This winter sports season in New Ulm for the local high schools will see something that I have not seen in my 37 years at The Journal.

This year there are six new head coaches at three high schools.

At New Ulm High School, Michael Poncelet is the new head boys basketball coach replacing Matthew Dennis, with Mitch Lewis the new head girls basketball coach as he takes over for Julie Rogers. Derek Johnson takes over for Jeremy Reed as the girls hockey head coach.

At New Ulm Cathedral, Zach Kaiser replaces Alan Woitas as new Greyhounds boys basketball head coach.

And at Minnesota Valley Lutheran, Kory Kettner takes over the boys basketball program from Craig Morgan, who will move over to become the Chargers girls head basketball coach.

And some of these new coaches will face some tough situations in their initial season.

Lewis will have just 17 players for the varsity and B-squad and for the first time that I can remember, the Eagles will not have a girls C-squad this year.

Kaiser at Cathedral returns just one player — junior Eli Anderson — who has any varsity experience at all.

That means that he will be kicking the tires on a lot of players to see who can fill open positions.

And Johnson faces a numbers problem for this season as he has just two goalies for the varsity and JV. If one of the goalies gets hurt, Johnson may be forced to put in a girl who has never played goalie before.

GIRLS HOCKEY FALLS TO WILLMAR

The New Ulm Eagles girls hockey team is 0-2 early in the season following a 2-1 road loss to Willmar on Saturday.

“It was a tough loss but a close game,” Eagles head coach Derek Johnson said. “I thought that we played well — we played better defensively especially in front of our net this game as we limited their scoring chances. We had our scoring opportunities. It took us a while to put the puck in the net — we scored late in the third period — and you could tell right after we scored that our girls took a deep sigh of relief that now we can play.”

The goal was the Eagles first of the season including a scrimmage.

“That (scoring a goal) was a little bit of a monkey on their backs as we had gone scoreless in our scrimmages and then in our first game, so it took five official periods to put the puck in the net.”

Johnson thought the defense played a lot better than the first game, a 5-0 loss to Waconia.

“They battled better in front of the net,” he said. “We are still a work in progress yet and we still have some things to work on.”

New Ulm hosts Luverne next at 7 p.m. Thursday.

EAGLES BOYS HOCKEY CELEBRATES 50 YEARS

This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the New Ulm High School boys hockey team. Plans are in progress to celebrate this on Hockey Day, New Ulm on Saturday, January 10, 2026, with an all-day celebration.

BREWERS MOVED

TO CLASS A

The Minnesota Baseball Association has officially moved the New Ulm Brewers from Class B to Class A for this season.

While the Brewers will still be in the Tomahawk East League for the regular season, come playoff time the Brewers will be in Section 1A with Rochester, Miesville, Hastings, Dundas, Hampton, Lakeville, New Market, Elko, Faribault, Owatonna and the Mankato Gators.

Four of the teams will qualify for the Class A state tournament.

LOCAL COLLEGE

HOOPS NEWS

Maddie Backer (NUHS) scored 5 points, had five rebounds and added an assist for Central College (IA) Saturday…Daviney Dreckman (NUHS) scored 7 points and hauled down seven rebounds for the University of Jamestown on Saturday…Colton Benson scored 18 points for Minnesota State University, Mankato on Saturday in the Mavericks’ 94-84 win over Henderson State. Benson was 6 of 8 from beyond the arc.