Unrivaled rivalries: We asked you about electric high school matchups in Minnesota, and we boiled a long list down to 10

You all delivered a crash course in all the must-see matchups in my new home state. Thank you.

In January, I wrote a long-overdue introduction as the Minnesota Star Tribune’s new prep sports reporter and, more importantly, asked our readers to submit what they believed were the top high school rivalries in Minnesota sports.

We received nominations for nearly 50 different pairings — and a few curveballs. (We see you, “Edina vs everybody” submissions.)

This list won’t be the last you read on the subject. As the winter and spring state tournament seasons unfold, keep an eye out for more. I’ll be catching a few in person or digging into other historical rivalries that submissions noted might be past their heyday but are still worth documenting.

For now, I’ve compiled a list of 10 of the most frequent nominees or others that made particularly strong cases as unique matchups. We included thoughts from readers about why they chose their pairings, plus more about the schools' histories.

This was, far and away, the most submitted answer. I wasn’t surprised — not at all. It’s difficult to exist in the world of high school sports in Minnesota and not hear about the historic hockey conflict between the towns 22 miles apart near Minnesota’s Canadian border.

“It begins and ends with Warroad vs Roseau,” Mathias Mortenson wrote. “Pretty sure most people in the Cities wouldn’t even know those towns but for the rivalry.”

The rivalry stretches back to 1945, so there is plenty of history to dig through. I found the matchup had even caught the attention of The New York Times, back in 2007. Charles McGrath wrote about the two small communities that are more alike than different, united in their geographic isolation and their obsession with the State of Hockey’s pastime.

Both small towns pack the high schools’ arenas to see teams that have produced an outsized number of Olympians, NHL players and U.S. Hockey Hall of Famers.

In boys hockey, Roseau has the all-time edge, 108-74-5. But in the past decade, things are evenly split: six wins for Warroad, six for Roseau. They no longer compete in the same size classification or state tournament — Roseau plays up in Class 2A — but that doesn’t take the edge off the competition.

“If you look in either locker room, you’ll see a priorities sign. In Roseau, it’s something like (1) Beat Warroad. (2) Win Sections. (3) Win State,” wrote Marc Baumgartner.

In 2020, so many people wanted into the Hopkins gym that the fire department had to turn away fans. Not everyone could be Karl-Anthony Towns and his Timberwolves teammates, sitting comfortably courtside.

Can you blame the eager fans, though? That Class 4A, Section 6 girls basketball championship pitted Hopkins — which had future UConn star Paige Bueckers and future Gopher Amaya Battle — against Wayzata, which featured another upcoming U talent, Mara Braun. Hopkins won that one.

The Hopkins and Wayzata girls basketball teams have met in all but one section final since 2016. Most years, boys and girls, it’s a battle of two of the top teams in Minnesota.

“One of the top eight teams in the state misses the state tournament each year because only one wins that battle,” Joe Grubesic wrote. “Crowds are huge (4,000+), and student sections are raucous for both the regular season tilts and seemingly inevitable Section Final. It has become the Duke/UNC of Minnesota high school hoops.”

The matchup has featured no shortage of talented players, overtime thrillers and last-minute comebacks. But fewest and furthest between are Wayzata wins, at least on the girls side.

The Trojans have defeated Hopkins only six times in the past 22 years. But this January, Wayzata snagged its first win at Hopkins since 1998, beating the Royals 73-70 behind 19 points from Sophie Hawkinson.

Split a high school in half, and you’re asking for a rivalry to form between the new siblings. It’s inevitable, right?

When our Mankato reporter, Jp Lawrence, previewed the annual Jug Game between the Mankato East and West football teams last October, residents told him it was more of a slow boil than immediate resentment. When Mankato East was founded in 1973, drawing students from Mankato West, a history of shared classrooms and sports teams kept the schools connected.

But the rivalry grew, year after year.

“It split the talent and created a vibe of the establishment/townies (West) vs. the newcomers/future (East),” wrote Adam Segar.

I watched Mankato East’s girls soccer team three-peat as Class 2A, Section 2 champ over Mankato West in the fall. The Jug Game also received national attention last fall as Gov. Tim Walz, a former Mankato West defensive assistant coach, visited the rivalry matchup amid his bid for vice president.

“There have been a long list of accomplished athletes, business leaders, politicians, community leaders and others who have played in the rivalry,“ Jay McAninch wrote. ”Many who played in the rivalry games remembered more about the East vs West games than about their success in Section and State tournaments."

Mankato East lost October’s regular-season game 28-7 but ended a 19-game losing streak in the Class 5A, Section 2 semifinals, beating West 35-15. West is a five-time state champ; East has finished as runner-up once, in 2001.

