How cultural changes are reshaping Minnesota high school sports

Editor’s note: This story is part of a three-story package from the Star Tribune on how cultural change is reshaping Minnesota high school sports. Please also read our story on boys volleyball and our deep look at high school hockey in our state. Thank you for reading.

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The mayor of a small town in southern Minnesota saw his population rapidly changing in the early 2000s as immigrants from around the world moved in for jobs and a better life.

“It’s the wave of the future,” former Austin Mayor Tom Stiehm told residents at the time. “You can either ride that wave or you can drown.”

In Austin and so many other Minnesota cities both big and small, populations have changed, dramatically in some cases. New families enrolled their kids in schools, and these student-athletes are growing up with their own preferences for what sports to play.

Minnesota state demographer Susan Brower noted that 20% of Minnesota children have at least one parent who is foreign born, compared to 9% in 2000. For nearly one in five public school students, a language other than English is spoken at home.

“Part of the increasing diversity of the state and students is there is a momentum built into it already,” said Brower, the state demographer since 2012. “Because we have more diverse younger people, we will have more diverse parents in the future, which means more diverse babies when they come to have children.”

When it comes to athletic choices, some sports have seen an increase in participation and interest — boys volleyball, soccer, girls wrestling — while other sports, namely hockey, are seeing a decline in numbers, or even disappearing at schools.

The Minnesota Star Tribune asked more than a dozen people involved in high school athletics how cultural changes statewide have altered our high school sports landscape. These are the common themes that emerged from those conversations.

Every culture views the role of sports differently. Coaches and athletic directors stress the importance of communication to set guidelines, explain expectations and encourage participation in sports. School districts must be intentional in their approach to make athletics inclusive, and building trust is critical to that process.

When Jens Levisen took over Austin boys soccer in 2006, his roster was mostly a blend of kids of American and Hispanic descent. Levisen minored in Spanish, so he was able to have conversations with parents and students in their native language about his program.

“That was a great way to connect with them,” he said.

His roster a few years ago included kids that were a mix of American, Hispanic, Karenni, African and European descent.

Levisen begins each season with a team-bonding outing before the first practice. Players are put through a series of challenges to establish chemistry and trust.

“I think about those pregame locker room conversations that we have,” Levisen said. “Sometimes it’s tactics and things like that. Other times, it’s just big picture and how do we trust each other and how do we work with each other.”

Koua Yang, athletic director at St. Paul Como Park, started his career as a coach. Yang explained the value of sports to immigrant parents using his own story as a native of Laos who moved to the United States and became a high school and college athlete.

Said Yang: “I had to go visit them in the homes. I had the advantage of being able to speak the language and telling them, ‘Hey, listen, this is what’s happening. Yes, the priority is on academics. But would you rather have your child coming home and doing nothing, watching TV, playing games, going out with their friends, maybe getting in trouble? Or would you rather have another two hours with their teacher who also is their coach after school?’ That was an easy sell.”

Former Austin athletic director Lisa Quednow oversaw a sports department that included students from six continents. The school hired cultural liaisons called “success coaches” to serve as conduits to different communities.

Family frameworks differ, too. Teenage girls in some cultures, for example, are asked to stay home to watch siblings after school instead of attending practice and participating in sports.

Transportation can be a hurdle. Even explaining that a student needs a physical to participate can be as well.

“It’s not as simple as saying, well, we’re a more diverse school and we have fewer numbers,” said Eden Prairie football coach Mike Grant, a former longtime athletic director. “The administration has to think about how they want to present activities, how they want to educate and get kids involved, how they want coaches to work with the community.”

Youth participation is essential to strong participation in high school, particularly for families new to a sport. High school students are far less likely to try a sport they are unfamiliar with or did not play growing up.

“They tend to gravitate toward a sport that is closely tied to their culture,” Como Park’s Yang said. “I can’t imagine myself playing a game on skates, coming in as an immigrant. I love watching hockey, but that took a lot of time to understand the sport.”

