School closing doors.....Last yr of football

[basketball777]

I hear NE Hamilton will not have a football team next year. How many more teams will not be playing football next year?

 

[Voicefromthestands]

Nishnabotna is having problems with the state. And there is a vote coming up on whether or not to consolidate to Farragut and Hamburg districts. Things depend upon how the state reacts and how the vote goes.

 

[NEHTrojan]

I hope no others are going through this! It SUCKS!! It is devastating to small communities. I have been the coach here for 25 years and I feel absolutely sick.

I wonder if CAL will have a team next year? They had 15 players to start the year with 8 of them seniors and no freshman. I do not currently know of any others but I am afraid we will see a lot of this in next couple of years. I have watched it several times the past few years with teams we played such as Ventura, WCLT, CWL, Sentral Fenton, North Kossuth, Armstrong, and TRV.

 

[lah8908]

I hate seeing all of theses small schools close. I am from Dows and we have seen the closing of our high school in 1998, then middle school in 2005, and now the elementary closed this year. It is amazing how the landscape of our area has changed in just the last 15 years. What really made me mad was that Dows consolidated before we would have had to because the consolidated C-G-D district could get $750,000 in incentive money from the state if it was done this year. For the state to be handing out money like that to encourage small schools to close is criminal in my book and takes away local control. Yes, we still got to vote but school officials tend to push an agenda when it comes to getting incentive money.

Small schools really have a good thing going. I feel schools like Dows, NEH, and CAL have really had a tradition of being great places to grow up. We're really losing something special. The state should not be in the business of trying to nudge schools to close. I am glad CAL is still going and I hope they continue for a long time to come. They are the last of the old guard.

 

[tm33_08]

Not to diminish the impact a school closing has on its community, but my initial reaction to the OP was how crazy it would be to not see NE Hamilton playing 8-man football. It'd be like seeing Adair-Casey or Lenox dropping football.

 

[basketball777]

The State should be encouraging the small school to stay, be wise, but stay around. If it's for the kids, I don't think larger school are the answer. And like someone said all that tradition just down the drain. The communities are usually behind the local school. 750,000 could pay for a lots of stuff in a small district. Who thinks busing kids 15-20 miles every day is cost effective. Sad. Just not right. There are school that do it. Diagonal is smallest (BEDS) and seems to be making it.

 

[TigerBlood65]

Laurens marathon I heard from the western part of the state will also have no team next season. Has anyone else heard this?

 

[Bud Boyz]

L-M will have football in '15. Will join with Pocahontas area in the 2016 season

 

[IowaHawkeyeFBnBB4Life]

I actually felt that my overall high school experience especially academic wise improved drastically when I went from a larger school to a small school. It really helped me for the academic side of college as well. I agree it sucks seeing this happen to small Iowa schools.

 

[StormHawk42]

Originally posted by tm33_08:
Not to diminish the impact a school closing has on its community, but my initial reaction to the OP was how crazy it would be to not see NE Hamilton playing 8-man football. It'd be like seeing Adair-Casey or Lenox dropping football.

That might not be so crazy in a few years. A-C already shares a bunch of faculty, including the superintendent, with Guthrie. A-C is getting pretty small.


In any case, of course it's sad what's happening to small schools, but it's just the nature of America right now. The people who do come back are usually from there and never left. Very few college graduates (except teachers) are heading to the small towns because they can't afford it with the student debt. If you have two college graduates get married, the chances of finding professional work for two people, with two student debt loads, in towns of

 

[basketball777]

Lenox grew slightly 99 to 106 (BEDS), but A-C dropped to 64 (BEDS). A-C is playing with around 18 players. It's tough to field a team with less than 20. Especially with some of the teams you play have twice that. So will how soon will Adair and Guthrie be playing sports together???? Should there be two divisions of 8-man?

 

[tm33_08]

I think we'll eventually see two 8-man classes. It won't be really soon (probably at least 5 years away), but as more and more teams drop down from Class A, the more likely it becomes that we'll see a new division. Or perhaps we could just get rid of Class A and reorganize all the classes, creating two 8-man divisions and then 1A-4A.

