When the MSHSL board of directors meets Thursday morning, football will be a major topic for the 20 board members who represent schools of all sizes around the state. The biggest item on the agenda is a proposal to change the structure of regular-season football in the hopes of relieving problems in filling schedules.

A proposal called District Football Scheduling would group teams into districts, beginning with the 2015 season. The board’s deliberations will include seeing the results of a survey that sheds some light on the issue.

The proposal includes these possibilities …

--Scheduling groups would be created around the state, based on factors that include school size, geography, “like schools” and strength of programs. The groups should consist of at least 16 or more schools whenever possible. The minimum size of any group is 10 schools. Districts could include teams from more than one class.

--A placement committee with representatives from all areas of the state would place schools into scheduling groups. Those decisions would be reviewed by the MSHSL’s Activities Director Advisory Committee and would have to be approved by the MSHSL board of directors.

--Districts would be realigned every two years to make adjustments for enrollment changes, changes in nine-man teams, changes in cooperative programs and changes due to programs being dropped, school consolidations, etc.

--A guideline is that the enrollment difference in any group should be no more than a ratio of 2-to-1, and when possible the ratio would be less than 2-to-1.

--All schools would be able to provide information to the placement committee, including important rivalries, willingness to play against larger schools, travel issues or a willingness to travel farther for a competitive schedule.

--Class 6A would follow the same plan as other classes, and some Class 5A teams may be included in groups with 6A teams based on enrollment and geography.

--Each school must play all eight of its regular-season games within its district. The only exceptions are districts with an odd number of schools. In that case, Zero Week games may be used to provide a full schedule or games could be scheduled against out-of-state teams.

--Each district would create schedules for teams in the district. Districts may create conferences or other sub-groups within the district for scheduling purposes.

--The section playoff format would remain the same as it is currently, with section seeding based on regular-season results.

The board could go in one of several directions at Thursday’s meeting. The members could approve the plan as is, they could make changes in the proposal, they could ask for more input and time to make a decision, and they could vote to make no changes to regular-season football.

At the December meeting the board asked MSHSL staff to survey schools on this topic. There are approximately 375 football teams in the state, and 227 schools completed an online survey. Here are the survey questions and results…

1. All students who play football should have the opportunity for a full eight-game schedule against teams from Minnesota. Yes-204. No-21. (90% yes).

2. Does your school currently have challenges scheduling regular-season football games? Yes-41. No-186. (18% yes).

3. Has your school had challenges with regular-season football scheduling at any time in the past 10 years? Yes-94. No-133 (41% yes).

4. Has your school had challenges with regular-season football scheduling at any time in the past 20-25 years? Yes-94. No-133. (42% yes).

5. Resolving regular-season football scheduling issues would help solve issues which oftentimes lead to conference dissatisfaction. Yes-126. No-100. (55% yes).

6. Resolving regular-season football scheduling issues would be of assistance to me as an athletic/activities director. Strongly Agree-56. Agree-67. Disagree-52. Strongly Disagree-51. (54% agree or strongly agree).

--Another football topic for the board Thursday is the 2015 season. Because of the availability of TCF Bank Stadium, the season-ending Prep Bowl will be held two weeks before Thanksgiving in 2015. That means the normal season schedule must change; practices could begin sooner, the regular season could be shortened to seven games, one round of postseasoson play could be eliminated.

Another possibility is allowing teams to play their first game after two weeks of practice (instead of the usual three weeks). Many teams now take part in scrimmages after two weeks of practice, but the board could allow games to be played on the Saturday of the second week of practice in 2015.

--In another football agenda item, the football advisory committee will ask for a change in the playoff structure for Class 6A football. The proposal calls for each of the four 6A sections to be seeded 1 through 8, and all 32 teams to be placed into one tournament bracket with eight four-team sub-brackets. Four of those sub-brackets would consist of teams seeded 1, 4, 5 and 8, and the others would include teams seeded 2, 3, 6 and 7.

This plan would ensure that No. 1 section seeds would not meet until the state semifinals. The tournament bracket would be revealed on television or through some type of media event.

--The softball coaches advisory committee will ask the board to approve an additional class, moving softball from three classes to four.

Thursday's meeting will begin at 9:30 a.m. at the MSHSL office in Brooklyn Center.

BY THE NUMBERS
*Schools/teams John has visited: 270
*Miles John has driven in the Toyota Camry: 6,963
(*During the 2013-14 school year)
Follow John on Twitter: @MSHSLjohn

If numbers help define Myron Glass, don't look at the number of girls basketball state championship teams he has coached at Rochester Lourdes High School. Or the number of teams he has taken to state tournaments. Or the state titles his teams have captured in cross-country and track.

