The decision of whether to stay and compete in the ranks of junior hockey or to return to one’s high school program is a choice that conflicts many athletes from the state of Minnesota each and every year. This decision is one that Carter Ernst didn’t take lightly and it’s something that he thought about more and more as the winter boys high school hockey season started to draw closer and closer.

The 17-year-old started this past fall in the USHL with the Cedar Rapids RoughRiders and had been playing quite well, despite being one of the youngest athletes on the entire roster. Over the summer and throughout the first few games of the junior hockey season, Ernst was fairly certain that he was going to spend his entire winter in Cedar Rapids, forgoing his final year of high school competition at Lakeville South. He was close with a lot of the seniors on the Cougar roster in 2024-25 who all graduated this past offseason, including his older brother Jackson, and it just seemed to make sense to move on to playing junior hockey full-time.

As the USHL season started to progress, Ernst started to think heavily on his decision though and he started to reconsider a return to Lakeville South. With time starting to run out for the Minnesota native to make his final decision he wound up officially deciding to return to the Cougar roster the week before high school tryouts were held in early November. He played his final game for the RoughRiders on Nov. 8 before moving back home to Lakeville and starting his preparations for his senior season. This is a huge and exciting development for the Cougars as Ernst brings a lot of leadership and talent back to a team that will certainly be vying for another run at the state tournament in 2025-26.

“I thought my experience was pretty good and I thought I was playing well, I thought my defensive side was really good and my offensive side was good but it’s really hard when you don’t get any time and space (in the USHL) and when you do - it’s gone in a second - so it’s definitely hard,” said Ernst about his time in Cedar Rapids, where he earned five points through 15 games. “I think I just kind of thought about it (returning to high school) and I just wanted to make one more run at the state championship and wanted to do it with my buddies that I’ve grown up with.”

Upon his return to Lakeville South, Ernst was also named captain of the Cougars squad. According to the team account on ‘X’, formerly known as Twitter, the coaching staff say that Carter’s 'dedication, composure and commitment to his teammates make him a natural leader’.

Returning to high school wasn’t the only big decision weighing on the 17-year-old’s mind at the time either, as Ernst was in the process of choosing which college hockey program that he wanted to commit to as well. He wound up verbally committing to the University of St. Thomas on Nov. 6 after pondering his offers and talking with other programs, so it’s safe to say that the past few weeks have been a chaotic whirlwind for the high school senior.

“I am extremely blessed and honored to announce my commitment to play Division 1 hockey and further my education at the University of St. Thomas. I would like to thank my family, friends, coaches, advisors, and teammates who have helped me along the way. Roll Tommies!” Ernst posted to his social media profiles in early November.

“I had originally visited St. Thomas in August, like right before I went down to Cedar Rapids,” said the senior forward, who had been in talks with the Tommies for a while. There was also a familiar connection between the Ernst family and the UST program as well as Karl Goehring, the current assistant coach of the Tommies, actually played high school hockey with Carter’s father back in the day, so that was a fun connection to have and to talk about.

Ernst had been talking with a few other collegiate programs too, such as the reigning national champions in Western Michigan, but there were a few things about St. Thomas in particular that stood out to the Minnesota native.

“When I visited, I loved the school and everything about it. It’s a kind of like a smaller, private school and your professors are going to know you. It’s 20 minutes away from my house too, which is sweet … and all of their facilities and stuff are just top notch.” he said about his experience on the campus in the Twin Cities metro area. Being close to home will be great for Ernst, considering that his immediate family can come and watch his games since they live so close and also because he has a lot of his extended family living in the state as well.

After talking with all of the other schools that were in the mix, Ernst was mulling things over and he received a follow up call from the Tommies that offered him a full scholarship. He talked things over with his family and with his advisor and decided that there was no way he could pass up that offer, considering the academics at the university, the campus - which includes the brand new Lee and Penny Anderson Arena, and the fact that the school is moving from the CCHA to the NCHC conference in the near future. Ernst hasn’t see the new arena in person yet since it wasn’t finished when he originally took his visit to the campus but he has plans to hopefully go out and visit it sometime this winter.

Ernst has been training with APX Hockey since 2020 and now with his commitment there are quite a few APX ties to the St. Thomas program. APX athletes Dylan Godbout, Luke Schelter, and Carsen Musser currently play on the Tommies roster right now while APX instructor Ray Christy is in his first season as the Director of Hockey Operations for the team.

