Madelia Activities Director Paul Carpenter said the merger between the Tomahawk Conference and the Valley Conference that will take effect for the 2024-25 school year began as a reaction to both conferences seeing a loss of schools.

Sports that will be played in Divisions are volleyball, boys and girls basketball, softball and baseball.

Divisions will be the conference that they are in now.

Cross-country, track, wrestling and golf can be in meets with other schools in the merger.

But at the end of a season, such as basketball or baseball, there will be a championship game between the leaders of each division.

The Minnesota State High School League does allow that extra game for that.

“Both the Valley and the Tomahawk were losing schools,” Carpenter said. “The Valley lost St. Clair and Lake Crystal Wellcome Memorial because they were going to the brand new Class AA South Central Conference and Minnesota Valley Lutheran left the Tomahawk also to go to the new conference. [MVL] thought that it would be in their best interest.”

Carpenter said that invitations to the merger were also sent out to Mountain Lake Area, Sibley East, LeSuer-Henderson and United South Central.

“Butterfield-Odin is in the process to build their sports programs to a varsity level,” Carpenter said. “So we actually had quite a few offers put out to join the Valley. But Sibley East and LeSeuer-Henderson elected to join the new AA conference also.”

Carpenter thought the Tomahawk Conference would have been open to taking the closer Valley Conference schools in.

“But we [Valley Conference] did not want to completely disband,” he said. “We did not have many options and they [Tomahawk] were in the same situation. Our new conference is all Class A teams, plus the Tomahawk/Valley is almost all Section 2A schools in all sports. Plus we already have lots of cross-over nonconference games going on with all of our sports. This fell into place easily and kind of made sense.”

Carpenter said that travel was originally an issue early.

“We tried to make travel not be a big issue, so the concept was we would take the exisiting schools in the Tomahawk and Valley and, for a certain sport, make them divsions within themselves so we only travel within our own division. Then we would consolidate to be the big Mega-Conference for cross-country, track, golf and wrestling.”

New Ulm Cathedral Activities Director Alan Woitas said that the Valley Conference approached the Tomahawk Conference and said that they were getting low on some of the teams in certain sports.

“We also had similiar needs,” Woitas said. “We thought that it was best for some of our athletes who are in some of those sports to be able to have a few more teams in the conference to compete against.

“Us and MVL co-op in track but are no longer a part of the Tomahawk Conference, so we only had three track teams for a conference meet. By adding the Valley, we doubled the number of track teams. In cross-country we are combined with Sleepy Eye Public and St. Mary’s — I think that Springfield and Cedar Mountain may be combined in cross-country. In those type of sports, the number of teams that we had was not very high and has not been for a few years. So we felt that combining with the Valley in those activities will give our kids a better experience and make the competition better in those sports.”

Woitas said that when MVL left, the Tomahawk Conference had reached out to some area schools but saw no interest.

“There is the outlier schools to where we are not sure where Lester Prairie is going to get placed,” he said. “They petitioned the high school league to place them in a conference. We should find that out in a week or so as to where they will be placed. They could be a member of this new conference.”

Currently there are eight schools in the Tomahawk and seven in the Valley.

“But the important thing to remember is that in basketball and baseball, we are still playing in the Tomahawk Conference, it is not a huge impact,” Woitas said. “There is just really is just an addition of a cross-over championship game between the two. But it allows us more flexibilty for those other sports to enhance the competition.

“The Tomahawk Conference has been strong for many years and they will remain strong for many years — that is the goal.”