Barbara Lawlor

Nederland

Nederland High School junior Damon Vigil has been playing football since he was in middle school. His dream was to become the quarterback for the NHS Panthers. This past season as a junior, he accomplished that dream, but he probably won’t have a chance to throw as a senior.

NHS Athletic Director Rick Elertson, in his first year at the school, says he has always worked in schools with a football team and can’t imagine what not having football would be like.

“My husband is a football coach,” said NHS principal Carrie Yantzer, who also hates to see America’s most popular sport walk off the Panther field. “I live and breathe football.”

However, the numbers don’t support the sport, according to an email survey sent out last month. AD Elertson says 50 people replied in support of replacing the football program with soccer. Only one opted for football.

Last Wednesday night, the school held a community forum, a chance to present information to the public on the Athletics & Activities Committee’s findings, as well as express opinions and thoughts about the possibility of switching sports programs.

Next fall’s sports schedules must be submitted at the end of this week, so there wasn’t much of a chance for options. About a dozen parents showed up as well as three high school students, one of them a newly enrolled freshman who has played football all his life, was a quarterback during his middle school years and expressed his disappointment with the possibility of having the sport taken away from him.

“We could round up enough players for next season in the next week,” he suggested hopefully. But an effort by Elertson and current football players failed to bring in the athletes that would be needed for a 2018 gridiron season. Someone suggested six-man football, but according to Colorado High School Athletic Association rules, we have too many students for that. Principal Yantzer says the travel time would be prohibitive.

It’s all about the numbers.

Last year 11 senior football players graduated. Of the current 117, about 50 of them are boys.

NHS enrollment is down from 141 students last year to 117 this year. Principal Yantzer says it is hard to spread that number around between sports and robotics and theater and band and choir and come up with enough to support two fall sports teams.

This past season, a valiant group of boys, nine of them at the most, played their hearts out for Nederland, but to have nine suited up, was often optimistic. Injuries, ineligible students, not enough practices and illness often left the team struggling, playing every minute of the game, both defense and offense. Two games were forfeited because Ned didn’t field enough players.

Elertson explains that there is a ripple effect when a team cancels a game: it messes up the other team’s schedules and takes away those two games needed for experience and momentum. The situation makes other league teams think twice about scheduling with a team that might forfeit.

One of the parents asked if Boulder High School or Fairview High School are turning away kids from joining their football team; maybe they could join Ned’s team like the skiers from down below do. Elertson answered that even the larger schools are having a hard time attracting football players, that the numbers are decreasing all across the nation, that it isn’t just up here.

Someone suggested that the boys who wanted to continue to play could join Gilpin High School’s football team, which has grown and seen success in the last couple of years. This wasn’t a new idea but one that has not been considered previously because the two schools are in two different districts.

Elertson says a poll given to students indicated that 71 percent of them would prefer soccer to football.

One of the reasons for this figure could be that soccer has a feeder program from the Nederland Elementary School. Kids join the Peak to Peak Soccer League when they are five years old and play through their elementary school years and some of them go on to indoor club soccer after that. There is no NES football program. There is a flag football program in the middle school.

Recently, NHS boys’ sports across the board have been sparsely attended. The basketball team does not have a junior varsity team, the alpine ski team, which boasts 50 team members, has only a handful of NHS students slamming the gates; the rest are from schools down below; the Nordic team has a handful of boys and the track team also suffers in numbers. Most of the time, the same 10 boys are playing all the sports.

Elertson asks, “How will we fill a soccer team if this is the case?” The kids have reported that more of them would join a soccer team, that more middle students would anticipate carrying over the skills they learned with Peak to Peak soccer.

“This is a kid-driven process,” says Elertson. “We need to listen to what they want to do. We do not want to be forfeiting games because of not enough athletes. I am a football person and I am so proud of our guys but with nine athletes playing eight positions there is so much chance for injuries. This is not about the extermination of the game; it is about the success of our sports program.”

Administrators and teachers are worried about declining enrollment and about dwindling school spirit. They argue that a sacrifice will have to be made, but even then, there are no guarantees that there will be support for soccer. All they can do is go by what the feedback has been.

Damon Vigil shook his head sadly, hearing his dream of being senior quarterback next year, slip away.

“I really want to see what’s best for the school. It is really hard to imagine no football, but I am going to be here anyway. So be it. If it will help the school to become well-rounded, okay.”

“It is going to stink for a bunch of people,” replied Elertson. “Either way, you will have to choose. I am sorry.”

When asked how many soccer kids might sign up, Elertson said, “We are not yet planning for a soccer season. As of tonight, we haven’t made that final decision yet.”

Up until five years ago, NHS had a fall boys’ soccer season with a hefty number of players. The school hopes that that could be the case again and it is dealing with this current reality.

If the decision to create a soccer team happens, that choice could change in two years. A two-year commitment has to be made, but perhaps by then, 20 young athletes will decide they want to be part of the football ambience that has been a tradition in most high schools around the country.

If they want it badly enough, it can happen. Meanwhile, says principal Yantzer, success attracts participation and the school will do all it can to support its athletes in their decisions.