Rib Lake board tackles football issues tonight

RIB LAKE-PRENTICE FOOTBALL

The final year of the Rib Lake-Prentice Hawks football co-op is moving toward being a JV-only season due to a lack of numbers, particularly in the older classes.

The move is not official yet, but the agenda for the Rib Lake School District’s board meeting tonight, Thursday, has been amended to include an item regarding a transition to a JV-only schedule for 2023, while the Prentice board meets next week.

Rib Lake-Prentice’s opening game next Friday against Marathon has been canceled due to “safety issues” and the Red Raiders have been fortunate to quickly find a replacement game at Kenosha Christian Life.

Contacted Friday, co-head coach Jonah Campbell of Rib Lake said there were about 20 players in the program, but only a handful were experienced upperclassmen.

“We’re still at 20 as a team, the problem being we only have two experienced seniors coming back,” Campbell said. “Prentice doesn’t have any returning seniors. We have two inexperienced seniors that have had some football experience, but not much. Then between the two schools we’re sitting at four juniors. So we’re relatively short for upperclassmen and, out of those six, only four of them probably have varsity experience. So the numbers just aren’t in the favor to try to do a varsity season safely.”

Rib Lake athletic director Tom Noennig, contacted Wednesday, said it is also his opinion that it is currently an unsafe situation. He’s preparing for all outcomes as far as a schedule goes but said he couldn’t state yet what that might look like until the school boards say yes or no to canceling the varsity schedule.

“Until the boards meet to discuss and determine what we’ll try to do if they would choose to cancel the varsity season, I will do everything to make sure there is football in Rib Lake and Prentice and the boys that are out are going to play JV 11-man games or JV eight-man games,” Noennig said. “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure of that.”

Rib Lake-Prentice, not long after the coop was formed, had two non-varsity seasons in 1989 and 1990 but hadn’t experienced this kind of difficulty with numbers since, though injuries were stretching the team a bit thin by the end of last year’s 0-9 season. The program started last year with num- bers in the low 30s.

This year’s team was hit with at least a couple of surprising departures from upperclassmen that were expected to be major contributors. Campbell said there are a variety of reasons students at both schools have given for not wanting to play football, ranging from protecting themselves from injury for other sports, wanting to work or simply waiting things out a year to play when the schools separate to begin their own eight-player programs in 2024.

He said the coaching staff is hopeful this move, assuming it officially happens, may attract a younger addition or two yet this year who would be more comfortable participating at the JV level, rather than being forced to play at the varsity level before they’re ready.

“Most of the sophomores, some of them got experience last year, but you’d just like to try to keep them off being a starter as a sophomore,” Campbell said. “Depth at multiple positions is an issue if someone were to go down. Not that you couldn’t field a team of 11 experienced guys, but there would be almost no depth behind them. We’re kind of in that predicament at this time.” Rib Lake-Prentice’s status for this year adds to what has been a tumultuous time for the Lakeland Conference’s football-only membership since it was formed in 2020 following a massive statewide football realignment project by the WIAA. The first year, 2020, was heavily disrupted by the Covid pandemic. The Lake Holcombe-Cornell co-op disbanded the following year to create separate eight-player programs and Flambeau bolted then as well to go to eight-man, leaving schedule voids that lingered into this year.

Rib Lake-Prentice is scheduled to play Hurley and Webster twice this season at the varsity level. Hurley is also switching to eight-player football next year and Noennig said Webster has indicated numbers are low in that program as well, so those games are likely to still be played in some fashion. Webster beat Rib Lake-Prentice 7-0 last year in the only Hawks’ game that was competitive into the fourth quarter.

The Lakeland Conference’s football membership will be realigned next year to include Cadott, Chetek-Weyerhaeuser and Cameron with one mandatory crossover game with the Dunn-St. Croix Conference.

“The opponents on the varsity schedule will take precedence over anything else because we want to honor that first and foremost,” Noennig said of his task in the coming days. “We want to make sure we honor our conference obligations with at least a JV schedule if they so choose so the next two years we wouldn’t have a playoff penalty when we go eightman.”

Campbell said the seniors who have stuck with the team have been assured they will be able to play, and he said after the first week of practice, the team was actually energized following news of the potential loss of a varsity season.

“There’s actually pretty decent morale around the team,” Campbell said. “They’re excited to have games that should be competitive at the JV level. The juniors know they have a shot next year. There’s a possibility we could get a couple more younger guys out with this decision. If not, they know they have next year with eight-man where if we do play varsity, they should have some competitive games.” Noennig said he’s been on the other side of these situations as a coach and athletic director at Mayville and knows it’s not fun for any side.

“I feel bad for all of the opponents on the schedule,” he said. “I feel bad for the kids and the communities. This is tough.”

“The number one thing is safety,” Campbell said. “You don’t want to keep 11 guys on the field the entire game. That’s not good for them health-wise and increasing that risk of injury. They also understand you can’t put a replacement in who if he’s playing slow, he might get injured on the first play. At least this way you feel comfortable, as much as you hate to do it as competitors, it’s just the right call for this season.”