Vanlue Football out of BVC per Courier

Look South Vanlue- Mid State League Cardinal (Berne Union, Fisher Catholic, Millersport, Fairfield Christian, Grove City Christian and Miller) are always looking to fill holes in their schedule. Also, Grandview Hts and Worthington Christian play independent in football starting in 2023 as members of Central Buckeye League. There are opportunities for Vanlue but travel will be involved- flip side is those schools would also travel to Vanlue if need be. Columbus City League North Division has 7 teams so those schools are usually looking to fill their schedules also.

Grandview Hts is traveling to Arcadia in week 5 in 2023 for football.
 
Sports aside, how does a school with 24 boys in the upper three grades even stay open? Average it out and there's likely less than 70 kids in the entire high school. How many classes can you offer if there's only 2-3 students in a class?
I'd guess there probably aren't 2-3 kids in a class. In high school, they probably still treat it like elementary and middle school. You have freshman, sophomore, junior, and senior English class, and everyone is in the same class, etc...probably get a couple of periods of electives at the same time to split them up, but there's still probably 20 kids in the band, 20 kids in FFA, etc...
 
here are the distances from Vanlue to the other members of the “Northern 8” league:

St Mary CC (Sandusky)- 1 hr 19 mins
Danbury- 1 hr 19 mins
Holgate- 58 minutes
Stryker- 1 hr 21 mins
Toledo Christian- 58 mins
Sebring Mckinley- 2 hr 31 mins

if i’m Vanlue, joining this league seems like a no brainer. in 11 man, every week is a battle to field a team, and even then, they aren’t competitive. they may never win another varsity football game again for all we know. not to mention they will be traveling all over the state as an independent. in the Northern 8, i’m guessing they’d be competitive, and the travel isn’t bad compared to potentially playing an independent schedule.
 
This whole situation feels like the family dog that has really outlived its expiration date by 8 years. Blind, Def, can't walk very far without laying back down, need to mush its food and hand feed it every meal, and more "accidents" seem to pop up every day. Everyone knows it's time to put the poor thing down, but the owner just can't part.

Put the poor thing out of its misery and remember the good times.
Or, you know. 8 man football. But I couldn't find a good way to weave that into the depressing analogy.
When were the good times?
 
But Temple Christian doesn't have football. That why Crestline is the 9th. Then, the conference is adding North Baltimore and Cory-Rawson for next year, so that's 10 football schools. NWCC is going to 9 conference games in 2023, so right now, there's no room at the inn for Vanlue unless the conference boots Crestline as a football-only member. I think you'd be hard-pressed to vote out a member that you feel confident is going to have a team every year for a team that doesn't know from week to week whether they can put 11 guys on the field.
Sorry, I wasn't thinking about NB & CR going there.
 
So I looked it up, Vanlue is 54-441-4 in the playoff area, and is 0-1 in the 2020 playoffs* on top of that. A 0.112 winning percentage; 7th worst of the 819 teams to take the field in that time, and nearly 100 basis points behind the next lowest team to field a team in all 51 seasons (Sebring McKinley, who smartly is going to 8-man). The only teams to have done worse folded in the mid-1970s or couldn't keep a team on the field longer than 5 seasons.

It's obvious Vanlue is no longer capable of fielding an 11-man program; and probably should've folded their program (or consolidated their school) at least 30 years ago. If the state's insurance broker has to step in and intervene to make it happen (as much as I generally oppose that sort of thing), I believe that would be what's best for the kids, especially given all the parental bullying in recent years. They could pull off 8-man with the kids they have, for now, and as mentioned previously, the travel distances aren't too prohibitive. Add in the fact that, in the next years, I think we'll see about 50 or so Ohio schools adopt 8-man out of necessity, it makes it an even better option. I know Vanlue has a lot of pride, but at this point, that's really become detrimental.
 
I think that list of schools that should join the northern 8 will slowly get longer. Arcadia is getting very close to joining this conversation. St. Joes numbers have been going down. New London will be going on 3 years without 11 man football next season. The interest level just isn’t there anymore and declining enrollments and population certainly aren’t helping either.
 
I think that list of schools that should join the northern 8 will slowly get longer. Arcadia is getting very close to joining this conversation. St. Joes numbers have been going down. New London will be going on 3 years without 11 man football next season. The interest level just isn’t there anymore and declining enrollments and population certainly aren’t helping either.
I wonder if some of the leagues primarily made up of DVI and DVII schools have talked about going to an 8-man conference as a whole, just to stay together but also to keep going with football.
 
Hilltop is terrible, Edon won't stay relevant once Olwin leaves, and North Central despite a decent start doesn't have the numbers to keep 11 man long.

I could see the BBC eventually sponsoring an 8 man conference of their own with those 3, Stryker, and Holgate.
 
Perhaps they should switch D-VII to 8 man.
Give schools the option to go up to D-VI if they want to play 11 man with the caveat that any team failing to have at least 15 players at any point in the season is permanently relegated to 8 man D-VII.
 
I wonder if some of the leagues primarily made up of DVI and DVII schools have talked about going to an 8-man conference as a whole, just to stay together but also to keep going with football.
No. Going to 8 man is a last resort and teams that go to 8 man will want to go back to 11 man as soon as they have the numbers to do so.
 
