By Blake Theisen / KVSC Sports Director / @btheisen24

Starting as soon as next year, St. Cloud Tech and Apollo may have to combine for five more sports.

The St. Cloud Area School District made a proposal to the MSHSL to co-op Boys Baseball, Girls Softball, Girls Basketball, and Boys and Girls Tennis.

The school district says that the co-op’s would allow for the teams to be more organized and maintain healthy and thriving activities at both high schools as they seek to maintain competitiveness. Last year, the Apollo Boys Baseball program fielded just 2 teams, Varsity and Junior Varsity, due to low numbers within the program.

“We are putting into place now strategies to revitalize and rebuild the programs so that hopefully in a couple of years we won’t need co-ops,” says Dr. Laurie Putnam, Assistant Principal of Secondary Education for St. Cloud Area Schools. “We are arranging transportation for after school high school activities and have hired middle level activities coordinators to help connect with elementary students and build the pipeline from a young age.”

The school district alread hosts six co-ops including gymnastics, wrestling, boys and girls lacrosse, girls hockey, and most recently boys hockey, which underwent the co-op in 2017-18.

The district is also seeking public input on selecting a unifying name and color for it’s co-op teams. You can offer your suggestions at their website. Several of the current co-ops still go by the “Tigers”, while the girls hockey program is named the Icebreakers, and boys hockey remains without a nickname.

The proposal is still awaiting approval from the MSHSL