity experienced by winning and losing programs can be very different.
Paul Severson is in his seventh year as Head Coach at Viroqua. The Eau Claire native who attended Memorial High School and is a UWEC Blugold alumni understands all too well the challenges of small-town hockey. Due to injury, his Blackhawks roster is now down to twelve healthy players.
“There will be times when we get seven players out for practice,” said Severson.
Head due north about one-hundred and forty miles to Medford and Head Coach Tasha Schmidtfranz, juggles a roster of sixteen girls, that has now shrunk to fourteen. “There is plenty of room on the bench,” she remarked tongue-in-cheek, when I asked what are the advantages of a small roster.
In addition to their short benches, Medford had to do what is not uncommon in small school programs: build a goalie from scratch. It usually involves asking for volunteers to find an unselfish teammate that is willing to take on one of the toughest positions in sports. For the Raiders that person was sophomore Chloe Pipkorn.
When I asked Pipkorn what the most difficult part of goaltending was, she replied, “Everything!” The steep learning curve and bright spotlight that shines on goalies hasn’t deterred her. “It has been hard controlling my emotions and not feeling like I let my team down,” Pipkorn confessed. “They never get mad at me when I mess up and they always tell me it’s ok and to keep my head up.”
In my lone season at Waupaca, Anna Ryder was the one who stepped up for her teammates and into the net. Ryder, now a Speech Language Pathologist at Eau Claire Memorial recalled her experience, “I heard the word ‘sacrifice’ a lot, but I never really saw it as that. I still got to play the game but in a different capacity, and I liked that I gained a new perspective. I remember my teammates really stepping up for me, especially at the beginning of the season, to keep the opposing team away and only allow easy shots. It helps to have a team and coach that will rally for you.”
Though small roster advantages are few, Schmidtfranz believes one is, “Everyone is needed, wanted, and has a place on the team.”
Viroqua mom, Cassondra Bramstedt, echoed those sentiments, “These young ladies rely on each other to contribute and play a key role. With every player having significant minutes on the ice and few breaks, each one becomes indispensable to the team’s success.”
Large co-ops add schools and players often at the expense of the players already there. Coaches can struggle with finding a meaningful role for every player. Some players become disenfranchised with the program and cut themselves from the team. Playing time, a menace to large programs, is mostly a non-issue at small schools.
Severson admitted, “There are no complaints about a lack of ice time–quite the opposite.”
Ryder, who earned Honorable Mention All-Conference in her one season as a goalie, realized the benefits of playing on a small team the following season when she was a member of the newly created WVU co-op. “Coming back after that year to skate was probably harder than being a goalie itself. When we joined the co-op, I was one of many forwards instead of the stand-alone goalie who would be guaranteed to play the whole game no matter how I played.”
Both Medford and Viroqua draw their players from a single youth hockey association. It is an advantage because the coaches can get an accurate count of the incoming players. The good news in Viroqua is that they currently have three youth girl’s teams at the U-10, U-12 and U-14 level.
Andy Rogers, whose daughter Brenna plays on the high school team, is confident in the future of Blackhawks hockey. “Viroqua has a real sense of pride and tradition,” said the Blackhawks alumni who graduated in 1997.
After graduating, Rogers joined the boys coaching staff for four years under Head Coach John Van Cleave, then later became the Viroqua girls head coach for twelve years. “We truly value what we have here as a program,” Rogers explained. “Our rink, our relationships, and our opportunities. Our program truly supports girl’s hockey and has put in the groundwork to keep it going. There is no envy of large co-ops here, the mentality is ‘we can and we will’ when competing.”
There is more work to do in Medford where there is currently no stand-alone girls team in the youth organization. “We hope to continue to build the girls program both at the youth organization and at the high school level,” Schmidtfranz noted. “We do have five or six bantams that will be moving up next season. I have been advocating to have a U-14 girls team and am happy to announce that we will be offering one next year.”
Wisconsin girls’ hockey had a breakout from 2006 to 2014 when the number of teams grew from fourteen to thirty-three. Programs sprung up quickly, but too many forgot that they needed to build a foundation of youth hockey girls underneath. Since then, a handful of teams have been disbanded and pulled in to strengthen co-ops.
In Waupaca we faced the next season outlook of a roster with ten players. My athletic director’s solution was for me to recruit new players from the high school hallways, like he had done for football. When my argument that teaching someone to skate was far more complicated than learning to play football didn’t land, I told him I wouldn’t return to coach a team with ten players.
