Seeking to keep more players on the ice well into February, the Mid States Club Hockey Association has altered its three-tiered postseason format.
With 87 players from MSCHA teams opting to play in the Central States Development League playoffs and another 75 participating in the AAA-level postseason, MSCHA has contracted its highest playoff tier, the Challenge Cup, from 12 to eight teams. The Wickenheiser Cup (named after former St. Louis Blues player Doug Wickenheiser) is the second-tier playoff with 12 teams. And the third-tier Founders Cup, in which Eureka, Fox, Northwest and Seckman usually compete, is expanding to 15 teams. The Founders Cup is like the consolation side of a basketball tournament bracket.
“We’re continually trying to get it right,” Mid States president Craig Ragland said. “We’re doing the Challenge Cup in a week and a half so the kids don’t have conflicts with club teams.”
Two-time defending champion
De Smet is the No. 1 seed in the Challenge Cup. The Spartans and other St. Louis private schools, such as Christian Brothers College Academy, St. Louis University High and Vianney, have all taken turns winning the Challenge Cup since Francis Howell Central was the last public school to claim it in 2011.
While the Founders and Wickenheiser playoffs are already underway, the Challenge Cup doesn’t begin until Feb. 18. The championship is slated for Feb. 28 at Centene Community Ice Center in Maryland Heights.
Breaking the private-school monopoly in the Challenge Cup doesn’t happen often. Usually, one of the top four seeds wins it. In 2011, Webster Groves wasn’t the champion, but made the semifinals while not seeded on the top four.
“That’s the closest thing I’ve seen to a Cinderella Story,” said Ragland, the league president since 2023 and vice president for five years before that.
The Challenge and Wickenheiser Cup finals were held at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis until 2020 and moved to Centene in 2022. At the Enterprise Center, Ragland said, usually between 5,000 and 6,000 tickets were sold for the Challenge Cup final. Last year’s game at the much smaller Centene drew a sell-out crowd of 3,000.
“It’s crazy loud in (Centene),” Ragland said. “There’s not a kid in the league anymore who remembers playing at Enterprise.”
The adjustments to the playoffs will make the competition in the ‘Wick’ tougher. That level has always been held in high regard by the players and coaches and public schools are as apt to win it as the private ones. Clayton beat Ladue (Wick champs in 2021) in 2024 for the Greyhounds’ first cup of any kind. Parkway West is the top seed this season.
“It seeds 9-20,” Ragland said. “Any one of those teams could win that tournament.”
Westminster Christian Academy is the top seed in the Founders Cup. The Wildcats lost to Liberty (Wentzville) in last year’s Founders final. All four teams in the Leader coverage area – Eureka (9-10-1), Fox (4-13-3), Northwest (2-17-1) and Seckman (3-16-1) – are in the Founders. The Wildcats won it in 2019 and 2021 and are seeded third.
No. 8 Fox beat No. 9 Seckman 3-1 Jan. 31 and 4-2 Feb. 1 to sweep their first-round series. The Warriors played Westminster on Monday, after our deadline, in game one of the second round. Game two is Feb. 10 at Maryville University. Eureka swept Holt 2-1 (Jan. 31) and 1-0 (Feb. 1) and will play sixth-seed John Burroughs tonight (Feb. 6) at Kennedy in game two. The Bombers eliminated No. 11 Northwest 7-1 and 3-0.
“Every coach and program has a different outlook where they want to end up,” said Eureka head coach Joseph Nahm, who led the Wildcats to the Founders title in 2021. “We want to get as high a seed as possible and see what’s in front of us.”
Eureka lost its top four goal scorers from a year ago and Nahm said his club has had to rely on defense and goaltender Lendon Arledge, who played in 17 games, posted four shutouts and had a goals-against average of 2.84. The Wildcats have been hampered by injuries, losing captain and defenseman Kaleb Nolen for half of the season. Colton Knop broke his hand and missed multiple games. Both have returned to the lineup.
“We beat the teams we were supposed to beat and ended up with the same record and ranking as last year,” Nahm said.
In their first-round series against Holt (Wentzville), the Wildcats were also without leading scorer Kelby Roark (seven goals, 19 points) who received a match penalty in the last game of the season against Oakville. The MSCHA discipline committee will rule on Roark’s punishment.
“It was a checking-from-behind call, which should have been a five-minute major and game misconduct,” Nahm said. “In our opinion there wasn’t an intent to injure. He doesn’t do cheap plays. He’s aggressive and active.”
Betty Sisco lives in an unincorporated part of Jefferson County. Her two sons played for Eureka. She is the head coach at Northwest, the only female in that position in a league that for years has always welcomed a coed environment.
MSCHA requires players to attend the schools their clubs represent. If teams can’t recruit enough athletes, however, they’re allowed to draw from a pool. Sisco said that severely limits the Lions’ growth and ability to beat teams with 30-man rosters. Two of Sisco’s players are from Hillsboro.
“If I have five kids out of town, I play with 15 skaters,” said Sisco, who works as a physician’s assistant in neurosurgery at Mercy South hospital and is also a coach for the St. Louis Blues Warriors Hockey program. “It’s hard to build a program with these types of limitations. Both of our goalies play high-level club and (we had) games where neither could attend. We had to put a player in net.”
Sisco isn’t a fan of MSCHA’s new playoff format.
“It gives (Founders) less credibility because they’re selecting the highest 20 teams to be in the higher brackets,” she said. “There’s pros and cons. They do the best they can. Hockey, at least in high school, has been so watered down because of the higher-level club programs. The chance of us ever being in a higher (Cup) is slim to nil because of the way the league is set up.”
Sisco said she’s been a coach most of her life, including artistic gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics and girls and boys high school volleyball at Thomas Jefferson School, an independent in St. Louis County.
“After all my years of coaching, the high school players have basic hockey knowledge coming in,” Sisco said. “Northwest has more learning to be done and I enjoy teaching the game. I want the kids to come out for the love of the game and make it a life sport (with) a desire to play after high school.”
Ragland said he doesn’t want people to consider the Founders Cup a lesser tournament.
“I’ve handed out the trophies the last five years and those kids are no less excited to win, and likewise, they’re just as disappointed to lose it as much as the Wick or Challenge Cup. The Founders Cup is not playing to win 21st place. I don’t think there’s teams that start the season to be the Founder’s champion. We want to change that.”