North Dakota
ND girls hockey tournament moving back to Scheels Arena, Ralph Engelstad Arena
FARGO — After just one year in Minot, the North Dakota girls hockey state tournament will be moving back to Fargo and Grand Forks through at least 2028-29.
The girls hockey season will be moved up one week beginning in 2023-24 while the state tournament will return to a combined boys and girls format, beginning with Scheels Arena in Fargo next winter and then alternating with the Ralph Engelstad Arena in Grand Forks in the following years.
The recommendations made by the Athletic Review Committee at its May 31 meeting were unanimously approved by the North Dakota High School Activities Association board at its June 6 meeting.
“This recommendation came from the girls hockey coaches through their advisory committee,” said NDHSAA executive director Matthew Fetsch, who oversees the sport of hockey. “And that was the group who pushed to split the tournaments going into last season.”
With North Dakota
introducing three classes of basketball this upcoming season,
Fetsch cited the addition of another state basketball tournament potentially affecting girls hockey media coverage as the primary reason for the switch back to coinciding boys and girls tournaments.
“In all honesty, I think the No. 1 factor ended up being the addition of the third classification of basketball and another tournament falling that weekend,” Fetsch said. “And the priority from the girls hockey community to have television coverage.”
Last season’s girls hockey tournament was at Minot’s Maysa Arena. Feedback from the tournament’s participating coaches at the time was mostly positive.
“I thought it was a great event,” Fargo North-South coach Parker Metz said
after his Spruins repeated as state champions.
“At the end of the day, I’d love to come back. I know there’s mixed feelings about it, but at the end of the day, it’s about the kids and the experience for them. We had a good time and it was a good venue.”
“I thought the games were all competitive and it was a good showcase for girls hockey,” Fargo Davies coach Josh Issertell added after the Eagles’ runner-up finish. “The facility and the city of Minot did their job and did it well. Kudos to all involved.”
Fetsch commended Minot and Maysa Arena for their hosting duties but noted that attendance lacked when the hometown Majettes weren’t lacing up the skates.
“I think Minot as a host and a facility were phenomenal,” Fetsch said. “They did everything they could to make it a great experience and it’s definitely a positive there. When they run any tournament, it’s a big deal to that community.
“As far as cons, I think the obvious one that was talked about with the advisory group was the attendance,” he said. “When Minot played, it was a very good atmosphere and very good crowd. But in reality, you had an outstanding championship between two Fargo teams and there were about 200 people there to watch it.”
Perhaps affecting attendance that same weekend were the East Region basketball tournament in Fargo and the West Region basketball tournament in Bismarck. Weather also may have deterred the Fargo crowd from making the trip to Minot, with an early-March blizzard causing travel difficulties for many.
The 2023-24 girls hockey tournament was slated to be hosted by West Fargo before the recommendation was made by the Athletic Review Committee to bring it back to Scheels Arena.
Fetsch said he wouldn’t completely rule Minot out of hosting a combined hockey tournament in the future.
“I think all of that will come into play with the combined tournament (is discussed) again,” Fetsch said. “Minot’s facility, I raise the question of are they a host for a combined tournament with the facilities they have? It’s probably something that will be discussed more in the future.”
North Dakota
Illinois State Gets 1st Win Over North Dakota, 35-13
(AP) — Wenkers Wright ran for 118 yards and two touchdowns and No. 13 Illinois State knocked off North Dakota for the first time, 35-13 in the regular season finale for both teams Saturday.
The Redbirds are 9-2 (6-2 Missouri Valley Conference) and are looking to reach the FCS playoffs for the first time since 2019 and sixth time in Brock Spack’s 16 seasons as head coach.
Illinois State opened the game with some trickery. Eddie Kasper pulled up on a fleaflicker and launched a 30-yard touchdown pass to Xavier Loyd to cap a seven-play, 70-yard opening drive.
Simon Romfo tied it on North Dakota’s only touchdown of the day, throwing 20 yards to Nate DeMontagnac.
Wright scored from the 10 to make it 14-7 after a quarter, and after C.J. Elrichs kicked a 20-yard field goal midway through the second to make it 14-10 at intermission, Wright powered in from the 18 and Mitch Bartol caught a five-yard touchdown pass from Tommy Rittenhouse to make it 28-10 after three.
