When it became official last year that the Two Twelve Conference was breaking up after 58 years of existence, coaches and athletic directors wanted to do something to keep the memories alive. The boys basketball coaches, headed by Nathan Dah-lager of Yellow Medicine East, decided to plan for an Old Two Twelve Conference Holiday Tournament.
Not all of the coaches went along with the idea at first, but after persuading from Dahlager, Ryan Luft of Kerkhoven-Murdock-Sunburg and Gary Nelson of MACCRAY, every team was on board. The girls coaches soon followed and will also have a tournament starting today.
"When we knew that the 212 would be over a lot of people didn't want it to be over," said MACCRAY athletic director Mike Dammann, another key player in the tournaments getting organized. "Some teams were already in holiday tournaments, but we got it going early enough for it to work out."
It was originally planned to be a two-year commitment, but some schools had scheduling conflicts so it soon became only a one-year deal. Teams in the Camden North Conference will have schedule conference games with schools from the Camden South starting next year.
"I wished we could do this for many years," said Dahlager, who graduated in 1994 from Belview-Danube-Renville-Sacred Heart High School. "It's a great conference. I used to play in there, but it's disappointing that (the two-year commitment) fell through so fast."
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Dammann and Nelson made a rough sketch of a possible bracket before Dahlager put the finishing touches on the pairings for the eight-team tournament. In the first round today, which is a girls-boys doubleheader starting at 6 p.m., MACCRAY hosts Central Minnesota Christian in Clara City, Tracy-Milroy-Balaton travels to Granite Falls to take on YME, Renville County West plays at Kerkhoven against KMS and Atwater-Cosmos-Grove City squares off against BOLD in Bird Island.
On Friday two games will be played in Prinsburg and two more in Kerkhoven in the boys bracket while Tracy and Grove City will both host two games for the girls. Consolation games start at 6 p.m. followed by winner-bracket games at 7:30 p.m.
The tournament concludes Saturday at Granite Falls for the boys and Renville for the girls. The seventh-place game starts at 1 p.m. with the fifth-place contest at 3 p.m., third place at 5 p.m. and the championship at 7 p.m. In the boys tournament a trophy will be awarded to the champion while medals will be handed out to the top three teams.
The boys will also be having a three-point shootout on Saturday. Each team will have one representative will all of them squaring off at halftime of the third-place game. The top four finishers will then meet in the finals at halftime of the championship game.
Like Dahlager and many other coaches, Nelson wanted this to be more than one-year occurrence.
"Since we have to schedule games against teams from the Camden South, it got in the way of this happening every year," said Nelson. "We wanted to keep the rivalries going, but we'll get to renew some of the friendships (this year)."
Some of the former 212 schools will get an opportunity to rekindle their rivalries next year as MACCRAY will host the West Central South/Camden North Challenge in February of 2007. Four boys teams from each conference - Dawson-Boyd, KMS, MACCRAY and RCW in the Camden North and ACGC, Benson, BOLD and YME in the West Central South - will meet to play four games on a Saturday. A decision for a girls tournament has not yet been made.
"I'm still young so maybe 10 years from now we can do this again," said Dahlager referring to the Old 212 Conference Holiday Tournament. "I wish we could do this for eight years so each team could host the finals. We could have had a traveling trophy if we did it for eight years."
