The WIAA State Tournament is in the books, and it is time to review and reflect on another exciting long tournament weekend in Madison.
And You Thought Losing was Bad
All three of the newly crowned state champions lost at the state tournament one year ago. Bay Area lost to the Storm 4-3 in the title match, while Edgewood lost to NDA and Tomahawk lost to New Richmond in the semi-finals. Coming close and falling short creates unique and immeasurable motivation inside you. It is that final step failure that very often leads directly to future success. It is a formula that duplicates itself in nearly every aspect of our lives. You cannot get back up with more determination and the willingness to invest more, until you have fallen. The exact reason why this athletic adventure is so valuable. When we can see past the immediate disappointment and learn from failure, it becomes a bedrock beneath our future successes—like a state championship!
“We want them”
It may not have exactly been a Mark Messier-like game six victory guarantee, but it was close. After Bay Area had disposed of the Cap Ice Cougars in the state semi-finals, junior Faye Brunke was asked if she wanted to face the Storm, who had beaten them a year ago, in the championship game. She looked straight ahead and said without hesitation, “We want them.” I knew revenge had been a motivation for the Ice Bears all season, but at that moment I realized it was personal.
Just as Messier backed up his prediction in 1994 with a hat trick and game winning goal, Brunke did one better by scoring four times, a state tournament record, including the first goal of the game in an 8-0 demolition of the Storm. Bay Areas leading goal scorer finished the season with thirty-one goals, six in the post-season.
Emily Bill told Scott Venci of the Green Bay Press-Gazette, “We would always want revenge on them (Storm),” said Bill. “That’s what we really wanted. I think that pushed us to wanting it this year.”
Will round three be on tap for 2026? Each team will be hit hard by graduation, Bay Area with nine seniors including Julianne Bradford and Emily Bill’s ninety-nine combined points. CWS will lose eight seniors, four of those on the blueline with Molly Engstrom winner Ava Rode, Taylor Freidel, Michaela Gerum and Sophie Bohlin all moving on. They will also need to replace the states leading scorer, Gabi Heuser’s forty goals and sixty-four points. Oh, and twenty-five other teams in the state will be doing their best to make certain a rematch doesn’t happen.
Hatchets Hit the Bullseye
Hatchet Head Coach Dewey Reilly is exactly the type of home-grown coach every program dreams of finding. A former Hatchet himself, deeply rooted in the community with a passion for the game of hockey. Coach Reilly had a vision about twelve years ago and went to work revamping the Tomahawk Youth Hockey Program. The results have been eye-popping as the Hatchets have buried memories of a 0-20 season just six years ago and replaced them with their first state championship. The smallest hockey school in the state has given every school in the state the hope that they can be next.
Stay tuned for a deeper dive, and feature story on Tomahawk’s climb to the top.
Emotional Championship for Edgewood Hockey Family
The first WIAA championship for the Edgewood Sacred Heart Crusaders was a bitter-sweet one for Head Coach Pete Rothering and playoff hero Dylan Lenz. Heartbreak struck the Lenz family and the Edgewood family when Dylan’s older brother, Drew, was tragically killed in a skiing accident the day before the sectional final. Drew was a 2020 graduate of Edgewood and former team captain.
It was a pivotal moment for Rothering and the team as they prepared to play Verona in the sectional final. In his fourteenth season as a head coach Rothering had not faced a team tragedy like this. Not knowing whether Dylan would choose to play or not, he addressed his team. “The best way to take care of our friend Dylan and honor Drew is to go play hockey and take your emotions and turn it into focus and play the best game you can to honor them.”
Dylan did play and according to his coach he played like never before. “Dylan had a ton on his shoulders, a ton of emotions, but he channeled it so well,” Rothering related. “Those next three games were the best games he played in his life.” He had five points in the next three games.
Riding side-saddle with the intense emotions of Drew’s death was Pete navigating his first season without his father in the picture. Steve Rothering passed away in August leaving a huge void in the tight nit Edgewood hockey family. Steve taught at Edgewood for forty-one years and was a coach for the Crusaders for forty-four years. He is a Wisconsin High School hockey legend with over seven hundred wins, seven Private School State Championships and twenty-three conference titles.
The elder Rothering was a first-class person in every regard and highly respected in the coaching community. There is a seat at the Edgewood Rink that is dedicated to Steve and stays vacant during games. “It was hard not to have him around this year,” said Pete. “Early on in the season, we would play a game and my first gut when I got in the car was to call him. I miss him a bunch.”
While Pete’s dad was not there filling an arena seat to witness his son’s first championship, Pete is confident he had the best seat. “It was definitely hard to not have him there, but also there is the other side, the year he is gone, he was looking on and we took care of business.”
State Tournament Podcast
Check out the most recent WiPH Podcast to hear interviews with all three of the championship coaches. Great insight by all three.
Bob Suter’s Legacy20 Arena
The name has changed, but the lone advantage of this venue is the atmosphere for the players. And I might argue that it is mostly enjoyed by the boys who have packed the arena and left uncertain numbers of fans at home. Listen to Pete Rothering describe the arena atmosphere in the most recent WiPH Podcast. Almost makes me believe all the other shortcomings can be overlooked. Almost.
