Fifth Iowa High School Football Team Forfeits Rest of Season

BigD

BigD

Well-Known Member
I know that when I visited my small home town in Iowa about two years ago I noticed a lot of homes for sale and several businesses had closed down. I can't help but think that this is causing the shrinkage of population in these smaller high schools to the point where they can't maintain football programs anymore. It's really a sad thing to see this happening as some of this smaller schools had football programs that go back at least multiple decades. I saw that one of the schools mentioned is one where my father had played football and baseball. That was a tough thing to have to read about.


 


Yes, small towns are really suffering, and it just continues to get worse every year. They are sad when driving thru or visiting. Everything looks dilapidated, the downtowns are old and need of repair that often times is not worth the costs to try to make a business work. Most store fronts are closed up. Many homes/yards are in need of massive repair, roofs, etc.

Along with losing residents and students, I think another point is there is just this noninterest of young guys playing football anymore, especially at a small school. The natural progression is a team to drop down to 1A or A than eventually the last resort at 8-man. Now these 8-man teams get a few injuries, and they can't safely field a team anymore. I wonder if there will ever be a time where two schools consolidate to make a team for the kids that still really want to play. When I played at my school over 35 yrs ago, we played at 1A. They are now an A school. I think they still have the numbers but I'm waiting for the day they announce they are going to 8-man. Who knows, maybe they are putting many 8th graders on their roster.

This is why there is such a drastic change from 5A schools to the lower classes. Depth with seniors and juniors.
 


This saddens me... Been gradually a thing and not getting any better. My hometown was a 1 A school in football and in the last 25 yrs or so bounced around to 8 man and back but now they just did away with it all together a few yrs ago I was told. They have a pretty nice field and everything it's just a shitty deal that what kids are there that want to play have to go somewhere else. It just plain sucks
 


Hawkfnntn said:
This saddens me... Been gradually a thing and not getting any better. My hometown was a 1 A school in football and in the last 25 yrs or so bounced around to 8 man and back but now they just did away with it all together a few yrs ago I was told. They have a pretty nice field and everything it's just a shitty deal that what kids are there that want to play have to go somewhere else. It just plain sucks
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Say a kid wants to play at one of these schools. Do they have to enroll to another school that has a program or do some schools take on these kinds of players that don't have a HS team anymore? I presume they would have to enroll but maybe they changed the rules.
 


MelroseHawkins said:
Say a kid wants to play at one of these schools. Do they have to enroll to another school that has a program or do some schools take on these kinds of players that don't have a HS team anymore? I presume they would have to enroll but maybe they changed the rules.
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Not a clue nowadays. The ones where the season is killed after it starts I think they are just totally hosed. That's really shitty even for the 8 man level. The kids just wanna play ball man it's not about chasing D1 schollys for 99.99% of these guys. They only get so many Friday nights to play as a kid. Just sucks.

The ones where you know going into the next school yr maybe they have ways of doing that without having to totally enroll at another school. But I'm just not sure either. My only experience with that was back in the early 90s when my hometown was starting to go through this they totally dropped it for like 1 yr and the handful of guys that still wanted to play were allowed to go play for Galva Holstein and still go to school with River Valley fulltime. They were like 15-20 mins down the road so either they drove themselves or parents did to the practices and everything. Wish I could remember what yr that was but I was young I wasn't even in jr high yet then
 


Hawkfnntn said:
Not a clue nowadays. The ones where the season is killed after it starts I think they are just totally hosed. That's really shitty even for the 8 man level. The kids just wanna play ball man it's not about chasing D1 schollys for 99.99% of these guys. They only get so many Friday nights to play as a kid. Just sucks.

The ones where you know going into the next school yr maybe they have ways of doing that without having to totally enroll at another school. But I'm just not sure either. My only experience with that was back in the early 90s when my hometown was starting to go through this they totally dropped it for like 1 yr and the handful of guys that still wanted to play were allowed to go play for Galva Holstein and still go to school with River Valley fulltime. They were like 15-20 mins down the road so either they drove themselves or parents did to the practices and everything. Wish I could remember what yr that was but I was young I wasn't even in jr high yet then
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Yea, that's shitty. I recall when my boys were in their senior seasons worrying and praying they wouldn't get an injury to derail their senior season. Luckily, they did not but having the teams stop in-season is totally out of the players control and just sickening.
 


MelroseHawkins said:
Yea, that's shitty. I recall when my boys were in their senior seasons worrying and praying they wouldn't get an injury to derail their senior season. Luckily, they did not but having the teams stop in-season is totally out of the players control and just sickening.
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Yeah and it sounds like more then a handful of schools have since the start of the yr. Low participation numbers kids getting hurt bad teams getting blown out all the time. That's another thing at the HS level.

This is a whole other thing but there's like 25 5A schools or so. But the difference between the top 10 of em and the bottom 5 or so is an ocean. DSM North was terrible and I assume still are. They had no business playing against Dowling, Valley, SE Polk I could go on. They got 50 pointed most all of those matchups. Yet due to enrollment they were 5 A...

Kids on both sides get nothing out of those lopsided blowouts. I get it that sometimes you're just going to have that. But when it's most of your opponents yr after yr after yr.... It's an addressable issue I would think. But what do I know?
 


MelroseHawkins said:
Say a kid wants to play at one of these schools. Do they have to enroll to another school that has a program or do some schools take on these kinds of players that don't have a HS team anymore? I presume they would have to enroll but maybe they changed the rules.
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Nope. Kids can play sports in any neighboring district if their school doesn't offer that sport. Pretty common around here in NW Iowa.
 


Remsen St Mary's is probably going to have to cancel the rest of this season too.

They are multiple-time state champs in 8-man including last year, they graduated a ton of seniors though and lost their first two games of this season, had some injuries and were down to 13 available players. They forfeited their 3rd game at halftime after an injury, and didn't play at all last week to rest and try to get some guys back. I heard they're going to give it a go this week but I doubt it's going to turn out well regardless. I have a hard time feeling terrible for parochial schools due to their methods in most sports, but that's a different subject for a different time. St Mary's also has a whole lot of advantages that public schools don't have so it's meh to me. Now a public school in the same situation, I agree it's a terrible deal.
 


Hawkfnntn said:
Yeah and it sounds like more then a handful of schools have since the start of the yr. Low participation numbers kids getting hurt bad teams getting blown out all the time. That's another thing at the HS level.

This is a whole other thing but there's like 25 5A schools or so. But the difference between the top 10 of em and the bottom 5 or so is an ocean. DSM North was terrible and I assume still are. They had no business playing against Dowling, Valley, SE Polk I could go on. They got 50 pointed most all of those matchups. Yet due to enrollment they were 5 A...

Kids on both sides get nothing out of those lopsided blowouts. I get it that sometimes you're just going to have that. But when it's most of your opponents yr after yr after yr.... It's an addressable issue I would think. But what do I know?
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My boys played in the 5A C-ship last year! Give you an idea of the area I'm from.
 




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