MOORHEAD, MINN. – The Moorhead Spuds have an ultramodern high school with black-and-orange-painted facilities galore, but the place is getting crowded with trophies.

Remember the boys hockey state championship trophy that captains Brooks Cullen and Mason Kraft hoisted in March? Or the net Moorhead’s boys basketball team scissored down after advancing to state? Or the first section championship trophy for baseball in 35 years?

This summer, about 15 of those keepsakes were pressed together like plates in a dishwasher, sitting atop four filing cabinets in the activities office. So much winning, it was hard to keep track.

“It felt like this was one of those years that we won’t forget,” said Moorhead High School historian Brian Cole.

Now, Moorhead’s star-studded football team has made the jump into Minnesota’s top tier — from Class 5A to 6A.

The Spuds didn’t lobby to join the state’s 32 biggest schools in 6A. The school’s growth put them there, as Moorhead’s enrollment numbers rank 23rd in the Minnesota State High School League.

Going to 6A is an expensive move for Moorhead, forcing other cuts in the activities travel budget. Spuds activities director Dean Haugo said football travel costs are up 30%.

The increase comes in a year Moorhead’s school district has trimmed $4.2 million from its budget. Last fall, a school levy fell by about 600 votes, and there will be two more levy votes this fall, with the district hoping to secure a combined $58.7 million over the next 10 years.

“We’re certainly in a challenging budget time in Moorhead,” Haugo said. “And so we have to be more mindful than we ever have been of our travel.”

But after going 9-1 in football last season, the players have been eager to measure themselves against the state’s biggest and best.

Which opponent do they look forward to playing most?

“Honestly, all of them,” said running back Taye Reich, one of Moorhead’s four Division I prospects. “But I’d probably say Edina and Maple Grove. Maybe Minnetonka. Geez. There’s so many. I don’t know.”

One-high-school town

Mayor Shelly Carlson noted that Moorhead is the fourth-fastest-growing city in Minnesota outside the Twin Cities.

“In a town of 45,000,” she said, “you don’t often find a four-year public university [Minnesota State University, Moorhead], a four-year private college [Concordia College], a two-year technical college [M State] and a [high school] career academy.”

Just across the Red River sits Fargo, and together the metropolitan area has grown to about 250,000 people.

If there was one key step that led to Moorhead eventually playing 6A football, it came in 2018, when the city was deciding whether to add a second high school.

“We border Fargo and West Fargo, and both have three or four high schools and have kept them a smaller size than we are,” Haugo said. “We just looked at the Minnesota landscape, and we felt comfortable that we could really serve our community properly with one high school.”

Carlson said there were second-, third- and fourth-generation Moorhead families determined to keep it as a one-high-school city.

“When that was put to a vote,” Carlson said, “the community decided, no, we want to be the one Spud Nation.”

Moorhead knew it was getting close to joining 6A in football during the previous two-year cycle. Rochester Mayo got the 32nd and final spot, and Moorhead was 33rd, based on the MSHSL’s enrollment formula. Two years later, Moorhead jumped past Mayo and nine other schools to land at No. 23.

Moorhead’s home games this season are against Rogers, Wayzata, Maple Grove and St. Michael-Albertville. The Spuds will travel to Woodbury, Minnetonka, Eden Prairie and Edina.

“Traditionally, we’re going to St. Cloud, Sartell, Sauk Rapids and Brainerd,” Haugo said. “So our usual trip went from about 2 hours and 15 minutes to about three hours.”

Travel advantage?

Whenever the Spuds send a bus to the Twin Cities, it costs $2,200 to $2,500, depending on what part of the metro they’re heading to, Haugo said.

The football team sends 80-90 players, so it takes two buses and it’s double the cost.

But the Spuds are used to it. They travel to the Twin Cities repeatedly for several events. It’s a way of life, starting in youth sports.

