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High school football: What to watch for in 2022

jace frederick, pioneer press
·2 min read

The 2022 Minnesota high school football season is upon us, with most teams kicking off Week 1 on Thursday or Friday.

Here’s what we’re watching for this fall:

YEAR 2 OF CLASS 6A SETUP

Year 1 of the Class 6A split of divisions between the Metro Gold — which featured many of the most successful big schools — and the Metro Maroon delivered some interesting results.

The Metro Gold schools matching up on a week-to-week basis delivered a number of titanic regular-season tilts, which created great theater. There is also the theory that iron sharpens iron, so perhaps the difficult regular-season schedules better prepared elite teams for the postseason.

That seemed to play itself out in the Class 6A playoffs. All four state semifinalists, and seven of the eight quarterfinalists, hailed from the Metro Gold, with Woodbury representing the lone outlier in the final eight.

On the flip side, the onslaught of top-tier competition did seem to provide some excess wear and tear on a few teams. And the strength of schedule can lead to difficult regular seasons for perennial powers, as was experienced by Rosemount and Lakeville North in 2021.

Meanwhile, the less daunting Metro Maroon divisions provided a setup for programs like Park, Anoka, White Bear Lake and Eagan to experience levels of success they hadn’t previously achieved in recent years at the Class 6A level.

And with challenging non-district games, top Metro Maroon programs like East Ridge and Stillwater do feature well-balanced schedules.

Still, Metro Maroon teams might fight perception battles come playoff time each year. East Ridge, for example, went 5-3 with a couple of top-flight victories in the regular season last fall, only to be woefully underseeded by its Metro Gold counterparts.

5A GOES THROUGH STA

The road to the Class 5A state championship this season probably goes through St. Thomas Academy.

That may sound like an odd statement, considering it’s been so long since the Cadets have actually hoisted the state championship trophy. But consider this: Since Dan O’Brien took over as coach of the program in 2018, the Cadets have lost just four games — all to the eventual state champion.

Twice those losses took place in the Prep Bowl. Last season, St. Thomas Academy fell 21-14 in the state quarterfinals to Mankato West in what was the Scarlets’ most competitive game of the postseason.

TWIN CITY GOLD RUSH

The Twin City Gold subdistrict is, effectively, the St. Paul City Conference, with four of the five City programs — only sans Harding-Humboldt, which plays in Twin City Red — squaring off for subdistrict supremacy.

Last season, they beat up on one another, with Como Park, Central and Highland Park all finishing at 2-1 in the subdistrict.

Will someone separate itself from the pack this fall?

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