8-player option gaining steam; keeping co-op is key question

RIB LAKE-PRENTICE FOOTBALL

The future of the Rib Lake-Prentice football co-op remained undecided, but momentum toward a future in eight-man seemed to build during a meeting Tuesday in Prentice between school board members, athletic directors, administrators and football parents from each school district.

The decisions will ultimately be made soon by the school boards of each district. No action was intended to be taken Tuesday. The two-hour session was used as an opportunity for representatives from both districts to present numbers, share ideas and raise questions.

While no changes will happen until the 2024 season under the WIAA’s current twoyear football conference realignment cycle, the schools are looking to beat WIAA deadlines if changes are going to be made. To renew the co-op past 2023, paperwork needs to be filed with the WIAA by an Oct. 1, 2022 deadline. The deadline to apply to switch to eight-man football after 2023 is Oct. 15, 2022.

Rib Lake’s school board meets tonight, Thursday, and again on Sept. 8. Prentice’s board also meets before the deadline. Both boards would have to support the co-op for it to continue.

Program costs, current and future enrollment and participation numbers, potential playing time issues, potential schedules and odds of success were all issues brought up on Tuesday. A key issue that might wind up being a decisive factor is the opportunity to reach the WIAA’s post-season tournament. Since the co-op started in 1988, the Hawks have made the WIAA playoffs just nine times and won games only once. That was in 2004 when Rib Lake-Prentice won three games to reach the Division 5 semifinals.

In eight-man football, the WIAA does not allow teams with enrollments of 200 and above into the post-season tournament. If the co-op remained and switched to eightman, it would surpass the 200 enrollment figure for the foreseeable future. Football is the only WIAA sport where teams have to qualify for the post-season.

The co-head coach from the Rib Lake side of the co-op, Jonah Campbell, said he talked to potentially-affected Rib Lake players last week to get their opinions on the program’s direction. “I asked them if this is your team, would you want to co-op and play and not have the opportunity for playoffs but knowing who you’re playing with from Prentice because obviously we’re going to be a much better team with the extra players,” Campbell said. “The unanimous decision was they would rather make the playoffs.”

The new co-head coach from the Prentice side, Michael Semon, said he had not yet had a chance to poll his players. That was something Prentice school board member Danielle Gruber said must be done before moving forward with any decision.

“Do we even know that by going eightman we’re not going to get 10 kids that say, ‘I don’t want to play eight-man, I don’t want anything to do with it and walk away from the program,’” Gruber said. “I think polling the players is something that’s really important because not every player wants to play 11-man, not every player wants to play eight-man. That’s something that needs to be discussed.”

Prentice principal and athletic director Kati Isaacson recalled being at a WIAA area meeting in Rice Lake a few years ago where the potential of a two-division playoff format for eight-man football was discussed, but Campbell and Rib Lake’s new administrator Travis Grubbs and new athletic director Tom Noennig, a recently-retired and successful football coach at Mayville and Hartford high schools, said the WIAA has backed away from that idea.

“The coaches association is definitely afraid of losing that seventh division for (11-man) state championships,” Noennig said.

From the standpoint of participation numbers, the Hawks have 30 players out at the high school level this year, 17 from Prentice and 13 from Rib Lake. Campbell explained that 30 players is a good number for an 11-man team because playing time can be spread out well between the varsity and JV teams. But, if there were 30 players in an eight-man program, things could get more complicated as 10-12 players would likely get most of the varsity playing time, which would mean trying to find meaningful minutes for about 18 players at the JV level with only eight being on the field at one time. On the flip side, there are several eightman programs that don’t have JV teams because they don’t have the numbers, which necessitated their move to the eight-player game in the first place.

Looking toward the future, Rib Lake Elementary School principal Jon Dallmann said there are 20 boys in the fifth grade class, 13 in fourth grade, 21 in third grade and 20 in second grade. So even if 25% of those boys play football, numbers should be viable. Isaacson said Prentice’s projected numbers are good until the current fourth grade class. As of now that class has just four boys. The two grades below that has 10 and seven. Recent averages show about 25% of boys from Prentice playing football. If that were the case six to eight years from now, Prentice’s numbers could be hurting.

