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Every two years, the Minnesota State High School League takes a look at section placement and typically makes just some small tweaks. A team here or a team there gets shuffled, but programs largely find a home and stick to it.

Unfortunately for  Chisago Lakes football program, their geographic location, paired with the size of the school in regards to football classes, has left them bouncing around sections for years, and this season is no different.

After going through a brutal district schedule in the 2022 regular season, the 2-6 Wildcats made a run to the state tournament by knocking off Brooklyn Center, St. Anthony Village and Fridley in Section 4AAAA. In the first round of state, they were clobbered by eventual champion Simley 46-14.

Now Simley is about to become more familiar to the Wildcats, as Chisago Lakes was moved to Section 3AAAA. It includes the defending state champs from Simley, Hill-Murray, South St. Paul, North St. Paul, St. Paul Johnson and St. Paul Como Park.

There is good news for the Wildcats, however, as they have many returners this year and are hoping for another shot at state. Simley graduates virtually all of their offensive production, including starting quarterback Caden Renslow, 2,000 yard rusher and All American wrestler Gavin Nelson and human Swiss army knife Tay’Vion McCoy, who had over 600 yards rushing and 500 yards receiving on the year.

The trio combined for 3,255 rushing yards, 569 receiving years and 1,100 passing yards and 54 total touchdowns. They scored six of Simley’s seven touchdowns in the win over CL last year.

The rest of the teams in the section have been struggling for some time. Hill-Murray has gone 5-5 the last two years, and their only winning season in the last decade was a 4-2 campaign during the COVID-shortened 2020 school year while South St. Paul, North St. Paul, Johnson and Como Park combined to go 2-33 last season. North St. Paul dropped down from Class AAAAA in this realignment after going just 4-55 over the past seven years there.

District realignment was also announced in early June and it’ll give the Wildcats and new Head Coach Ryan Anderson a bit of a reprieve during the regular season.

Last year’s schedule featured Class AAAA football factories Becker and Hutchinson, as well as upstart Rocori and ranked Class AAAAA team St. Francis. Those four teams were a combined 35-9 and the record of the teams CL faced was 46-35 overall.

This year, there are only three holdovers from last year’s schedule, and these are Cambridge-Isanti, Willmar and Big Lake, who were a combined 8-20.

The new opponents for CL will be St. Cloud Apollo, Providence Academy, Zimmerman, Princeton and North St. Paul.

Apollo won one game last year. Providence Academy was 7-3 but played mostly small schools. Zimmerman went to the state semifinals but graduated All State running back and 2,500 (no, that’s not a typo) yard rusher Caden Spence, as well as their second leading rusher and quarterback. Princeton was 6-3 but they also took heavy losses in graduation, including three year starting quarterback Cooper Drews and leading rusher Ethan Ballweber. And, North St. Paul has struggled to be competitive for nearly a decade.

That’s all to say that the Wildcats should win more than the two regular season contests and shouldn’t have to go through such a meat grinder come section time.

The CL girls hockey team remained in Section 4A, but it will look much different this year. Gone are Simley, Two Rivers and Red Wing. That trio is replaced with Holy Angels, Blake and Minneapolis. 

Although Simley and Two Rivers were tough competition, the section arguably got harder with the new squads. Blake was the top seed in Section 6AA last year and was one win away from going to the state tournament in the big class last year, but decided to opt back down to Class A. Holy Angels was the top seed in Section 5A last year with a 20-6-1 record, and Minneapolis was 12-14-1 last year, but beat Chisago Lakes 4-1 and is replacing Red Wing, who hadn’t been competitive in almost five years.

The girls swimming and diving team will be glad to not see the blaze-red of Visitation in the pool any longer. They escaped the perennial power by moving from Section 4A to 5A. The new section is much closer to CL’s conference competition, with Mississippi 8 Conference foes Becker, Big Lake, Monticello and Princeton all in the section, along with Foley, Lakes International Language Academy and Milaca, Mora/Ogilvie

NORTH BRANCH

North Branch’s football section is mostly unchanged. They did gain a school in Rock Ridge, which was previously in Class AAA and went 1-7 there last year. North Branch has beaten the Wolverines two years in a row. 

The addition also means Section 7AAAA grows to six teams, which eliminates one of the byes in the first round. Previously, three teams got a bye while only two will get one in the new section.

The district didn’t change much, either, for North Branch, but they do have one new opponent this season on the gridiron in Pequot Lakes. They’ll open the season against the Patriots, who went 8-3 last year, on Thursday, August 31. Luckily for the Vikings, PL’s quarterback Grant Loge graduated this spring. The signal caller was fourth in passing yards last year with 2,450 and second in touchdowns with 32.

Viking wrestling escaped Class AA powerhouse Simley in new section placement. They’ll now be in Section 7AA with Milaca, Cloquet, Hibbing, Little Falls and four other teams.

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