John's Journal: As Retirement Looms, Here’s The Summer Plan

Hello folks. As many of you are aware, I am on final approach to retirement. My final day with the MSHSL will be Aug. 15, which will be here before we know it. I am so grateful for the more than 15 years I have spent in this job, as well as previous stops at five newspapers in Iowa, Arizona and Minnesota prior to joining the MSHSL staff.

My journalism career began when I was a 15-year-old high school student in my hometown of Graettinger, Iowa. I wrote sports stories for our weekly newspaper – The Graettinger Times, to which I still subscribe -- and loved it. That led to a career in the world of sports journalism.

I know nothing about numerology but some numbers repeat themselves: I was 15 when I started writing sports stories … I’ve worked at the MSHSL for 15 years … I was 51 years old when I was hired by the MSHSL … and I’ve been doing this work for 51 years. So if you’re a numerologist, feel free to let me know what all that means.

Every summer I have a tradition of posting my favorite John’s Journal stories from the just-completed school year, and I have just finished choosing those stories. The result of this process will be a little different this year; as long as I have been posting these “Best Of” stories, I have settled on a Top 10. I have spent time in recent weeks trying to select 10 stories, whittling down a long list of some of my favorites from the 2024-25 school year. But darn it, my list came down to 11 stories and I can’t bring myself to eliminate one of them. So this year I will be breaking with tradition and posting my Top 11 stories from the school year.

After those stories are posted I will go back through 15 years of my work with the MSHSL and someway, somehow pick my Favorite 15 all-time stories. I began writing for the League in 2010 and there have been thousands of entries on John’s Journal, so this will be a time-consuming exercise. And at this point I have no idea what the final result will look like. All I know is that I will be spending lots of time on beautiful summer days hunched over my computer, scrolling through stories.

In ranking my favorite stories from each school year, I have always started with the posting of No. 10 and working my way down to No. 1. That will not change this year (which will begin with No 11). But in the Favorite 15 process, at this point I do not plan to rank them because that seems like an impossible task. Once I know what those 15 stories are, I will have to figure out the order in which they will be posted. More on that when the time comes.

Once all those stories have been posted – my Top 11 from 2024-25 and my Favorite 15 from 15 years – I will put together and post a final John’s Journal essay. That will certainly be more personal than just about anything I have written here previously. This work has never been about me, because the focus has always been, and rightfully so, on the kids, the coaches, the schools, the families and the communities that make high school activities in Minnesota so special. That theme will continue right to the very end in August, but I’m guessing my final piece of writing here will include some personal thoughts … and many, many notes of gratitude and thanks.

So that’s the plan. We’ll be back soon, kicking off the countdown of my Favorite 11 stories from the 2024-25 school year.

--Follow John Millea on Bluesky at @minnesotamillea.bsky.social. Contact John at [email protected]