MN State High School League Excludes Soccer from Online TV Coverage

2009 August 13
by Brian Quarstad

MSHSL Soccer Tournement 2008Jim Paulsen of the Star Tribune reported in today’s edition of the online paper’s blog, that the Minnesota State High School League has extended their TV contract with KSTC-TV (Channel 45) to televise state tournaments. The contract has been extended through 2021.

Currently, KSTC-TV broadcasts the Prep Bowl, the boys’ hockey state tournament, the girls’ basketball state tournament and the boys’ basketball state tournament.

According to the article: The extension also includes the MSHSL’s first official foray into webcasting of state tournaments.. Starting this school year, KSTC will partner with GrandStadium.tv, an online webcasting network, to provide the volleyball, wrestling, softball and baseball state tournaments. The MSHSL will be monitoring the webcasts to determine if interest in them is sufficient enough to webcast other league-sponsered tournaments and events in upcoming seasons.

IMS has been following these developments and is disappointed in the fact that the State Soccer Tournament was also up for consideration of being broadcast online but the High School League decided against it. Instead they choose volleyball, wrestling, softball and baseball.

Inside Minnesota Soccer recognizes that 40,000 youth play organized soccer in the state and many of those go on to play high school soccer, with large numbers of high schools having to expand programs to allow the expanded numbers of players who want to participate. Boys and girls soccer teams statewide field teams with 11 players on the field for each side (22 for both teams compared to 12 in volleyball for each) with larger rosters than the girls-only sport of volleyball.

IMS believes that soccer would have had a much larger draw in numbers and is disappointed that the sport of soccer was considered but overlooked in the end by the MSHSL.

from → High School Soccer (MSHSL), Soccer on TV

2 Responses
  1. JP permalink
    August 14, 2009

    Thanks for posting this, however disappointing.

  2. MF permalink
    August 14, 2009

    Thanks for the report. With friends like MSHSL and MYSA, youth soccer needs no enemies in this state.

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