Those numbers are indeed impressive. Under Glass the Eagles have won eight basketball titles, which is a state record he shares with Faith Johnson Patterson, formerly of Minneapolis North and currently at DeLaSalle. And Glass has coached 15 teams to state tourneys, which is the most in girls basketball history.

The numbers that really count, however, are the numbers of girls he has mentored, taught, coached and led since his career as a teacher and coach began at Lourdes in 1968. He has been the Eagles' girls basketball coach since 1983.

"He's given his life to this school," said Lourdes athletic director Marv Peters. "That's the easiest way to say it."

Glass is one of the pioneers of girls athletics in Minnesota. He helped start girls programs at Lourdes, building models for many other schools in southeastern Minnesota and around the state.

"Look at how far the young ladies have come," Glass said. "That's something that myself and others can be really proud of. Once we ran a couple meets and got more teams doing it, it just took off."

Glass may or may not retire after this season -- more on that in a moment -- but no matter when he steps down he will leave big shoes to fill. He ranks second all-time in Minnesota girls basketball victories; his 713-134 mark stands behind only New London-Spicer coach Mike Dreier's record of 799-145.

Glass coached girls and boys cross-country at Lourdes for 40 years, winning four state championships with the boys team and two with the girls. His girls track teams also won two state championships. Lourdes owns a total of 42 state team championships and Glass was the head coach for 16 of them.

"I am perplexed about replacing him," Peters said. "It's going to be tough.''

Glass is waffling just a bit on retiring. He had originally talked about ending his coaching career after the 2012-13 season, but Peters convinced him to stay on while Lourdes departed its downtown location after 71 years and moved into a sparkling new campus in northwest Rochester. Now, in the midst of the 2013-14 season, Glass won't absolutely, positively confirm that he will retire at season's end. But it appears that he will.

He laughed when I asked him about retiring, saying that is the likely scenario "unless Marv talks me out of it, like he did last year."

Little has changed over the years. Glass still wears a wristwatch calculator, befitting a math teacher; he also taught social studies before retiring from teaching several years ago. He also still prepares some of the most detailed scouting reports of any high school coach in any sport. He puts together seven- or eight-page packets for each of his players to study before every game.

Glass has coached young athletes who grew up and had children, and then he coached the second generation. As he put it,"You have kids who you held as a baby, because you coached and taught their parents, then you're coaching them when they're 16, 17 years old."

Martha Macken, a Lourdes player in the 1980s, wishes Glass would stick around long enough to coach her fifth-grade daughter, Sydney Elliott, and hand her some of those famous scouting reports.

"The thing about Mr. Glass is he knows the team that you're playing. We know their offense and their defense before we play them. He's very prepared," said Macken, who made one of the biggest baskets in Lourdes history, a buzzer-beater that lifted the Eagles past Wheaton 33-31 in the 1987 state title game.

"Mr. Glass has really created a foundation here, and a legacy," Macken said. "He's built these programs. When I grew up we didn't have all the leagues and everything that they currently have, and it's due to him. He put in a lot of time and effort. He's a fixture at the school."

At both the old school and the new school, Glass is the person who opens the gym doors in the morning and locks up the place at night. He sweeps the floor, he mends uniforms, he runs summer basketball camps, he even runs the clock for ninth-grade girls basketball games.

"He's here every weekend," Peters said. "Every Saturday, and he comes in on Sunday. The thing about Myron is that there are so many layers, but every layer connects back to the school. It's been his vocation.

"I think he's one of the gentlest, kindest guys around. He really makes it all about the kids. He deflects so much; he deflects praise, he deflects congratulations. He deflects all those things, he's so old-school."

Glass' success as a coach is remarkable because he didn't play the game. He was cut from the basketball team at Minneapolis South and worked his way through St. Cloud State as a non-athlete, working at a gas station in Minneapolis during summers, weekends and holidays. After graduating, he interviewed for teaching jobs at Albany, at a Minneapolis junior high and Lourdes. The first offer came from Lourdes and he happily accepted.

Now 46 years later, as a lifelong bachelor in his late 60s, he is pondering a transition to a post-coaching lifestyle.

"That's the hard part about deciding on retirement," he said. "What do you do? Being a single guy you don't have that 'honey do' list that the married guys have. The mind is no problem, it's the body that as you get older has a little trouble keeping up. I'm probably looking forward to a knee replacement and stuff like that."

When Glass retired as a classroom teacher, he began working as a scheduling coordinator at Lourdes. As any administrator knows, putting together schedules for classes, teachers, students and classrooms can be a tedious, difficult process. And that's right up the coach's alley.