The Wisconsin Valley Union was born. Once three teams, Waupaca, Marshfield and Point/Rapids was now a one team co-op with twenty-three players. I firmly believe Waupaca will have their own team again because they have that small town pride and determination. Trying to survive for five or six years with mostly beginning skaters was in my mind dangerous and a recipe for failure. Bet on the Waupaca girl’s program to make a return.
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Educated in a Small Town
For some teams a trip to the state tournament is far from a dream. When your program has been to the state tournament seventeen out of nineteen years like the Central Wisconsin Storm, far more than any other program, your season expectation is clearly defined from day one. The running jab at the Storm is that they reserve their Madison hotel rooms in November.
Right now, with only one division in girls’ hockey, the small school vision isn’t so rosy. “We know that in the current structure of girls hockey,” Severson explained, “that our program odds of a state championship are like winning the Powerball. We’ll get struck by lightning seven times before that happens.” Ironically, Viroqua was one of six original WIAA girls’ programs in 2002 and participated in the first state tournament. They haven’t been back since.
“A trip to the state tournament might not be in the cards for us, but that doesn’t change the way we support our girls,” said Bramstedt. “As parents, we take great pride in watching our daughters out on the ice, giving it their all and playing the game they love.”
Schmidtfranz, a home-grown Medford native said, “I always hope for an upset.” She also stresses the importance of loving the game and appreciating the experience. “Every game, every period, every shift is a chance to go out on the ice and play the game they all love. Just because we lose does not mean we are not having fun.”
Due to injury, the Blackhawks roster is now down to twelve healthy players. The low roster numbers create many problems, but an even bigger issue is trying to instill a winning attitude, without winning.
“I think a big challenge for us as coaches has been to instill that “compete” that’s required to win,” outlined Severson, “to get that extra effort from our players.” The Blackhawks started their season with fourteen straight losses and scored only ten goals in those games. Players feel “pretty hopeless after a lot of losses,” said Severson.
In his second season as head coach Severson posed the question to his team if their won-loss record should be one of their goals, their answer was a unanimous “no”. In my season at Waupaca I had Markie Ash, fourth on the state’s All-Time Leading Scorer list and a handful of very raw skaters. Their past coach had played Markie and Avrey Simonson the entire game at times. When I met with the team leaders before the season I asked a similar question, “do you want to play to win, or do you want everybody to play?” Without hesitation they wanted everybody to play. Honestly, I couldn’t have been any prouder of that response.
“We have played more than one game this year with only two defensemen for the whole game,” Schmidtfranz professed.
“High school athletes who go out for a sport go out for many reasons–competition, winning, camaraderie, etcetera,” rationalized Severson. “But top of the list is they go out for that sport because they love to play it. If they don’t get to play, not all of them will stick it out. If the athletes see a path to playing time, fewer are likely to drop out of hockey.”
“The players take pride in playing for their home team,” said Schmidtfranz.
Winning can be the bully in the room that nobody really knows how to handle. Its influential power causes us to make decisions and do things that often have no intrinsic value or place in an education-based environment. When winning is knocked from the top of the pyramid, so many other benefits of athletics are allowed to flourish.
Lopsided scores can often be a by-product of an unhealthy emphasis on winning. While most coaches and players will tell you it isn’t much fun to be on either side of these mismatches, one side is truly worse than the other.
Blackhawks senior goaltender Sami Bramstedt has been on the wrong end of some of those games. “I respect the teams that start to pass and work on fundamentals instead of just shooting the puck over and over to try to score,’ she said. “Once it is in run time, it is just disrespectful to keep scoring on the team that is already down.”
When winning games isn’t a realistic expectation, which despite the “1980 Miracle on Ice” does indeed happen, coaches must become even more process driven to find the silver linings. “Focusing on the little wins helps our team the most, and we stay excited by setting small goals for the game,” said Virqoua forward/defenseman Charlie Brudos. “Our coaches help us come up with these goals and they make sure to be supportive of all of us by letting us know how we have improved individually.”
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Got Nothing Against a Big Town
It is hard to fault these small-town teams for questioning why they can play a season with fourteen players, but a large co-op of nearly forty players won’t split. As I have explored in the past, splitting is more complicated than many believe. Funding, ice time availability and the unpredictability of open enrollment are just a few of the potential issues that must be solved. The value of programs having junior varsity teams is also a consideration. Often there are no easy solutions, but that doesn’t mean separating large co-ops shouldn’t happen.