“That seems to be not enough,” Isaacson said. “I’m trying to be impartial but I just want to factually say that bothers me. I would not want to end up in that situation.”

Semon said the effect of a split also would have to be looked at from the middle school perspective. With somewhere around 17-18 kids now, dividing that in two would leave both schools barely able to field even an eight-man team. But there was a general agreement the middle school program could remain a coop even if the high school program did not and that could be flexible from year to year. Costs for items such as equipment, uniform and travel to games and to practices between the two schools also were discussed. Isaacson said her estimates show it costs about $900 for a school to host a football game once officials and workers are paid. This year, each team is hosting two varsity games. Rib Lake-Prentice’s current placement in the Lakeland Conference has done nothing to help transportation costs as the Hawks have been traveling to places like Webster, Grantsburg and Unity (Balsam Lake) since 2020 and will continue to do so through at least 2023. Staying with 11-man likely leaves the WIAA with no alternatives for a different conference placement for the Hawks with so many area teams switching to eight-player football the past two to three years.

On the other hand, there is no guarantee as to what eight-player conference(s) the co-op or the split teams would be placed in by the WIAA in 2024.

“I think one thing we’re all interested in is not traveling to Webster and Unity and Grantsburg,” Isaacson said. “I was running the numbers on that and it’s ungodly expensive to get to all those places.”

Nearby eight-man conferences for 2022-23 include the Central Wisconsin East that includes Gilman, Athens, Thorp, Owen-Withee, Greenwood and Alma Center Lincoln and the Lakeland East that includes Phillips, the Chequamegon Co-op, Mellen, Northwood-Solon Springs, Washburn and Winter-Birchwood.

Both schools have held off on replacing outdated uniforms the varsity has been wearing for games while they have wrangled with the decision to stay cooped and/or go to eight-man. But, as Grubbs noted, that’s an expense each school is going to have to deal with regardless of the final outcome.

“In essence, we’re either buying 40 jerseys together or we’re buying 20 jerseys separately,” he said.

At the tail end of the discussion, the general consensus was that eight-player football is likely the shot in the arm the schools need to maintain and even reinvigorate interest in the sport. The key question will be whether to do it alone or together. While it was suggested several times the schools could keep the co-op to start a change to eight-man football, Campbell noted if the WIAA keeps these October deadlines to make changes, the Hawks may have to decide what to do in 2026 before even playing a game in 2024.

“Competing in 11-man for us has just been hard,” Rib Lake parent Brenda Bullis said. “It’s been really hard for the past how many years and no discredit to anybody. I know everybody works hard. But when you have teams like Stratford and Edgar and Marathon it’s hard.”

Dallmann said to him it was obvious eight-man was emerging as the way to go and it comes down to each board determining if their schools can sustain programs by themselves or do they still need each other, when it comes to player numbers or financial numbers or both.

“We don’t have all of our best players playing football,” Ryan Scheithauer of Rib Lake said. “I know at Rib Lake we don’t, and I know in Prentice you don’t either because I’ve coached some of those kids. That’s my point. Will eight-man get us to that point where we get our best athletes out? I don’t know. I see a lot of schools where their best athletes do go out. That’s what I hear walking down the halls. I’ve had my nephews and my cousins that were very good athletes that didn’t play and this is what they claim is, ‘why are we going to go out because we get to go against Stratford. Every year we’re going to get pounded, so why are we going to take a chance at getting hurt.’ For Prentice kids I hear I don’t want to get hurt for basketball. How are we going to get our best athletes out?”

Phillips and Newman Catholic were two nearby programs noted to have participation numbers jump after making successful transitions to eight-player football.

Rib Lake school board member Rollie Thums said if he had to vote that night, he’d be in favor of keeping the co-op for two years of eight-player football and see where it leads.

“Two years we’re going to talk about this again about are we going to stay at a co-op,” he said. “At that time we can look at it and say hey Prentice’s numbers are up, Rib Lake’s numbers are up. Now it’s about time that we go beat each other up. But I think that we need to give it a chance because I think we’re going to be pleasantly surprised. Not only will the kids like it and will the grandparents like it, like me. But more people in the community will come out because they’re competitive. They’ve got a real chance.

“We’ve been doing if for thirty-some years now and we’ve been getting along,” he added. “I think that speaks a lot for both schools.”