Seth Glatz added a 13-yard touchdown run to make it 35-10 before Elrichs added a 37-yard field goal to get the Fighting Hawks on the board to set the final margin.
Rittenhouse finished 21 of 33 passing for 187 yards for Illinois State. Loyd caught eight passes for 121 yards.
Romfo completed 11 of 26 passes for 135 yards and a touchdown with an interception for North Dakota (5-7, 2-6).
Illinois State faced North Dakota for just the fourth time and third time as Missouri Valley Conference opponents. The Redbirds lost the previous three meetings.
North Dakota
Photos: Championship scenes from North Dakota Class A, Class B state volleyball
FARGO — Top-seeded Langdon Area-Munich lived up to its billing Saturday night at the Fargodome.
The
Cardinals earned a 15-25, 25-16, 25-15, 25-16 victory
against No. 2-seeded South Prairie-Max to earn the North Dakota Class B volleyball state championship.
Bismarck Century spoiled West Fargo Sheyenne’s bid for a three-peat. The
Patriots scored a 25-21, 18-25, 25-15, 25-22 victory
for the Class A state championship.
Century won its 10th state title in program history.
Below are championship scenes from Saturday night at the Fargodome:
Peterson covers college athletics for The Forum, including Concordia College and Minnesota State Moorhead. He also covers the Fargo-Moorhead RedHawks independent baseball team and helps out with North Dakota State football coverage. Peterson has been working at the newspaper since 1996.
North Dakota
North Dakota Badlands national monument proposed with tribes’ support
A coalition of conservation groups and Native American tribal citizens on Friday called on President Joe Biden to designate nearly 140,000 acres of rugged, scenic Badlands as North Dakota’s first national monument, a proposal several tribal nations say would preserve the area’s indigenous and cultural heritage.
The proposed Maah Daah Hey National Monument would encompass 11 noncontiguous, newly designated units totaling 139,729 acres in the Little Missouri National Grassland. The proposed units would hug the popular recreation trail of the same name and neighbor Theodore Roosevelt National Park, named for the 26th president who ranched and roamed in the Badlands as a young man in the 1880s.
“When you tell the story of landscape, you have to tell the story of people,” said Michael Barthelemy, an enrolled member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation and director of Native American studies at Nueta Hidatsa Sahnish College. “You have to tell the story of the people that first inhabited those places and the symbiotic relationship between the people and the landscape, how the people worked to shape the land and how the land worked to shape the people.”
The U.S. Forest Service would manage the proposed monument. The National Park Service oversees many national monuments, which are similar to national parks and usually designated by the president to protect the landscape’s features.
Supporters have traveled twice to Washington to meet with White House, Interior Department, Forest Service and Department of Agriculture officials. But the effort faces an uphill battle with less than two months remaining in Biden’s term and potential headwinds in President-elect Trump’s incoming administration.
If unsuccessful, the group would turn to the Trump administration “because we believe this is a good idea regardless of who’s president,” Dakota Resource Council Executive Director Scott Skokos said.
Dozens if not hundreds of oil and natural gas wells dot the landscape where the proposed monument would span, according to the supporters’ map. But the proposed units have no oil and gas leases, private inholdings or surface occupancy, and no grazing leases would be removed, said North Dakota Wildlife Federation Executive Director John Bradley.
The proposal is supported by the MHA Nation, the Spirit Lake Tribe and the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe through council resolutions.
If created, the monument would help tribal citizens stay connected to their identity, said Democratic state Rep. Lisa Finley-DeVille, an MHA Nation enrolled member.
North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum is Trump’s pick to lead the Interior Department, which oversees the National Park Service. In a written statement, Burgum said: “North Dakota is proof that we can protect our precious parks, cultural heritage and natural resources AND responsibly develop our vast energy resources.”
North Dakota Sen. John Hoeven’s office said Friday was the first they had heard of the proposal, “but any effort that would make it harder for ranchers to operate and that could restrict multiple use, including energy development, is going to raise concerns with Senator Hoeven.”
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