For the first time since the program started, there will be no varsity boys hockey at Faribault High School.
Activities director Shane Gunderson confirmed to Strib Varsity that the school has canceled its 2026-27 varsity season because of low participation, pausing roughly five decades of Big Nine and Minnesota State High School League competition.
“We are not going to have enough for a varsity . We know that piece,” Gunderson told Strib Varsity. “We’re in the process of trying to figure out, ‘Do we have enough to play a JV schedule?'”
That is where the work sits right now, with almost three months until the season opens. Not who fills the top line. Whether there are enough bodies for a junior varsity schedule at all.
The warning signs were on the roster last winter. Faribault went 4-21-1 and dressed 16 players even while co-oping with three other schools. The Falcons lost their head coach after he took over the family business. The program hasn’t had a winning season since 2019-20, and its only trip to the state tournament came in 1993.
What it means for the Big Nine and Section 1A
Without Faribault, the Big Nine is down to 10 boys hockey teams for 2026-27: Northfield, Mankato West, Owatonna, Albert Lea, Mankato East, Rochester Century/John Marshall, Rochester Mayo, Austin, Winona and Red Wing.
Faribault also comes off the Section 1A board, where the Falcons had been a fixture on the bottom half of the bracket. Every team in that section now has one fewer opponent to schedule, and one fewer body in the section tournament field. Our Section 1A predictions for 2026-27 were built with Faribault in the field, and the Faribault season preview we published in June is now overtaken by events.
The Shattuck contrast
Two miles from the public high school sits Shattuck-St. Mary’s, one of the best-known development programs in North America, with a long list of national titles and NHL alumni. Faribault has that on one side of town and no varsity team on the other. It’s a striking split for a city of this size, and it says something about how separate the prep and public paths have become.
This isn’t only a Faribault problem
Boys hockey participation across Minnesota fell 2.3% in 2025-26, from 5,077 players to 4,962, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations survey.
Faribault is the latest program to run out of runway, not the first. Bloomington Kennedy ended its boys program after 60 years. St. Paul Johnson, one of the most decorated names in state tournament history, folded into a co-op with Highland Park. Schools that once carried their own team now share one, and schools that already share one are still coming up short.
The pattern is familiar: fewer kids in the pipeline, more families choosing junior or prep routes, and rising costs that thin the middle of a roster before they touch the top of it.
The youth numbers give Gunderson something to work with
Here’s the part that keeps this from reading like an obituary.
Faribault’s youth hockey is not in the same shape as the high school program. The Peewee A team hosted a state tournament earlier this year, and the number of seventh and eighth graders in the association is rising. Those are the players who would be filling a varsity sheet in three or four years.
Keeping them is the whole job now, and Gunderson knows what happens if the high school program goes dark completely.
“We know the ramifications of not having a team at all,” he said. “For our younger kids, we need a team that they can see themselves on in a few years.”
A JV schedule would give those kids a jersey to point at. No team at all gives them a reason to look somewhere else, whether that’s another sport or another school.
“The numbers are there,” Gunderson said. “But we’ve got to keep them.”
Statistics and roster information courtesy of the Minnesota State High School League and published reports. Have a tip or a correction? Email ftphockey@gmail.com.
