One of the new aspects of the realignment of District football that fans here in New Um are going to see are some new teams on their schedules.

That is especially the case for the Minnesota Valley Lutheran Chargers and for the Greyhounds of New Ulm Cathedral.

MVL plays road games this season at Mayer Lutheran, St. Clair, Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton and Kenyon-Wanamingo while hosting Lester Prairie/Holy Trinity, Southland, United South Central and Medford.

New Ulm Cathedral goes on the road for games at Lakeview, Adrian, Sleepy Eye and Tracy-Milroy-Balaton and entertains Lac qui Parle Valley, Murray County Central, Wabasso and Springfield.

For the Chargers, two of their road games have some miles to them. Mayer is 62 miles and Kenyon is 85 miles.

For Cathedral, it has more long trips this season playing at Lakeview (Cottonwood) 71 miles away and at Adrian which is 105 miles away and at Tracy 64 miles away.

Next season, the Chargers wil have more long road games at Lester Prairie (55 miles) Southland (Adams) which is 120 miles away and Medford 78 miles on the road.

Cathedral hops on the bus for road trips to Lac qui Parle Valley (Madison) 116 miles away and Murray County Central (Slayton) 88 miles away.

For MVL head coach Jim Buboltz, it will be a sort of reunion of teams the Chargers played when they were a 2A team and played in the Gopher Valley Conference.

One of the teams that MVL or Cathedral will not play this regular season or next season — despite being officially eight minutes apart — is each other.

“I think that it is bad not only for the travel time involved — and I am concerned about that,” Buboltz said. “But you have a team your size in town and you are not playing them. I have appreciated it as a community game with Denny [Lux Cathedral coach] and their fans. It was always a great opportunity for the kids on both teams to play in front of a giant crowd on a Friday night.”

Buboltz said that not playing Cathedral “was a late move by the Minnesota State High School League (MSHSL). We were scheduled to be in our regular district that we had been in but we were a small amount of teams that got moved really late. Our having played in the Gopher Valley maybe led a little bit because we had gone in that direction for a couple of years when we were 2A. When [Mankato] Loyola dropped down to nine-man and Cedar Mountain went to nine-man late, when those decisions were made then the schedules changed and we took Loyola’s schedule.”

“I am hoping that this is just a two-year thing and when they redistrict we will be back here,” Buboltz said.

Cathedral coach Denny Lux said that once the MSHSL stepped in four years ago and took away all of the conferences “that led us to where we are at today. We are fortunate that MVL will join us in the playoffs. We will not see them in the regular season.”

Lux said that the long travel “is just something that you are going to have to get used to. And this all could change in a couple of years. We are seeing more and more teams our size going nine-man.”

He said that despite not playing the Chargers in the regular season “people here will be watching both teams in the season to see how they might match up in the playoffs.”

CATCHERS GOOD QUARTERBACKS: This season, Hunter Ranweiler wil be the starting quarterback for New Ulm High School. Josh Seidl will be the back-up quarterback to Jacob Manderfeld at New Ulm Cathedral.

During the spring, both are starting catchers for their high school teams.

Lux said that comes with the territory.

“The catcher in baseball is looking out on the field and he is controlling what is going on defensively,” Lux said. “The same thing happens with the quarterback. You look around and some of these big catchers end up being good quarterbacks — there is a reason for that.”

KNIGHTS ADJUST TO NINE-MAN: Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s head football coach Brent Kucera said that it is going to be strange not playing traditional rivals like New Ulm Cathedral and Sleepy Eye High School.

“We are going to miss playing them especially because of the traveling distance,” he said. “The players always liked those games. But we still do have Cedar Mountain and BLHS. Mankato Loyola (now nine-man) has been a stong rivalry. And we will look forward to playing good teams like Cleveland and Madelia. We will reform rivalries.”

Sleepy Eye High School head football coach Cory Haala said that not playing the Knights is not that big of a concern.

“The fans and the parents make a little bit bigger deal out of it as far as a rivalry,” he said. “We could be playing nine-man football — we have had nine-man numbers for quite some time — but we chose to stay 11-man. Some people may argue that we would be better off playing nine-man. But we have done surveys and talked to players and our coaching staff and we feel we want to continue to play 11-man football. That is the choice that we made and we are content with that. Our numbers are just over 40 kids so those are 11-man numbers at this point in time. We may re-evaluate it in two years but this is where we are at for now.”