High School Sports, Activities Bringing Renewed Excitement

SARTELL -- It's been a bounce back year for high school athletics following last year's pandemic driven obstacles.

Fall sports were able to complete a full season and winter sports are starting to get underway.

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Nick Peterson is in his first year as the Sartell-St. Stephen Activities Director. He says after a year of quiet gyms and stadiums, it's been great to see fans back at the games.

At football games we had a big student section and they were passionate with their cheers. I had several families from other schools reach out how fun our student section was. But compared to last year with limited fans, we're having some good participation.

Peterson says while they don't have official numbers, they have noticed strong participation throughout all of their after school athletics and activities this year.

One of the main concerns heading into the school year was the lack of bus drivers and how it may affect extracurricular activities. Peterson says that wasn't much of an issue this fall.

We did have a few occasions where we couldn't bring our lower level teams because we didn't have enough buses to go to the same location. So we had to consolidate and send our varsity team separately and figure out when our lower level teams could match up.

Peterson says he doesn't expect busing to be an issue as they transition into winter activities. He says it's more likely the weather would be the main factor for rescheduling games and events.

Peterson says with a majority of their activities now moving indoors for the winter, he wants to remind fans that the district does have a masking policy when visiting inside school buildings.

The varsity girls hockey season opens Thursday in Rogers and the varsity girls section swim meet will wrap up Friday and Saturday at Sartell high school.