John Scarffe, Gilpin County. Colorado’s 8-Man All-State Football Game will be coming to Gilpin County Schools after 25 years in Sterling. The All-State Game will be played in Gilpin County on Friday, May 29, 2020, with a 7 p.m. kick-off.

Players will check in at the Colorado School of Mines on May 26, where they will live and practice with their new team and coaches before the event, according to the website at www.eliteallstate.com. The Elite All-State Foundation, a not-for-profit public benefit company established in 2019, now sponsors the event when it took over the operations and management of Colorado’s 8-Man All-State Football Game. 

The Elite All-State Foundation provides educational scholarships to All-State Football Players and promotes the safety and benefits of tackle football. Priorities include building a safe and entertaining football game, granting educational scholarships to graduating students, advocating for the safety and benefits of tackle football, offering grants for advanced concussion prevention helmets and promoting the Gaming District of Black Hawk and Central City.

Colorado’s 8-Man All-State Game will take place in Gilpin County under the lights in Black Hawk, with the Town of Black Hawk hosting fans and players from around the great state of Colorado, according to the website. The game’s alignment consists of a team composed by players in three leagues from south Colorado, and players from three leagues in north Colorado, who will play each other in a standard 8-man football game.

Executive Director Coach Craig Ball said the quarters will be a standard 12 minutes, and they do have a few different rules in the sense of a coach not sending all players on a blitz and some regarding kickoffs. Senior football players are being selected to participate in the game by the end of February 2020. 

Ball said this year the state had 39 schools with a population of less than 135 students, which qualify for 8-man football. If a school has more than that population, they go to Division 1A, which is 11 man. Gilpin has about 115 students.

On the website, the Foundation lists players from the South team including schools from Springfield, McClave and Holly to Pikes Peak covering Southern, Mountain and Arkansas Valley regions. Players on the north from the Northwest, Central and Plains regions included schools ranging from Gilpin, Hayden, Denver Christian and South Park. 

Coach Ball said this is really a nonprofit and any profit goes to the schools and the boys. It also will promote this community by just making people coming to town aware of what the area has to offer such as Base Camp, Roy’s Last Shot and the casinos. 

Head Football and Track Coach Ball also teaches business and technology for Gilpin County secondary schools and has been at the school for ten years. He moved to the area in 1989 and worked on the campaign to legalize gambling in Colorado. 

When gambling passed in 1991, he and partner Steve Boulter started two small casinos and stayed in business until 2008 for 18 years. Ball played football in high school in southeast Texas and at Lamar University, but he didn’t do anything with that experience. 

As his children grew, he started coaching his son. The value of his property in town had increased, so he thought it was a good time to switch and be with his kids, teaching and coaching. His daughter is in 11th grade, so he still has a couple of years coaching track with her.

Gilpin County Schools have a new 8-man football field, so when Coach Ball found out that the 8-man All-State game was available, he thought the new Gilpin Field would be a great location for the game. Brad Heinz from Haxtun put on the game for many years in Sterling. Ball said that Heinz sent out an email to coaches and asked if anyone would take over the game. 

“I waited a week and went into Gilpin County School Superintendent Dr. David MacKenzie and Athletic Director Jeff Schuessler and asked what they thought of bringing the All-State game to the new field,” Ball said.

They were interested, so Ball called Heinz and said he would like to take a run at this. Although a couple of other schools were interested, Heinz agreed, and Coach Ball mirrored Heinz last year and then took it over after the game last year.  

“I’m bringing it here to Black Hawk,” Ball said. The players pay a deposit to get in the game, so they will have a buy in and won’t decide to go somewhere else with the family or other personal problems come up. 

Over the years, Ball would like to grow the educational scholarship endowment so it won’t cost the players any money, and our communities will help pay for this game. The event costs $39,000 to run, so he relies on more than 29 businesses and organizations including town governments for their sponsorships and support.  

Ball said he can put together the volunteers to make this a great game, including parking tickets, parking and a trainer. “That’s what they’ve done for many years, and will work this year, but we would like to pay it through the foundation in the future and pay for jerseys. Right now, we’re just begging for money on all fronts.”

Ball said he is trying to make it a nice event with live feeds, a nice film and video.

Recruiters will attend from different colleges. It’s too late for students in the All-State game to get a scholarship, but they could be invited to walk on.

Ball said the goal is the relationship they can build with recruiters over time. A coach may have an 11th-grader they want a recruiter to look at. 

“Bringing them together,” Ball said. “That will be a nice feature to highlight these kids a little more. Division II and III schools wouldn’t go watch an 8-man game, but they would come and see a player. That’s what I want to build.”

“I’m just an old casino guy,” Ball said. “I’d like to give the state a nice 8-man football game.”

For more information, go to: www.eliteallstate.com.

(Originally published in the March 5, 2020, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)