Tiny Humboldt hopes for better football days with districts

By James Walsh • jim.walsh@startribune.com

At 18 minutes before kickoff against the Harding Knights, the St. Paul Humboldt football players stepped off the bus and started putting on their shoulder pads and jerseys on the sideline. At 17 minutes before kickoff, just 24 players were in uniform and warming up.

"That's four more than last week," said Coach Steve Elizondo. "It's a battle."

Next season, the battles should get a little less daunting for tiny Humboldt — not because of an influx of students, but because it will no longer have to face the two- and three-times-bigger schools of the St. Paul City Conference. Wednesday was the last day for all conferences in Minnesota high school football, and perhaps no school will be happier to see the end come than Humboldt.

The city's smallest high school has been the conference's punching bag since the 1970s, when it won its last football title. Now that conferences are going away, replaced by districts that will better match schools by size and prowess, the folks at Humboldt admit they aren't shedding any tears.

"It's just been so tough," said Dave Mergens, the school's athletic director. "Demographics have changed. Our soccer team is terrific, but football is a numbers game. We walk the hallways and there aren't any kids you see who you say should be on the football team."

Still, he said, it's been hard for some alums from those glory years to accept the change.

Mike Sodomka, Humboldt's principal since 2008, acknowledges that the school has struggled to attract students over the years and that potential players have been lost to more athletically robust programs at neighboring Henry Sibley in Mendota Heights and South St. Paul.

He said he thinks the move to the new Twin City District, which will match Humboldt against schools such as Spectrum, with 264 students, and St. Agnes, with 200, will give the West Side school a better chance to make gains — in football and in enrollment.

"I am looking forward to it," Sodomka said of the change. "I see it as something that will make us much more competitive."

Before Wednesday's game started against Harding, Elizondo, a lifelong West Sider and a member of those solid teams of the past, said much the same thing.

"Yeah, it has the potential to get more kids out," he said. "But first, we have to win some games."

Within the first six minutes, the Hawks were down 14-0. At the end of the first quarter, it was 22-0. Some nice plays by James Jackson, a junior quarterback/safety, and Robert Johnson, a sophomore running back, left the score 22-6 at the half. The second half, though, was all Harding, as the Knights pulled away for a 42-6 victory.

It's not as if Harding, or the other high schools of Minneapolis and St. Paul, aren't facing similar issues of shifting demographics and decreased participation in traditional high school sports.

The city schools have lost almost all of their hockey teams and have struggled mightily to maintain healthy rosters in football and baseball as families left the cities for the suburbs.

Despite its 1,500 students, Harding suited up only about 35 players on Wednesday. The East Side school, in fact, remains on Humboldt's schedule for next season.

The hope, though, is that Humboldt's days of being a punching bag for much bigger squads are over.

James Walsh • 651-925-5041