 

[high90school]

I dont think we will ever see two classes of 8 man. We will see 9 man or 6 man before we see two classes. No reason for their to be a larger class of 8 man and a smaller one as most of the smaller schools in the class are either a.) joining with other schools and moving up into class A or higher or b.) just aren't having a football program at all. No sense to make a smaller class where you have no idea who will be around long enough in it to have consistancy. Having a 9 player class between A and 8 man or a smaller 6 player class makes more sense than going two classes.

 

[Rose bowl or bust]

Originally posted by high90school:

I dont think we will ever see two classes of 8 man. We will see 9 man or 6 man before we see two classes. No reason for their to be a larger class of 8 man and a smaller one as most of the smaller schools in the class are either a.) joining with other schools and moving up into class A or higher or b.) just aren't having a football program at all. No sense to make a smaller class where you have no idea who will be around long enough in it to have consistancy. Having a 9 player class between A and 8 man or a smaller 6 player class makes more sense than going two classes.

The problem with the 6 and 9 man classes is that it would dilute the 8 man field. No way you can have a class with only 30-35 teams in it…way too much travel involved to play 9 games. That would be like going back to the early days of 8-man, and I don't think most schools would be for that.

I see the 8 man field being pretty consistent at 60-70 teams. As you stated, some schools will join and bump up to A or 1A status (NSK and A-R; Spalding kids going to Gehlen, etc.), but they are usually replaced by a new school coming down (mostly in Eastern Iowa now it seems, Turkey Valley, etc.)

 

[high90school]

I agree. Its just hard to picture their being two classes of 8 man. Unless the state decides to redo all the classes drastically then it will most likely never change. If it did I could see 9 man taking shape before 6 man though if they had to make another smaller class of football for the state but until the desire to do so comes around, expect to see one big class of 8 man.

 

[paxregis]

8-man will stay around 60 teams and only need one class. For every team that's falling below 75 BEDS and looking for a sharing partner, there will be another rural school dropping below 115 and moving to 8-man. The association will shrink the upper classes before they eliminate Class A.
Posted from Rivals Mobile

 

[Rose bowl or bust]

Originally posted by high90school:

I agree. Its just hard to picture their being two classes of 8 man. Unless the state decides to redo all the classes drastically then it will most likely never change. If it did I could see 9 man taking shape before 6 man though if they had to make another smaller class of football for the state but until the desire to do so comes around, expect to see one big class of 8 man.

The problem with the 9 man proposal, and 6 man for that matter, is it eliminates any possible chance of crossover games with other classes. 8-man is solid now, and should be for awhile. Adding other classifications of 9 or 6 man wouldn't do any good. If there is ever a second class of 8 man, it would at least allow for a crossover game of 8-man A vs. 8-man AA. I would see the state saying something along the lines of >85 = 8A and 86-125=8AA or something, which would at least allow for crossover games between the smaller and larger 8 man schools.

 

[hawkeye_fan2006]

Originally posted by basketball777:
Lenox grew slightly 99 to 106 (BEDS), but A-C dropped to 64 (BEDS). A-C is playing with around 18 players. It's tough to field a team with less than 20. Especially with some of the teams you play have twice that. So will how soon will Adair and Guthrie be playing sports together???? Should there be two divisions of 8-man?

Quite possibly next year. It is coming faster than most people think or could even imagine. They were talking about joining this past year.

 

[high90school]

I still just dont see two classes of 8 man ever forming UNLESS the count of teams gets to be just astronomical compared to the other 5 classes (80-90+ schools in the class). The declining numbers of smaller schools forcing them to consolidate will keep the number about right where it is. Some schools will come down and some will go up. And even if it did get to that point where a huge amount of schools were in the class I still find it tough to have a "bigger" class and a "smaller" class based off BEDS. Most of the schools that are below your 85 number I would like to think have have thought about the "what ifs" of joining with neigboring schools as it gets tough to support a district financially with such low numbers in kids. There would be more turnover in the smaller class than any class in the state with the low beds numbers. The state would have to either A reconsider restructuring all of their class sizes or B have to create a smaller class or new class entirely of football 9 or 6 man above or below the 8 player level now.