Those involved with Minnesota hockey are taking steps with different initiatives to teach basic skills and make the sport more accessible to all populations as high school programs grapple with changes that have necessitated more co-op agreements.

Eden Prairie’s football program has long been the gold standard. Grant noted that participation numbers have decreased significantly in recent years, starting at younger levels, though he attributed the decline to two other factors as well: safety concerns with a contact sport and an increase in sports specialization.

“You have to be very strategic in the school district to plan how you are going to get young kids included,” Grant said. “Because if you don’t play youth football, youth basketball, youth hockey, it’s very difficult then to get to high school and play.”

Worthington High has a 63% Hispanic or Latino population. Athletic director Josh Dale said the school and community education have implemented different programs hoping to get more kids involved in organized activities at an early age.

“It continues to be a challenge,” he said. “In particular in those traditional sports.”

Coaches are adjusting their manuals by accommodating outside factors that interfere with schedules. Multiple coaches and ADs said they show more leeway with excused absences from practice if, for instance, a player needs to watch younger siblings while parents are at work.

“You’ve got to learn that, OK, I can hold them accountable, but there are some things that aren’t in my control or the athlete’s control,” Austin’s Levisen said.

Leaders say being inflexible with demands and rules will decrease participation.

Said Burnsville athletic director Kevin Kleiner: “It’s maybe not what the coach would have wanted 10 years ago, but at the same time, we’re trying to find that sweet spot of developing and being competitive and teaching being accountable and being committed while also dealing with realities of their life.”

Playing sports is expensive. Some sports are really expensive. The cost of participation is a concern inside homes in every demographic group.

Traditional sports such as hockey can cost families thousands of dollars every year through equipment, fees and extra training.

Families with limited spending power might not be able to afford costs that seemingly are necessary to compete at the varsity level in some sports.

“That’s where we have to be creative in what we do as a school and district,” Como Park’s Yang said. Como Park held a fundraiser in which boys volleyball players joined Yang in working at a club volleyball tournament for 28 hours over one weekend. They raised $9,000 to help cover startup costs.

Most families in the state, whether new to Minnesota or not, face financial questions if their kids stay on the sports track long enough.

“Can people financially commit to — I hate to say it — what it takes to be competitive in that sport?” said Eric Hansen, director of secondary education in the Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan school district. “And can they commit to the time that’s demanding of families and kids the entire year?”

These changes evident in homes, school hallways and playing fields aren’t limited to a few communities. In one generation, many high schools in our two major cities, in the suburbs and in greater Minnesota look much different.

The proactive and inclusive athletics leaders across the state are catching up to this change, or ahead of it. They are finding ways to encourage participation across all demographics inside schools.

Students have never had more opportunities to play sports in Minnesota with the arrival of new sanctioned activities, including boys volleyball, girls wrestling and girls badminton. Those sports, along with soccer and baseball, are drawing big multicultural interest and participation.

As a club sport last year, boys volleyball had nearly 2,400 registered players, of which 61% identified as people of color (including 43% Asian), according to the boys volleyball coaches association.

“One kid said to me, ‘Finally, a sport where we feel like we belong,’ ” said Yang, the Como Park AD.

Tartan athletic director Trevor Mbakwe, the former Gophers basketball player, said he expects to field three levels of boys volleyball teams after having 60 kids try out for the club team last year.

Tartan also has strong participation numbers for badminton.

“Our coaches do a great job too with our youth associations and connecting with them and making sure everyone is included,” Mbakwe said.

Dale, the Worthington AD, said his school has higher participation numbers for boys soccer than for football because of its Hispanic and Latino community. The soccer team has made it to the state tournament five times since 2017.

“If you drive around town, you see more soccer balls kicked than you do footballs thrown,” Dale said. “It’s a neat thing for our community to rally around a sport.”

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MaryJo Webster of the Minnesota Star Tribune contributed to this story.