Toledo Christian went 3-7, 1-9, and 0-10 in their last three years before switching to 8-man. Since doing so, they’ve gone 5-3, 6-3, 8-1, and 9-2.

I understand there are a lot more factors that could make this different, but at the very least you would have a chance to win a game and heck, maybe even be competitive! AD has got to be a straight up masochist to reject even the consideration of it.
 
No. Going to 8 man is a last resort and teams that go to 8 man will want to go back to 11 man as soon as they have the numbers to do so.
Definitely not always true. I understand Holgate is still having numbers issues to the point they couldn't even play 8 man in 2021, but after going undefeated in 2019, everyone in town pretty much said in no uncertain terms they'd rather be competitive in 8 man than go back to 2-3 win seasons like before. It was the biggest reason they left the GMC completely.

For every Stritch or New London that uses it as a way to build the numbers and program back up, you're going to have a Holgate, Toledo Christian, or Stryker that either realizes it's their best bet to keep football, or that they're better served letting their kids actually compete rather than get their brains beat in.

Now I don't expect many leagues to go as a group. For example, leagues like the NWC or GMC that are predominantly D6 or D7 will never do that....they have too many solid programs with good numbers who compete. But if you're a league like the NWCC or the TAAC, as more teams consider it....why not? It may be the path to survival.
 
Definitely not always true. I understand Holgate is still having numbers issues to the point they couldn't even play 8 man in 2021, but after going undefeated in 2019, everyone in town pretty much said in no uncertain terms they'd rather be competitive in 8 man than go back to 2-3 win seasons like before. It was the biggest reason they left the GMC completely.

For every Stritch or New London that uses it as a way to build the numbers and program back up, you're going to have a Holgate, Toledo Christian, or Stryker that either realizes it's their best bet to keep football, or that they're better served letting their kids actually compete rather than get their brains beat in.

Now I don't expect many leagues to go as a group. For example, leagues like the NWC or GMC that are predominantly D6 or D7 will never do that....they have too many solid programs with good numbers who compete. But if you're a league like the NWCC or the TAAC, as more teams consider it....why not? It may be the path to survival.
I do think if they get their roster up to 25 kids and winning most or all of their games I bet there would be a large portion of community wanting to move to 11 man. Not many happy to be big fish in tiny pond if they think they can be big fish in small pond. Time will tell but the last several years very few if any teams have followed the Northern 8 teams down that road to 8 man football.

BTW I agree many schools would benefit moving to 8 man.
 
Perhaps they should switch D-VII to 8 man.
Give schools the option to go up to D-VI if they want to play 11 man with the caveat that any team failing to have at least 15 players at any point in the season is permanently relegated to 8 man D-VII.
If anything, 8-man football with be Division 8.
 
All it would take is OHSAA sponsoring 8-man and the flood gates open.
If by "sponsor" you mean to create an 8-man division for post-season tournament, I mostly agree.

DI has 72 teams and they all qualify for the playoffs. I could be wrong, but I doubt that even half that many schools would elect to play 8-man football. OHSAA should poll their membership and see how much interest there is. Maybe they already have. In any case, if creating an 8-man division helps save football in Ohio I am all for it.

Otherwise, the OHSAA already has rules for 8-man football.

1.6) Eight-Player Football High school and 7th-8th grade teams may participate in a modified version of 11-player football by utilizing eight players.

1.61) High schools with enrollments of 160 males or less (obtained from October 2018 enrollments plus Competitive Balance factors) may choose to participate in eight-player football.

1.62) Schools that choose to play the eight-player format shall not have both an 11-player team and an eightplayer team.

1.63) Schools (Varsity Teams) that choose to play the eight-player format are not eligible to qualify for and participate in the OHSAA 11-player football tournament.

1.64) Schools (Varsity teams) that choose to play the 11-player format may participate in an “exhibition” 8-player format contest with permission from the OHSAA Executive Director’s office. The contests utilizing the 8-player format shall count as open dates for those schools desiring to qualify for the OHSAA’s 11-player tournament.

1.65) Middle schools and sub-varsity teams have the flexibility for their one team to participate in 11-player or 8-player formats.

1.66) Schools playing eight-player football must follow all other OHSAA bylaws, general sports regulations and football regulations unless noted elsewhere.
 
If the OHSAA started an 8 man division, I agree there would be more teams to crossover because they are hanging on by a thread. I feel they would experience what Holgate did and never go back to 11 man. I am sure it would be their intent but just because as an example Vanlue would get their numbers up to 15-16 and go back to 11 man they still would lose every game by 50+. Teams realize they will be competitive and not return `just to return and get beat badly.
 
Make the current D7 8 man only. Ask every team currently in D7 if they would like to stay in and play 8 man, or move up to D6 and play 11 man. May be a few surprises once the dust settles, especially teams that are barely holding on, like Vanlue.
This is what Wyoming did with 9-man. Just turned 1A into 9 man and gave schools the option to play up to 2A if they wanted to keep playing 11 man. Most played 9 man.
 
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