“When we play against large co-op teams it is very challenging to go into the game with a positive mindset,” related Viroqua forward Mari Buros. “It is very difficult to lose by a lot and it makes me angry when we do so I do appreciate teams that do not run up the score.”
Severson has witnessed within their conference how mega co-ops are built and why. “As some of the largest programs have gobbled up other high school programs, they have shown that you can have some dramatic success with winning state championships that way. This gives incentive to combining two programs and taking the best seventeen players from the two to have an all-star squad.”
Summer hockey opportunities put girls from all over the state together on AAA and summer tournament teams. Often that is where the talk begins, and players are courted by co-op programs and parents dream about championship mergers. Severson recounted “One of their players (large co-op) asked one of ours why we didn’t co-op with them, then they would have a full junior varsity team?” The following year, nine of their players didn’t come out for hockey.” There is no argument that open enrollment and co-op growth displace homegrown players.
“While it (adding more schools) would initially increase our numbers by pulling players from nearby cities, it could also take away opportunities for local girls to play,” reasoned Viroqua mom, Cassondra Bramstedt.
Junior Mari Buros agreed, “I would hate to see Viroqua join a large co-op, she confessed, “because that means many more girls (my teammates) wouldn’t be able to play hockey.”
The original intent of co-ops, to provide students with athletic opportunities is working, but the idea that co-ops would be temporary, has produced very few success stories.
Medford parent Shawn Konieczny sees more damage than benefit. “The reason co-ops were formed in the first place was to give players the opportunities to play a sport they love, but that purpose has been abused by directors and schools to benefit them personally.” He continued, “Don’t get me wrong the coop intent is wonderful for the girls, but the abuse of its intent is killing the sport.”
Tasha Schmidtfranz, didn’t mince words about the co-op subject. “I strongly believe that communities that have multiple rinks between them should not be allowed to co-op. I believe co-ops should only be allowed for schools which do not have a rink offered to them. There are twenty-seven girls teams in Wisconsin and from my understanding there are two hundred plus schools (198) within those twenty-seven teams. In my opinion the co-ops need to be split up into separate teams.”
There are success stories, albeit few. “Fond du Lac and Beaver Dam split up a few years ago,” noted Severson. “The Warbirds the following year were a small team like ours–but quickly grew their numbers back and were a very competitive team the last few years. Beaver Dam struggled for a few years, but their numbers at the youth level grew, and their program has developed into a competitive team the last couple of years.”
Two divisions have been an overwhelming success with the boys. Severson would like to see the girls follow that same path. “I believe that if the girls divided into two divisions, there would be some incentive for high schools who have their own rink and own program to have their own high school team.”
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I cannot forget from where it is that I come from
From the outside looking in, this small-town struggle to win games and discover a path to the state tournament might seem like singing the blues. But like the melancholic and somber tone of a B.B. King track, it is also beautiful music to the ears of those who are living it and soaking in the benefits of growing up in a small town. There is an “old school” loyalty and pride that can’t be ignored and demands respect.
For these small-town teams, the greenest grass is right under their feet.
“They are proud to be all from the same school and see their teammates in the halls at school,” Medford father Shawn Konieczny added. “It brings a strong bond of closeness.”
Putting the team first, selflessness, one the monumental lessons of athletics, isn’t lost on these small-town girls. Charlie Brudos, only a sophomore for the Blackhawks, sees the bigger picture. “This year we had two players leave and it made me realize how important it is to play for our small team to ensure that the program has a future.”
“It is very important to me that the girls program continues to grow so our younger girls will have a high school team to play on for all the years to come,” said Buros who has a younger sister who will be a Blackhawk in the near future.
King’s most famous blues melody is “The Thrill is Gone”, but for Viroqua’s elite puck-stopper, Sami Bramstedt, the thrill of playing in a small town is alive and well. “I like how close we all get to be on a small team like Viroqua. Being able to talk to all your teammates and know them so well is truly one of my favorite things about playing for this team. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Changing from our roots won’t be on the ballot,” Rogers concluded.
And people let me be just what I want to be—in a small town.
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published at Wisconsin Prep Hockey. It is being republished with permission from the author.
You can read the original work here: www.wisconsinprephockey.net/news_article/show/1330185
You can follow more Wisconsin high school hockey news and information at wisconsinprephockey.net.
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