As high school football teams prepare for another season to begin, two teams will not be suiting up at the varsity level. The North Central and Langford Area football programs will play a JV football schedule this fall.

Both teams have dealt with declining participation numbers in recent years, but the declining numbers have reached a new low, making it difficult to field a team.

Langford Area football coach Michael Alberts said low numbers led to the decision to cancel the varsity season.

“We had 11 kids say they were going to play, and then another one went down with an injury in baseball, so we have 10 high schoolers,” Alberts said. “That was pretty much the only factor of why we’re going JV.”

Alberts said the players were initially disappointed when they found out they could not play at the varsity level, but soon became grateful knowing they still have a chance to play at the junior varsity level.

“Of course, they want to play a varsity schedule, play Friday nights, work for playoffs, work for postseason awards, conference awards and all that,” Alberts said. “I think now they’re just excited to go play again.”

Despite the low number of participants over the course of the past three years, Alberts says the community of Langford still has strong support for the team.

“There’s a lot of pride in Langford. There’s a lot of pride in being a Langford Lion, and we want to try to do things on our own as much as we can,” Alberts said. “They’re happy that the boys are trying to make this work. I think they’re proud of them, and they’re happy that we’re playing in Langford, too.”

Alberts noted that those close to the football program could see participation numbers dwindling in recent years, making the reality of the situation all the closer to home.

“People in the school kind of knew it was going to be coming,” Alberts said. “Three or four years ago we had a big senior class of 12 kids with a bunch of the younger kids. All of a sudden, the next year came and we lost those 12 seniors with only one or two freshmen coming up. I think last year we finished with 11 healthy guys. We started with 17, 18, but finished with 11, and now this year with 10. It’s just slowly going lower right now.”

For North Central, the situation is similar, yet different, to that of Langford’s. The co-op consists of three schools, which include Eureka, Bowdle, and Edmunds Central, and while the participation numbers are not as low as Langford’s, the number of upperclassmen participating had Edmunds Central administrator Kevin Kunz concerned. Kunz began noticing the issue during summer workouts.

“We had a little bit of a late start to the summer as far as doing some organized activities and as we got into that in mid to late June, the majority of the kids that were showing up for some of those open fields were freshman and sophomores,” Kunz said.

Kunz, who serves as the superintendent, principal, and athletic director at Edmunds Central in addition to being the football coach, sat down with the coaching staff to figure out what the best option would be for the team, given the limited amount of upperclassmen.

“At that point, the first thing we did was try to get ahold of some of these upperclassmen kids that had played at one point in the past, and by the time it was all said and done we thought our numbers were going to be OK,” Kunz said.

However, out of the 20 kids that said they would play football, 19 were freshman and sophomores. The number of young players ultimately led Kunz and the coaching staff to cancel the varsity season, despite a positive number of players on the team.

“19 to 20 kids is not a terrible number by any stretch of the imagination for nine-man football, but when they’re all freshman and sophomores, we just decided that for the sake of the program and trying to keep those underclassmen out for football, our best bet would be to try to do something different on that end,” Kunz said.

After discussing the possibility of canceling the varsity season with kids and parents, Kunz said the decision was made to move forward with playing a junior varsity schedule for the 2023 season.

“The consensus across the board from the kids and the parents was they thought in the sake of safety and trying to build a program, that playing a JV schedule was the correct route to go for us,” Kunz said.

Kunz said the communities have welcomed the idea of playing a junior varsity schedule this season knowing that the program is looking at moving back to a varsity program in the near future.

“We’re very fortunate right now to have the number of younger kids interested in football that we do, so we’re hoping that in a year we’ll be back to a varsity schedule and we’ll be able to hang on to the 20 kids that we have now, and then add to it and really keep things moving forward,” Kunz said.

Kunz said he was surprised at what the actual participation number was compared to what it had looked like during past participation counts.

“I know we did crunch some numbers a little bit and took a look at if we would’ve gotten everybody that had played football in the past back out for football, we probably could have had as many as 30 to 32 kids out for football, but for a variety of reasons some of those kids decided it wasn’t in their best interest to do that,” Kunz said.

Both coaches are thankful that they have not seen any kids transfer out of any of the school districts for football reasons, and both are optimistic that the participation numbers will improve because of the totals at the junior high and grade school levels.

“Numbers wise I think our junior high is going be around 12ish, and elementary we just kind of got a flag program, so there’s a couple of grades together,” Alberts said. “Our numbers are going to get better; it’s just going to be a little while before we get there.”

“I think we have a relatively good youth football program at the younger ages that has kind of drawn some kids in,” Kunz said. “Middle school I think we’re sitting right around somewhere from 15 to 18 kids out on that end.”

Both coaches say the long-term future shows positive numbers and a return to varsity football. In the meantime, this season will take on a different look.

“For the short term, we’re going make it work as best we can,” Alberts said. “We’re going JV schedule. Our AD got five games for us this year and we’re hoping to play all of them. Like I told our boys, we’re going to focus like it’s a varsity schedule, not change anything, and try to make it work the best we can.”