Death of a Dynasty

Sad news came to me today. My high school has just cut the funding for its football team; this includes the varsity, junior varsity, and the junior high school teams. This was a long and storied program. In my time on the team alone the team experience much success including: two undefeated junior high seasons, one undefeated jv season, a one loss jv season, a state championship at the varsity level. All of that, and I only was around for the tail end of the success. Before I had arrived my school had won 4 divisions championships in ten years. Two of which were also state championships.

What finally undid all of the success that my school had enjoyed was a new principle. When he came in he felt that two much of the schools resources were being focused on the football team. So he cut the funding in half the first couple of years. Because of this, most of the coaching staff that had been there for years had to be let go. The team was also forced to do maintenance on their own field. That alone was enough to deter most of this kids away from the team. That left only the hard core football lovers to make up the entire roster. When you have a school of only 500 trying to compete with schools that had more than 3000, you need every able body. Those last couple of years the team struggled on the field because most of the team had to go both ways. Which meant that the team was competitive in every game until the fourth quarter when the players all got too exhausted. The did not win a game their last two years in existence.

One side effect from the football teams down fall was declining enrollment rates at the school. My school is a private institution. So none of their enrollment was guaranteed. The only reason that most people had even heard about my school was from all the publicity the local news papers writing about the football team. There are many private schools in the area that are similar in every way, except none of them had a successful sports teams. The attention that the news papers brought not only brought in athletes, but many other students as well. The name recognition of the school made it attractive to all.

I hope that one day I will be able to resurrect the team. Even if I have to fund and coach the team myself.