"He's just been a whiz at that because of his math skills," Peters said. "Even if basketball comes to an end, I really hope we can keep him on as our scheduler and helping in the guidance department."

Glass has not only taught and coached generations of athletes at Lourdes, he also has had a major impact on other coaches at Lourdes and southeastern Minnesota.

"I'm sure he stole or figured out everything he did, and now he's the most copied coach around," Peters said. "Everybody in this area who's successful does what he does. It's unbelievable. That's the best form of flattery."

BY THE NUMBERS
*Schools/teams John has visited: 259
*Miles John has driven in the Toyota Camry: 6,855
(*During the 2013-14 school year)
Follow John on Twitter: @MSHSLjohn

If there are any busier high school students in Minnesota than Annika Smith-Ortiz, it has to be a very short list. The Edina junior will compete in the state debate tournament Friday and Saturday at the University of Minnesota, and that activity is just one of many for her.

“There’s so much to do in life and I might as well get it all in there when I’m young,” she said.

In addition to taking part in Lincoln-Douglas debate, Smith-Ortiz was a junior varsity kicker on the Edina football team last fall, plays softball, is on the Nordic ski team, is vice-president of her school’s Latin club and a captain for Sober Squad. Her current classes include Advanced Placement U.S. History, AP U.S. Literature and Language, AP Three-Dimensional Art and Design, Enriched Biology, Pre-Calculus and Latin 4. She also plays tenor saxophone in the varsity band, baritone saxophone in jazz band and marches in the football halftime shows while wearing her football uniform.

Oh, and she biked across the country last summer from South Carolina to California, nearly 3,200 miles over six weeks.

When I asked if she ever had any free time, Annika laughed and said, “I try and work it in there. It usually comes in the form of sleep and napping, maybe reading.”

This will be her first time competing at state debate. Her Twitter username offers a clue about why she is talented in debate; it’s“I LIKE ARGUING.”

“I really like to argue,” she said. “I think for me, it’s a lot of looking at the news. I’m really interested in the news and being able to see the full side of things. In debate you’re forced to debate both sides of the argument, and you get caught up. It’s fascinating for me to see the world and get caught up in topics that you never would have thought about otherwise.”

Annika isn’t alone in being a very busy member of a debate team; the activity is populated by bright, energetic, well-rounded students. One of her Edina debate teammates, Arvind Veluvali, for example, will compete in Lincoln-Douglas at state and also is a member of the Hornets swimming and diving team.

Annika (in the center of this photo) became interesting in kicking footballs in eighth grade, when students got to try it in gym class.

“I thought it would be really cool to do this,” she said. “It was so much fun to get onto the team, form relationships and play a sport I love. I try to be as much of a team player as I can.”

Annika didn’t have any time for football last summer while biking across the country, but in previous summers she worked out with linemen and defensive backs, “trying to get a feel for the team. I love football and just being part of it is awesome.”

She enjoys watching football on TV. When I asked if she had seen any of last weekend’s NFL playoff games, she said, “because of debate I came home and took a nap and got ready for finals.”

This is indeed finals week at Edina, and Annika will miss two final exams Friday because of the debate tournament.

“I think the leadership and the voice that debate gives people is really incomparable to other activities,” she said. “It really teaches you to get up in front of crowds, and as you advance further, more and more people are expecting you to do well. It’s kind of like pitching or kicking; you’re the only one being watched. In every sport it’s a different sort of activity while debate is more of a mental awareness, a mental game.”

She is uncertain of her career plans, saying the medical field is one possibility.

“I would love to go into medicine of some sort. And last year I did an English project called a passion project, and my project was on teen homelessness. I’d like to do anything that gives back to the community. Anything that encourages leadership and people to step forward and make a difference.”

BY THE NUMBERS
*Schools/teams John has visited: 259
*Miles John has driven in the Toyota Camry: 6,811
(*During the 2013-14 school year)
Follow John on Twitter: @MSHSLjohn

ROCHESTER – One-hundred is a nice round number. And when the boys swimming team from Rochester Century reached the century mark in victorious dual meets without a loss Thursday evening, it was a very nice deal for a team that doesn’t even have a home pool. And notice that I didn’t refer to the Panthers as a “swimming and diving” team … because they have no divers.

No pool. No divers. And here they are, 100 dual victories in a row and counting since their last dual-meet defeat in December 2004. The Panthers outscored Rochester John Marshall 94-84 Thursday at John Marshall’s pool, and celebrated with little more than cookies … some of which were topped with “100” in frosting.

“It’s a great achievement and it’s unreal,” said Century coach Linda Freeman (pictured). “It will obviously end at some point; this is a competitive sport and someone always loses and someone always wins. No one goes through life never losing so this is a fairy tale.”