“If you’re a kid that plays basketball and plays lacrosse, you stay at the Marriott West every time you go to the Twin Cities on a Spud bus,” Haugo said. “And they’re going to take care of us, right down to the breakfast. Each team does a smidge different, but for the most part, we travel in a very, very consistent manner.”

Haugo said, depending on section and state tournament outcomes, Moorhead will use 400-500 hotel rooms this school year. That counts each room used, regardless of how many share the room. Sometimes two athletes will room together. Sometimes four.

The Moorhead boys hockey team will make six overnight trips to the Twin Cities, for example, playing Friday night and a different opponent Saturday. They’ll use 14 rooms on each of those six trips, so that’s 84 hotel rooms used.

Moorhead’s prolific speech team — nine consecutive state championships and counting — also stays in a hotel for Twin Cities competitions.

“The speech and theater program at Moorhead is not just one of the top of the state but also one of the top in the country,” Cole said.

Moorhead boys hockey coach Jon Ammerman said that in exit interviews, players “almost always write down their favorite part of the season was the bus trips or the overnights.”

“You talk to some of our metro counterparts, and some don’t even bus to games together because it’s a 10-minute drive both ways,” he said. “So they basically get done with the game and say, ‘See you later.’ And unless somebody organizes something, the kids aren’t together.

“In our situation, the kids are forced to interact, or at least hang out for three hours each way.”

But everything comes with a cost.

“We’re cutting as much out of our travel budget as possible while still maintaining high-level competition,” Haugo said.

Haugo said the Spuds found some cost savings at the junior varsity level. Instead of mirroring the varsity football schedule, Moorhead’s JV team will play 50% of its schedule against teams from the Fargo-Moorhead area (with virtually no travel) and 50% against schools the varsity team faces in 6A.

Right off the bus

Knowing the move to 6A was inevitable, Moorhead football coach Kevin Feeney scheduled a scrimmage with St. Michael-Albertville last summer and Anoka this summer, just to see how the Spuds stacked up against 6A competition.

“You know the old movie ‘Hoosiers,’ where it was like, guess what?” Feeney said. “The football field’s the same. There’s 11 guys on the other side of the football, and it’s blocking and tackling.”

The Spuds have the skill-position talent to compete in 6A, including Feeney’s son, junior quarterback Jett Feeney, who led Minnesota with 48 passing touchdowns last year. But they’ll be tested along the offensive and defensive lines against programs with more depth.

Moorhead’s longest road trip will be the first one, to Woodbury. That morning, players will wear their jerseys to school, in the old tradition. For that trip, they’ll leave school around 10 a.m., knowing they need time to stop for food and must battle traffic to the east side of the metro.

They’ll get to the field at least two hours before kickoff. The game starts at 6 p.m., and by the time they get home, it’ll be close to midnight.

The Spuds will do this three more times during the regular season, while opponents make the trek to Moorhead once each.

“We’re going to make the best of it,” Maple Grove coach Adam Spurrell said. “We’re going to make it feel like a college experience.”

When players complained about a few hours on the bus, Spurrell told them, “We’re one of the shorter drives. Some of those schools [Edina and Wayzata] will have to drive even further.”

Next season, the schedule flips, with Moorhead traveling to face the four schools it will host this year. Kevin Feeney said Woodbury coach Andrew Hill has already asked him questions about that 2026 trip to Moorhead.

“Just the fact that they’re thinking about that,” Feeney said, smiling. “We’re going to try and put as much of that into their heads as possible.”

Haugo jokingly said some opponents get to Moorhead for a game “thinking they drove somewhere south of the Arctic Circle.”

The Spuds, meanwhile, look right at home in Moorhead or on the road. Besides boys hockey, boys basketball and baseball, they also reached state last school year in girls hockey and boys lacrosse. They sent Nordic skiers to state, and Moorhead’s Billy Ward won a wrestling state championship.

“We do believe in a weird way our travel is an advantage,” Haugo said. “I mean, it really is. Because when teams come to Moorhead, they’re not used to it. For us, it’s what our kids do.”