by Mandan » Mon Mar 11, 2013 12:38 pm
NDHSAA HAS to have tons of information sitting in their offices. Someone needs to convince them how good it would be to have all that past data available on their website. Even past champions in each sport, results from state tournaments, etc are pretty much missing.
I can tell you that in 1964 there were 33 teams in Class A. I have a copy of a state tournament program from a few years ago that listed the history of what teams were in Class A from 1964-1980, which is when Class A had 4 regions. It was online at one time, not sure if I still have the original link or if it still works. It was interesting to see how class A went from a high of 37 teams in 1967-1968 down to 24 in 1980 when they reduced to three regions.
Here is the breakdown of Class A in those peak years of 37 teams:
Northwest (9 teams): Minot, Minot Ryan, Williston, Bottineau, Harvey, Rugby, Crosby, Stanley, Tioga
Southwest(11 teams): Bismarck, Bismarck St Mary's, Mandan, Dickinson, Dickinson Trinity, Bowman, Hettinger, Mott, Assumption Abbey (Richardton), Watford City, Ft Yates
Northeast(9 teams): Grand Forks Central, Grand Forks St James, Grand Forks Red River, Grafton, Langdon, Carrington, Cavalier, Park River, Larimore
Southeast(8 teams): Jamestown, Valley City, Wahpeton, West Fargo, Fargo Shanley, Fargo North, Fargo South, Lisbon
I don't know that the cutoff was for Class A, was it around the 325 limit like now or was it less?
This shows how the bigger smaller towns were not only bigger back then but had a lot of students.. I imagine a lot of bigger farm families contributed to this.