John's Journal Favorite 15: Three Schools, Three States, One Team

This is the fifth installment of my Favorite 15 John’s Journal stories from the past 15 years. This one is special because of its uniqueness; possibly the only high school teams in the country with students from three schools in three states. It originally appeared on January 17, 2020.

The communities of Campbell, Tintah, Fairmount and Rosholt have a combined population of barely a thousand people. Rosholt is the largest with 423 residents, Tintah is the teeniest with 63. When high school athletes compete, the four little towns are one.

The teams are known as the Tri-State Tigers. That's because the schools involved in the cooperative athletic programs are in three different states. The Campbell-Tintah school district is in Minnesota, Fairmount is in North Dakota and Rosholt is in South Dakota. Where the state lines intersect, Tigers rule the countryside.

"They're all my friends," Alyssa Hensch, a Campbell-Tintah junior, said of her basketball teammate who live in both Dakotas. "Honestly, I wouldn't know them without sports.”

One day this week, the Tigers girls basketball team was practicing inside the historic little gym in Campbell. That evening, the boys basketball team played the visiting Central Cass Squirrels inside the modern, well-lit gym in Rosholt. The Squirrels are from the town of Casselton, 95 miles away on the prairie west of Fargo, N.D. They traveled on a charter bus.

For the Tigers, spending time in a school bus is part of the deal for almost all practices as well as games. It's a 12-mile drive from Campbell to Fairmount, and another 19 miles from Fairmount to Rosholt. If conditions are good it can be a 40-minute drive from Campbell through Fairmount and on to Rosholt; vehicles pass signs that proclaim “Welcome to North Dakota/Legendary” and “Welcome to South Dakota/Great Faces, Great Places.”

“We've grown up having to commute to practice and stuff every day,” said Campbell-Tintah senior basketball player Sam Viger. “So we've gotten used to it.”

The basketball players from Campbell-Tintah are the only high schoolers in Minnesota who play with shot clocks in every game. That's because both North Dakota and South Dakota use shot clocks (as well as eight-minute quarters instead of Minnesota’s 18-minute halves). During the regular season the Tigers are part of a basketball league, the Eastern Coteau Conference, which consists entirely of South Dakota schools. When the postseason arrives, the Tigers play in the North Dakota High School Activities Association playoffs.

But wait, there’s more. The Tigers also compete in North Dakota in football, volleyball, softball and golf, but in South Dakota in cross-country, and track and field. The softball team is a five-team coop, with North Dakota schools Hankinson and Lidgerwood joining in.

The cooperative agreement was originally formed for football in 2007, with other sports added to the arrangement in recent years.

Boys basketball coach Adam Krueger is Rosholt graduate and teacher who played football for the Tigers coop team. But when he was in school there were no golf, softball or cross-country teams, opportunities which are now available.

Girls basketball coach Brenda Dahlgren (who teaches in Fairmount) said, “When we were alone, we just didn't have enough athletes. South Dakota probably didn't need us yet, but they're at the edge of their state and they didn't have anybody else to coop with and we knew eventually it would happen. So they took us in and it's been nice. It does give everybody an opportunity.”

There is tremendous history to be found in the hallways of the century-old school in Campbell, including trophies from both the MSHSL and the NDHSAA. There are displays honoring Campbell native Errol Mann, a kicker who was a member of the Oakland Raiders’ winning Super Bowl XI team; Mike Cannon, another Campbell product who now lives in Hutchinson and is a high-ranking NCAA football official; and Eugene McCarthy, who taught social studies in Campbell in 1939-40 and went on to a political career that took him to the U.S. House of Representatives, the U.S. Senate and five presidential campaigns.

The 2019 graduating class from Campbell-Tintah consisted of six students, three fewer than in 2018. The local communities, no matter the state, work hard in providing opportunities for their students.

“We're really lucky because the kids, the schools and the parents are all really flexible,” Krueger said. “If something comes up we make a switch and we don't really hear much.”

The athletes often spend time together away from their sports.

“There are a lot of times where we will show up in Fairmount to pick up the Fairmount kids and we'll have Campbell kids already there,” Krueger said, “or we'll get a call that a bunch of Campbell kids are already in Rosholt because they're hanging out with the guys from Rosholt. So they're a really close group.”

Since the team members don’t attend school together, practice time can be disrupted just a bit with small talk, Krueger said with a grin.

“The only issue we've ever had with it is they miss each other. Not seeing each other in school, they get to practice and they want to talk and chat about what's going on.”

Campbell-Tintah sophomore basketball player Mary Rupp said playing for the Tigers is special.

“It's definitely different,” she said. “But I like how you can experience a whole different aspect of people because you're not stuck in one state or one school. We’ve got lots of friends from the other schools.”

--Feel free to contact me via email: [email protected]. You can follow me on Bluesky at @minnesotamillea.bsky.social and on Twitter/X @MinnesotaMillea