The 212 Conference, School Consolidation and High School Basketball in Minnesota

An interesting chapter in Minnesota high school basketball is the demise of dozens of small-town schools that had injected such a tremendous amount of color into the hoops landscape. Just consider the names of some of the towns that won district titles during the heyday of the single class era from 1930 to 1970. Maybe one or another of these names will strike a chord in some of you. Alvarado (District 31 1960). Askov (District 25 1940). Clinton (District 21 1956). Dodge Center (District 2 1960). Echo (District 10 1948). Garden City (District 6 1955). Hanley Falls (District 9 1954). Lancaster (District 32 1937). Lynd (District 9 1946). Milan (District 11 1939). Trimont (District 5 1935). Waubun (District 30 1935). Wykoff (District 1 1955 and 1958). All had unconsolidated school districts dedicated to the needs and wants of their towns. All fielded high school basketball teams, and all of them beat much, much bigger schools at one time to achieve the thrill of the lifetime. No, not a trip to the state tournament. That was impossible for such tiny towns and schools. A district title and a trip to the regional tournament in places like Rochester or Mankato or Alexandria or Bemidji. That would do. But of course none of these towns has its own school district and its own high school any more. Instead, the consolidation of smaller school districts in Minnesota would very dramatically alter the landscape of high school basketball in Minnesota beginning in about 1947.

These consolidations first were provided for in state law in 1911, but with “meager results.” At a nationwide conference held at the Iowa State Teachers College in 1920, Minnesota’s inspector of rural schools C.C. Swain said, “Consolidation is coming…. Down deep in every farmer’s heart,…he is going to see that it is foolish, it isn’t right, it isn’t just for him to send his children to town and to church in a six-cylinder car, and then have them educated in a one-cylinder school.”

Still, it was more than a quarter-century later in 1947 that, pursuant to a new state law, 62 counties across Minnesota established committees to assess their rural schools. In Mille Lacs County, a consolidation plan was proposed in 1948, but it was only executed in 1970. The Princeton Union editorialized, “Let us go a little slow in closing our rural schools and remember that neither numbers nor size make for perfection.” But, eventually—almost 60 years after it was first proposed—dozens of those “one-cylinder schools” were indeed closed and consolidated into the schools of their larger neighbors.

Consider the 212 Conference, located along a 50-mile stretch of Highway 212 west of the Twin Cities. The Conference was founded in the very year that its demise was first plotted by the consolidation movement, and it existed only from 1947 to 1974. But, if there was a Golden Age of Minnesota high school basketball, the 212 was Exhibit A.

The 212 had a stable membership and stable rivalries. Kids could walk to school, and the name above the door (and the name on the jersey) was the same one that welcomed folks to town out on the edge of town on Highway 212. It provided basketball and all of the athletic teams, and their fans, too, short bus and car rides to and from games. And, everybody could and did compete. From east to west, the 212 consisted of Brownton, Stewart, Buffalo Lake, Hector, Bird Island, Danube, Renville and Sacred Heart.

Glencoe (1960 population 3,216), located in McLeod County to the east, and Granite Falls (1960 population 2,897), in Yellow Medicine County to the west, were bookends just beyond the confines of Renville County and of the 212. And Olivia, the Renville County seat, located on 212 right in the center of the county between Bird Island and Danube and with a 1960 population of 2,355, not quite double the largest cities in the 212, was never a member of the 212 but shared the geography with those who were.

Table: The 212 Conference 1947-1974: Basketball Results

(State tournament appearances shopwn within parentheses occured before or after the 212 was active.)

The smallest city in the conference, Danube, had the second most wins and the second most conference titles and two state tournament appearances. The biggest city, Bird Island, won less than half of its games, but it should be noted that they were the only town among the eight that also had a Catholic high school, St. Mary’s, competing for students until it closed in the early 1970s. The smaller towns could compete if they had a strong athletic culture, like Brownton, whom Dick Peik led to the 1958 state tournament and graduated the following year with a total of 1,218 career points. In Danube, the great Bob Bruggers led his team to the 1961 and 1962 state tournaments, and completed his high school career as Minnesota’s second leading scorer with 2,364 points. He went on to play football at Minnesota and in the NFL. In Renville, the Mulder brothers—Larry, Greg and Kevin—scored more than 4,000 points among them in the 1970s. Renville appeared in the first Class A tournament in 1971, winning one game, then losing two to finish in fourth place. In 1972, they lost their first and only game to Howard Lake.

But, today, kids from Brownton, located just over the Renville County border in McLeod County, go to Glencoe-Silver Lake High School. (Silver Lake also no longer has its own high school.) Kids from Stewart, Buffalo Lake and Hector go to Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart. Kids from Bird Island and Olivia (and Lake Lillian) go to BOLD High School in Olivia. Kids from Danube, Renville and Sacred Heart (and also Belview) go to Renville County West, located in Renville. Granite Falls and two or three other neighboring schools are consolidated as Yellow Medicine East. An area that once boasted 20 high schools, in other words, now has seven or eight, and high school students in the other dozen or so towns ride to school in six-cylinder buses. Not a single school in Renville County or any adjacent school district, with the single exception of Hutchinson, has been untouched by this remorseless process. Then multiply this by Minnesota’s 80 essentially rural counties. Statewide, there are about 224 high schools in rural areas that once were served by half again that many. No wonder that many Minnesotans no longer embrace their local high schools as their parents and grandparents did.