There’s a special folktale spin to Bemidji and Brainerd’s football matchup.

The cities, separated by 98 miles in northern Minnesota, both lay claim to being the birthplace of American folk hero and lumberjack Paul Bunyan. Both are home to towering statues of Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe.

So when Bemidji and Brainerd’s football teams meet each fall, it only makes sense that the traveling trophy on the line is “Babe’s Bell.”

“This is a rivalry that is second to none in Minnesota football,“ wrote Wade Haapajoki. “[The backstory] only glorifies this match up.”

The rivalry dates to the 1940s, and Bemidji has a 6-4 edge in the last decade of meetings. Each team has finished as state runner-up once: Bemidji in 2011 and Brainerd in 2013.

In the reader submissions, everybody wanted to claim a little bit of rivalry with Edina, it seemed. And Edina wanted to claim a little bit of rivalry with everybody. It was the school involved in the highest number of different rival pairings.

It makes sense. At the end of last school year, the Hornets led the state with 159 state titles. The next closest school, Wayzata, has 91.

But readers' most frequently submitted pairing for the Hornets was fellow west suburb school Minnetonka. The Skippers are fourth in state championships with 73.

In a few short months, I saw the schools compete in a boys soccer section final (a 1-0 Minnetonka win), a girls hockey game to benefit mental health nonprofit Sophie’s Squad (another 1-0 Skippers win) and at the top of the girls swimming state championships (Minnetonka victorious, again).

The meet even started, fittingly, with the two schools finishing the 200-yard medley relay in a tie, down to the millisecond. The pair has combined to win the past eight girls swimming titles, and they compete tightly in everything from hockey to football.

“Both Lake Conference West High Schools. Good and great athletes from youth programs, well coached,” reader Paul Liemandt wrote about the rivalry. “Lots of student interest and excitement. Social competition between higher socioeconomic communities — cake eaters.“ (Ah, yes, that nickname, which several readers noted.)

Spice it up and bend our rivalries rules by adding Wayzata to make it a trio, as one reader suggested, and you’ve got three dominant Lake Conference programs competing with one another in Minnesota’s largest size classifications.

Before she was the PWHL Rookie of the Year for the Minnesota Frost, Grace Zumwinkle was a Breck Mustang, caught in a yearly battle with the Blake girls hockey team.

The private schools in the west metro fielded two of the state’s first girls hockey programs when Minnesota became the first state to sanction girls hockey in 1994. Since, Blake has won a state-best seven state titles and Breck four.

“As a Blake student, I feel a natural competition between us and Breck because we’re both independent schools and kids apply to both, so it feels like a natural rivalry,” wrote in Yoni Zacks. “The Blake/Breck games are always the best in terms of [student section] signs.”

The team’s paths used to cross in the Class 1A, Section 5 championship, meaning only one could make it to Xcel Energy Center for the state tournament. Zumwinkle’s Breck team lost to the Bears in the section final every year of her high school career.

Blake is back in Class 1A after spending six years competing in 2A, and the teams are in different sections, meaning they could now, theoretically, meet in a state tournament knockout game.

I watched the two schools play one another in January, at the 61-year-old Blake Ice Arena, with a conference title on the line. Two young goalies had spectacular games, with Breck eighth-grader Clara Milinkovich making 28 saves and Blake sophomore Janie McGawn blocking 39 shots. Breck won 2-1.

Despite the rivalry, the schools combine to field a dominant swimming and diving program. The Breck/Blake boys swim team won a record eighth consecutive Class 1A state title last year.

It’s a rivalry so well-respected it’s been dubbed, simply, “The Rivalry.”

There was a stretch between 1983 and 2003 when no school not named Hill-Murray or White Bear Lake won the Class 2A, Section 4 title in boys hockey. The Pioneers have been to the state tournament 33 times, winning four titles. White Bear Lake has made 20 trips but is still looking for its first championship.

Their annual matchup is a battle of familiar neighbors, of private vs. public, of teams that once shared the Pioneers’ Aldrich Arena. More often than not, that matchup comes in the section championship game, with a spot at state on the line.

“Hill-Murray and White Bear Lake have had some epic regular season games, but rivalries are made in the playoffs and many of their section tilts have been legendary,” wrote Brent Voight, “especially back in the dark confines of the State Fair Coliseum.”

The two teams used to do frequent battle in the Lee and Rose Warner Coliseum at the State Fairgrounds, selling out its 5,000 seats before use of the rink was discontinued in 2014.

