Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Administrator’s Corner by Paul Durbahn

It has been a whirlwind of a school year so far for ALHS activities. Hard to imagine we have completed a full fall season, and we’re already beginning our winter activities. We’re very proud that even during challenging times our students are still excelling and we’re still celebrating our student successes. No matter our circumstances, we’ve been able to provide strong and stable environments for our students, and we’ve seen a lot of success.

During this fall season, we had about 475 students grades 7-12 participate in a school-sponsored activity. Education-based activities are more important than ever to our students and their families, especially considering our current times.

This fall, we had another state tournament appearance for the Albert Lea Tigers, as our boys cross country team earned a trip to the MSHSL state tournament for the first time since 1981!

We had 44 students involved in our fall musical, “Mamma Mia,” put on by Ms. Diane Heaney. The amount of work that goes into these performances is tremendous. What a great production it was, and it was great to see the community come out in waves and fill the auditorium!

Of our students in activities this fall, we had 250 of those students earn a spot on the honor roll while participating in an activity. We celebrated that by serving them all breakfast.

This school year, we’ve added middle school wrestling and a middle school dance team to our school-sponsored activity offerings. This helps take the burden off families and booster clubs and also makes them more accessible. We are able to do this only because our community supported our school district’s referendum. We will continue to embrace our middle school activities, and we hope to soon have middle school opportunities in all athletic activities.

As we embark on the winter season, I would like to extend a thank you to our community for your support of our schools and student-athletes. The opportunities they have are very important, and we’re very thankful to be able to provide them.

Paul Durbahn is the Albert Lea Area Schools activities director.