I do believe the staff at the Legacy20 Arena are doing everything possible to make this a great experience, they just need another 500-1,000 seats to accommodate all those that would like to attend the boy’s tournament. Turning people away from a 20,000-seat NHL arena in Minnesota is very different than turning fans away from a 2,000-seat arena here in Wisconsin. We need an arena that can handle everybody that wants to be there. I understand we already had that at the Alliant Energy Center, but the seating capacity and parking were the only advantages there. We need an arena that checks more than one or two boxes.
Before you start asking about the Kohl Center, LaBahn or the Resch, they have all been extensively vetted and for various reasons, beyond control, they will not work.
The girls are not selling out the arena and I don’t believe they are benefiting from cross-over fans from the boy’s spectators. Neither of the girl’s sessions was close to a full house. Combining the two still possesses issues and I believe it puts the girl’s tournament on the back burner. The early starting time for some games still seems ridiculous based on the number of games that need to be played. And sending the D2 semi-final boy’s teams to their banquet after they have lost is not ideal.
And lastly, I thought we had moved past the DC Everest Co-op and the Sun Prairie West Co-op labels for teams. Did we not do away with that for a couple of years? Or was that just a pleasant dream I had? I’ve heard the rationale, about other teams in the co-op being jealous enough to break away. That clearly is not having any effect. And for those who don’t see a game all year with those team labels, on a scoreboard or a game program, it is annoying.
I haven’t been able to crack the cone of secrecy surrounding the length of the new WIAA contract with Legacy20. Hopefully it isn’t in the same zip code as the eight-year extension they just signed with UW-Madison for many of the other state tournament venues. With a few new arenas on the way around the state, it appears a better facility could soon be available.
Two Divisions Are Enough
Those who seem more than willing to buy into the WIAA supposed support for a three division boys’ tournament are drinking too heavily from the everyone gets a trophy fountain. Please don’t buy into the math that suggests we can have twelve teams at state if there are three divisions, but not if there are two. That is nonsense that should be dismissed immediately. Two divisions have been the long debated and requested solution of the Wisconsin Hockey Coaches Association and it has been a major success. The competitive balance initiative has moved successful D2 teams into D1, creating new paths for more new teams to get to Madison. If Tomahawk can go from back-to-back 0-20 and 2-20 seasons just five years ago, to state champions, then there is a blueprint for any team to follow.
The road to the state tournament should be difficult and should be challenging. And not getting there should not be considered a failed season. This is not college or professional sports, and the further we can stay away from that win at all costs mindset, the better high school sports will be.
Two divisions would also help grow the girls numbers. The problem is the WIAA is so concerned with their equity among sports talking point, which I do not believe even exists, that growth and improving the overall health of a sport isn’t considered. The contradictions to their equity argument are many.
Seeding: Can It Be Better?
The general concept behind seeding tournaments is to get the tops playing against each other at the end of the bracket. Thankfully lower seeds stage upsets along the way. Otherwise, it would make for a very predictable tournament. Each year it is very likely that there will be a sectional between the four that is weaker than the others and one that is stronger. Predicting those swings in power is an uncertain science. Moving teams around from sectional to sectional at an attempt to create parity would be an exercise in futility.
This year, based on MyHockey computer ratings, before the playoffs, here are the seeds that made it through to the state tournament: Girls: #1, #2, #11, #16. Boys D1: #2, #3, #7, #9. Boys D2: #1, #2, #4, #6.
A few years ago, former CFM coach Tony Menard proposed a re-seeding idea that I think would be worth exploring. A reasonable adaptation would be to seed and play the first-round games as they are currently done. D1 boys would play out both regional games, so at this point each division would have sixteen teams remaining. Then, based on a computer formula, seed those sixteen. Honestly, I am not convinced this needs to be done, based on the recent state tournament qualifiers.
Sectional finals would be played at established venues that provide the best experience for the teams and the fans. Quite a few years ago, the WHCA evaluated every rink in the state, based on key factors and then rated them. The idea was to prevent sectional finals from being played in rinks that cannot handle the demand of that game. That is an idea that may be worth revisiting.
Pick Up the Puck
It did not happen at the state tournament, but it did take place at the boy’s sectional final between NDA and Neenah at the Champion Center. First, I thought the officiating crew of Ryan Reischel, Johnny Annis and Jason Zurawik called a great game. It was a physical battle between the two teams and the officials allowed them to play the game. At one point during the game, Reischel admitted he messed up an offsides call and a player, who shall remain nameless, shot the puck into the zone is protest. Reischel, a veteran of thirty-seven years of officiating, made the young man get the puck, pick it up and hand it to him. Said Reischel about the incident, “I did make that kid retrieve the pick that he shot away from us. I messed up an offside and I blew it down too quickly. Then he unnecessarily shot the puck into the zone. I figured making him get the puck was more effective than a penalty.”
I thought it was one the best things I have seen an official do since one stood next me at the bench, and told me, “That last penalty I called on you, wasn’t my best call ever.” The human element of officiating will always be better than the electronic version in my book. Tip of the hat to Reischel and his crew.
Coming Attractions
NEXT WEEK: My Awards: Girl’s All-Freshman Team and The Radar Awards. SOON: The story of the Tomahawk Hatchets Championship Climb!