Nearly 20 future pros and a half-dozen Team USA players have competed in the boys rivalry.

Hill-Murray has won 14 of the past 20 section final meetings, but White Bear Lake shut out the Pioneers 3-0 last year. Aldrich Arena sold out its 3,400 tickets minutes after they went on sale.

Yeah, that kind of rivalry.

The most consistent Minneapolis City rivalry submitted by readers was Minneapolis Washburn vs. Southwest, though North vs. Camden did get a shout or two.

Washburn and Southwest are close enough, just 2.5 miles apart south of Lake Harriet, that I’m likely to pass both on one of my too-cold Chain of Lakes runs that I’m still, somehow, managing in February.

If I did, I might see large rocks outside, spray-painted in the other school’s colors after an athletic victory, wrote reader Aaron Vap.

“Kids that grow up together in Minneapolis City sports leagues (Minneapolis United, Rec Sports, etc.) tend to fuel some of this rivalry,” Vap wrote.

Southwest has won 27 state titles in all sports since its founding in 1940 and Washburn 18 since 1924. Despite Minneapolis schools competing in hockey as a co-op, and with realignment into districts changing football schedules, the competitiveness between the two schools runs deep, through volleyball, cross-country, Nordic skiing and more.

Soccer, in particular, caught two readers' attention. The teams play each other a second time each regular season, just so they can compete for the Sylvester Cup. It’s a yearly event named after Washburn alum and coach John Sylvester, who coached across the Minneapolis soccer community before his death following a long battle with ALS in 2017.

The boys programs took turns winning every City Conference title from 1981 to 1993 and are likely to meet in the section playoffs, too.

“One of the biggest moments in the Southwest vs Washburn boys soccer rivalry was the Section 6 final in 2021,” wrote Jamie Plaisance, the Southwest coach at the time. “With 10 seconds left in overtime, Rees Bonnabeau scored off a corner kick to send Southwest to state.”

Though Lakeville South might be the newest school on this list, its rivalry with crosstown Lakeville North received several nods from our readers.

The old, singular “Lakeville” was split into two schools when Lakeville South opened in 2005, and ″the split of one high school into two created a natural rivalry," Dan Thorton wrote. It helps that both schools have been competitive in the largest size classifications of Minnesota sports, adding extra stakes to their matchups.

I’ve seen Lakeville North and South battle in football, as Reece Hunt scored a last-second touchdown last fall to help North end a five-year losing streak against South, the 2020 and 2021 state champion.

Both student sections were decked out in blue, a common theme for the rivalry. It recognizes a united “Lakeville Strong” approach to situations bigger than sports, such as a local student or family dealing with tragedy.

But my favorite matchup to follow between the schools in my short time here has been volleyball. In the fall, the Lakevilles fielded two of the top three Class 4A teams in the state. Still, because they compete in Section 1, only one could make it to the big dance at Target Center.

“Having two Lakeville schools in the finals is absolutely a testament to the strength of the sport within Lakeville itself,” North coach Jackie Richter told the Star Tribune then. “The youth program is unbelievably strong for both programs.”

South beat North in a five-set match en route to the Cougars' first state championship. The Panthers have won three titles of their own.

I enjoyed hearing about the Lakers and Yellowjackets football teams’ “Battle for the Paddle” an hour east of Fargo. In the 2022 edition, as Perham handed over the wooden oar to a victorious Detroit Lakes, the paddle broke in two amid a crowd of excited Lakers players. Oops.

“Detroit Lakes is in an upper class, Perham is in a lower class, but they have the best sports teams in the area,” wrote Anna Aakre, who lives in Perham but has worked for Detroit Lakes schools. “They are rivals from when they first start sports in third or fourth grade to high school. Teams remember their records against each other all time — like the current high school basketball team juniors knows their record against each other since third grade.“

The two schools have been particularly outstanding in Class 1A gymnastics, with Perham winning eight straight state titles from 2004-11 and Detroit Lakes winning five in a row from 2015-19. They are still consistently ranked among the state’s best.

It’s one of those rivalries where you’ll see athletes cheering one another on, more than jeering at one another. Fans won’t be starting fights under the bleachers. In covering and playing sports, I’ve found that’s often the case with sports like cross-country, skiing and gymnastics; when you’re all alone on the course, or on a beam, you can’t help but empathize with your rival a little more.

Still, the guarantee of championship-caliber gymnastics at a dual meet in northwestern Minnesota earns these two schools along Hwy. 10 a spot on my list.

A sincere thank you to all of our readers who sent in responses to the initial survey. There is, as always, space in our comments to let us know your thoughts and share other rivalries we might have missed.