BP cites numbers, player safety as reasons for co-op

During an exclusive interview with the Steele County Times, Blooming Prairie Activities Director Ali Mach said that conversations between Blooming Prairie and Hayfield High School about creating a co-op for football had been ongoing for years with the latter making first contact due to a decline in athlete participation numbers; however, an agreement was just finalized earlier this month after Blooming Prairie recognized the same concerning trend in its own program.

According to Mach, Blooming Prairie’s decision to move forward with the co-op was made after multiple conversations with the school’s head football coach Chad Gimbel.

“Students weren’t informed before, but I know there was a lot of talking because we’re a small community. It’s been brought up a few times… This is a conversation that began with looking at our numbers in the late spring. I talked with coach Gimbel at length about some things and revisited with him in the summer to see where we were at. He said that it’s probably time that we started having the conversation [about a co-op.] Our numbers were just less than we would have liked to see, so I reached out to Hayfield’s activities director, Chris Pack, and then we got our superintendents together,” said Mach.

According to Mach, the powers at be decided that the best course of action for the interest of players’ safety and overall experience was to combine the two programs – a decision that after its approval, locked both schools into a two-year commitment as the Blooming Prairie-Hayfield (BPH) football team.

“(Blooming Prairie) is hoping to stay in Class AA football and when you’re going to a game with maybe 30 bodies and the other team has 60, there’s certainly a discrepancy there… It’s a whole other beast than Class A. We could get by with the numbers we had in single-A, and we tried to get by in double-A, but as the season progressed and injuries happen, it became more of a challenge for us. Knowing our numbers were a little bit smaller this summer, it wasn’t going to be feasible to safely put our kids out there and provide great experiences, and to continue the tradition we’ve had of having success,” said Mach.

Due to the move coming so close to the beginning of the fall season – BPH has its first game scheduled for Friday, Sept. 4 against Lewiston-Altura – there have been many questions to answer in a short period of time for both programs.

The following is the breakdown of important information regarding BPH’s future as a team.

Identity

According to Mach, the primary concern with handling the introduction of the co-op has been protecting the identities of the two towns.

Both are proud, historic programs, and part of the move has been assuring the communities that each will have their fair share of the spotlight.

With Blooming Prairie being Section 2AA compared to Hayfield competing in Section 1A, the co-op will absorb the schedule and section assignment previously allocated to the Awesome Blossoms for 2026.

BPH will not feature a logo involving either the traditional Awesome Blossom or Viking, and instead will be kept as the letters “BPH” until a suitable replacement has been agreed upon.

According to Mach, there are hopes that a logo will eventually depict both school mascots in some way.

The BPH football team will also split its practice and home-game schedules between both schools’ fields and wear the Awesome Blossoms’ home and away uniforms during varsity games.

Both schools will also have their own separate homecoming games with Blooming Prairie hosting St. Clair and Hayfield taking on WEM.

X’s and O’s

With practices beginning in less than a month, both schools have elected to fully absorb the coaching staffs from each program without making any cuts.

“This is a true cooperative agreement, so we’ll have two co-head coaches: Chad Gimbel and Hayfield’s Derrick Thompson. Thompson is actually a Blooming Prairie alumnus and was coached by Gimbel, so he’s familiar with us… Since this decision came so close to the beginning of the season, we chose to honor all of our coaches’ contracts. It will be a full collaborative agreement between the two staffs,” said Mach.

According to Gimbel, the familiarity between the two coaching staffs should make for a smooth transition.

“We were pretty closely aligned offensively with what we did. Derrick played in our system and coached with us before moving on [to Hayfield.] We did a lot of things similarly. Really the X’s and O’s offensively was pretty close. Defensively, we do something completely different than most teams, so that will be pretty new and we’re going to carry that over. Our kids that ran it, loved it. Now, having more bodies being able to run it and being deeper, I think our defense will only continue to grow, but that will be different for the Hayfield side,” said Gimbel.

According to Gimbel, the opportunity to have stronger numbers mean less kids will play both sides of the ball, and create stronger competition at every position.

“I know they have some really talented wide receivers and secondary players. They also have some big, strong guys that will really boost our line on both sides of the ball. I’m just looking forward to seeing how much our guys are going to be able to compete and thrive without being worn down so much over the course of the season. If you watched our games last year, we were always competitive in the first half, but things began to slip as the game went on with injuries and players tiring out from having to play offense, defense and special teams,” said Gimbel.

Looking forward

The BPH program will be effective until the end of the 2027 season due to the two-year minimum requirement; however, at the conclusion of said season, both teams can review the co-op on an annual basis.

According to Mach, the hope is that the combination of the two teams will inspire more athletes from each school to come out and participate.
“We went into this knowing it’s something that we’re committed to for these two years. I’ve seen many things out there, speculation about what people think is going to happen, and ultimately, we’ll have to see. Obviously, our long-term goal is that both programs can grow enough to go back on their own. That’s the purpose of co-ops is to put yourself in a position to get more engagement and participation to separate again… But the reality is too, that I don’t know if that’s going to be the case,” said Mach. 

According to her, there have been “mixed feelings” amongst the students about the co-op, but that they understand “why it is necessary.”

In terms of Blooming Prairie’s other sports, Mach sees the school being able to maintain its other athletic programs independently.

“Small schools are struggling with numbers in their programs and it’s hard to preserve their identities. We feel very confident that our other programs are healthy and where we want them to be. But we certainly listen when other schools come calling. It’s hard because we want to continue to be the Blooming Prairie Awesome Blossoms, but ultimately my responsibility is to provide what’s best for our kids at our school. If [a co-op] is something that has to happen, it will. But for now, it’s not something that’s on our radar or anything we’re looking at for our other teams,” said Mach.