Glencoe High School will not have a junior varsity football team for the upcoming 2015 season.
Outgoing athletic director Scott Ellis officially informed Metro League athletic directors by email Friday that Glencoe will only field a varsity team and a freshman team made up of sophomores and freshmen.
The conference’s eight athletic directors had unanimously approved the request that both sophomores and freshmen merge into a freshman team during a meeting in Sunriver.
The reason for the change is Glencoe’s low participation numbers. Ellis said the high school football program had 90 students on its three teams last season.
That number was down to 55 during spring workouts, with approximately 15 freshmen, 15 sophomores and 25 upperclassmen.
“If we split into freshman (and) JV with numbers around 15 or so, there’s a chance that during the season we’ll have to cancel the season,” Ellis said.
Ellis said this was the first time in the history of Glencoe High School, which opened in 1980, that the Crimson Tide would not field a junior varsity team.
Ellis, who will retire and cede the athletic director position to John Gaffney over the summer, said the athletic department knew as early as last year that participation numbers could be a problem. The incoming eighth grade class had less than 20 players in the Glencoe Youth Program and fielded only one team instead of two.
“For whatever reason, kids aren’t coming out,” Ellis said.
Health concerns and competitive imbalance were among the causes attributed to low participation numbers.
Recent discoveries about the long-term effects of concussions have made headlines across the country and been attributed to declining involvement in some youth football programs across the country.
“I have heard that everybody’s youth numbers are down a little bit,” Southridge athletic director Bryan Sorenson said of schools in the Portland metropolitan area.
The OSAA approved restrictions for contact in practice in May for the coming season, in part to limit the risk of repetitive blows to the head.
The other factor Ellis cited was how much Glencoe struggled last season in its return to the Metro League.
Glencoe’s varsity football team went 0-9 in 2014, putting the Crimson Tide among the four teams in Class 6A to go winless. Glencoe won one football game across its three high school participation levels (varsity, junior varsity and freshmen) last season, when the freshman team defeated Hillsboro 26-8 on Sept. 12.
That is an overall record of 1-26.
“Our games, freshman and JV, were lopsided,” Ellis said. “You’re going to lose some kids when games are over at halftime.”
The decision leaves each junior varsity football team in the Metro League with an open date in its schedule when it would have played Glencoe.
Ellis noted in the email to conference athletic directors that junior varsity football teams in Class 5A’s Northwest Oregon Conference each have a bye week and that teams in the league are an option as opponents.
La Salle Prep of Milwaukie will also not field a junior varsity team next season, leaving the scheduling opening in the Northwest Oregon Conference.
Aloha athletic director Tom Bendt said the school is close to scheduling a junior varsity game with Hillsboro on Sept. 17. That is when the Warriors were once set to open their conference slate against Glencoe and Hillsboro would have played La Salle.
“There was no way (Glencoe) could field two teams,” Bendt said. “I think that was the best course of action to take going forward.”
The Metro League is part of Class 6A, which includes high schools with enrollments above 1,258 students.
Glencoe (1,405 students) has the lowest enrollment of public schools in the Metro League, according to the OSAA. Jesuit, the conference’s lone private school, has 1,276 students.
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