Ernst is a bit familiar with some of the other UST recruits as well in guys like Jackson Potulny, who also trains at APX, and Casey Vandertop, who was roommates with Ernst at a USA Hockey camp in New York this past summer.

Now, as Ernst is back in Lakeville and is ready to start his senior campaign as one of the top athletes in the state, he doesn’t have any specific goals for himself or for his team other than setting their sights on the state tournament and making a deep run this season in 2025-26. After leading the Cougars in scoring last year as a junior with 61 points through 30 games played, Ernst will be a top candidate for the Mr. Hockey award this spring as well.

“I don’t even really care about my own points at all, as long as I’m playing the right way and my defensive side of the puck is just as good as my offensive side,” said Ernst, who is excited about the Cougar roster this winter and what the team will be able to accomplish. “I think we’re going to start winning a lot of games and the ultimate goal is to make it to state and go on a run.”

This Lakeville South roster will definitely look a bit different though compared to last year as Carter’s older brother Jackson has graduated - and he scored 60 points last season as a senior - alongside a few other key skaters. Despite losing a few high-end guys, Ernst is feeling confident about the 2025-26 season and thinks that the Cougars are an underrated team that will surprise a lot of people down the road.

The senior forward and the rest of the returners on the Lakeville squad are hungry for another shot at the state tournament after nearly pulling off an upset over the now reigning state champion Moorhead in the Class AA quarterfinals last spring. As the No. 8 seed many were overlooking the Cougars team but they gave the No. 1-seeded Spuds a run for their money and kept pace with them until late in the match when Moorhead pulled away for an eventual 7-4 victory. Jackson and Carter Ernst both had goals in that match.

“We had a lot of guys in and out and sick or hurt right at the start of the season (in 2024-25), which was really unfortunate … so it was kind of a rollercoaster at the start but once everyone got back we finally got our lines set and ready to go,” he said about the up and down season for the Cougars last year. “I think we only lost like two games (after Jan. 1) up until the state tournament.”

2025 just so happened to be Carter’s first time playing at the state tournament, considering that the Cougars were upset by Rochester Century/John Marshall in their section final the year prior when he was a sophomore. He says that he just tried to soak in the experience of being able to play at the Xcel Energy Center, now renamed ‘Grand Casino Arena’, and that it was really special. He had been able to watch his older brother Jackson compete at state twice in the past but it was extra special to be able to get to experience it for himself alongside his older brother, too.

Now with Jackson graduated and currently playing for the Wisconsin Windigo of the NAHL, Carter will be playing his first season of varsity hockey without his older brother there in 2025-26. It’ll definitely be an adjustment because the brothers had clicked so well together on the ice in the past but Carter is ready to take on that challenge and will be an immediate difference maker for Lakeville South this winter.

“I’d say I’m more of like an East/West player and he’s more of like a North/South player and I think that’s why we played so well together because he could feed me the puck or I could feed him the puck and chances are that we were probably going to score,” said Carter, who describes his game as being a 200-foot forward who has strengths in the way that he sees the ice and develops plays.

The Lakeville South captain currently has 72 points to his name, after scoring 11 in his sophomore campaign and a whopping 61 last season as a junior. It’s likely he’ll be hitting the 100-career point marker in just a few weeks if everything goes according to plan. The senior forward attributes his large jump up in points from his sophomore to junior season due to lots of on-ice training at APX every day that offseason, putting in plenty of time and energy into the weight room, shooting pucks in his garage and learning about how to take better care of his eating and sleeping habits too. He also said that he was a bit undersize in his first season up on varsity so being one year bigger and stronger in his second season helped a lot as well.

“Carter’s superpower from a young age has always been his extremely high level of conviction in how he approaches the game,” said APX Director of Player Developmen Wes Jirovec about Ernst, who has been training with APX since 2020. “It’s not enough to just say he’s a really hard worker and he’s wildly competitive, which he is those things, but he’s been so obsessed with wanting to win and so motivated on wanting to get better. He’s just been so driven towards wanting to attack his working points and he’s always so motivated about finding tactical advantages within the game.”

For now, Ernst and the Cougars are preparing for their first game of the season which is right around the corner. The first match for Lakeville South will come against Minnetonka on Nov. 20, followed by their home opener against Cretin-Derham Hall on Dec. 2.

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