According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, the national record for consecutive dual victories in boys swimming and diving is 165, set by Brophy Prep in Phoenix, Arizona, between 1977 and 1993. It can be difficult to find such records in Minnesota, but St. Thomas Academy went 125-0 in dual meets from the beginning of the 1995 season through 2009.

Freeman did not have any assistant coaches for her first three years as head coach. This season, however, her staff includes Scott Diercks, who has a dozen years of experience as a high school swim coach, and her brother Doug Freeman, a volunteer coach. Doug was a champion swimmer at John Marshall in the early 1970s and swam at the University of Arizona.

The Panthers practice in the Mayo pool, often working out from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m.

“We have to rely on the good graces of our buddies,” Freeman said of Mayo. “We never get first choice, we’re always second. It’s tough, but no pool, no problem.”

No boys swimming team from Rochester has won a state team championship since 1964, when the winning school was simply named Rochester High because it was the only public high school in town. Century has had five individuals win state titles during the 10 years of the current streak; the most recent was Chris Freeman (Doug's son) in the 500 freestyle in 2011.

“We don’t have open enrollment down here,” Linda Freeman said. “ So it’s swimming upstream when we get in with the big fish.”

At the Class 2A state championships last year, Alexander Kofler placed sixth in the 100 breaststroke and Jason Tri was 12th in the 200 individual medley and 50 freestyle. The Panthers placed 17th in the team standings.

The Panthers have competed without any divers since 2007. The reason?

“I wish I knew,” Freeman said. “We go into every stinking meet 13 points behind.”

Indeed, John Marshall outscored Century 13-0 in the diving competition Thursday. The Panthers led the team scoring 44-18 before diving and 44-31 afterwards.

The lack of divers, while a little odd, doesn’t dim the team’s accomplishments.

Kofler said being part of a program that has won so many consecutive dual meets “means a lot to me. Just seeing the whole team pull together and really work hard during all those years, all these generations and classes of swimmers. It means a lot to finally know we did it, we made it to triple digits. It’s a big benchmark for us. Obviously we want to keep it going, but that hundred was the big thing we wanted to go for.”

Freeman became the Panthers’ head coach four years ago when the streak was at 76 consecutive wins. The team’s original co-coaches were Kent Quackenbush and Dale Magnuson (Magnuson currently coaches the Century girls). Magnuson was the solo boys head coach for six years before Freeman took over four years ago, when the streak was 76 in a row.

Freeman and the swimmers almost never talk about the streak, instead taking the position that working hard and staying together will result in good things.

“It’s a situation that I have downplayed quite a bit, and every season and every meet we have to go out and start again,” Freeman said. “I don't talk about it a lot except to say, ‘Forget it and just swim.’

“It’s been a great opportunity for them to realize what a champion is. A champion is humble, has great pride, and lets his swimming do the talking. I always tell them it’s one meet at a time, one swim at a time. It will take care of itself.”

--To see a photo gallery from the Century-John Marshall meet, go to the MSHSL Facebook page.

BY THE NUMBERS
*Schools/teams John has visited: 256
*Miles John has driven in the Toyota Camry: 6,611
(*During the 2013-14 school year)
Follow John on Twitter: @MSHSLjohn

The wrestling team from Apple Valley and Cretin-Derham Hall basketball player Sam Neumann are the recipients of this week's Old Dutch Team and Athlete of the Week honors.

The Apple Valley Eagles continued their wrestling domination by capturing the championship of the 12th annual Clash national duals tournament in Rochester. The Eagles defeated teams from Alabama, Illinois, New Jersey and Minnesota in winning the 32-team tourney.

Apple Valley, which is ranked No. 3 in the nation, defeated second-ranked Oak Park River Forest of Illinois to clinch the title. Apple Valley also won Clash titles in 2004, 2009, 2010 and 2011.

Neumann, a 6-foot-6 junior forward, had a memorable weekend, surpassing the 1,000-point milestone on Friday and putting on the best performance in the four-game Timberwolves Shootout on Saturday.

Neumann scored 25 points in a victory over Park on Friday night, moving him past 1,000 career points. On Saturday he made nine of 15 three-point shots and scored 39 points as the Raiders lost a close game to Bettendorf, Iowa, at Target Center in the Timberwolves Shootout.

Neumann scored 24 points in the second half, and his 39 points rank sixth all-time in the Timberwolves Shootout. Duluth East’s Rick Rickert tops the list with 44 points, and Kevin Love scored 41 at the Shootout when he was in high school.

Congratulations to the Apple Valley wrestling team and Cretin-Derham Hall's Sam Neumann for being this week’s Old Dutch High School Team and Athlete of the Week!