Eight-man football spreads across diocese

By Julie Keane, Globe staff reporter
December 4, 2003

Two Catholic high schools in the diocese have implemented the new eight-man football program that is racing its way across the state of Iowa for smaller schools that do not have enough students to support the tradition 11-man football team.

Boys at St. Mary's High School in Remsen and Spalding Catholic in Granville have for the past four years been playing eight-man football.

Eight-man football is played on a shorter field with the end zones at the ten yard line and the field is also not as wide as the traditional field - it is shortened by approximate 5 or 6 yards.

High schools must have less than 115 students in the first three grades in order to participate in program. There are approximately 25 eight-man football programs in the state of Iowa. Nebraska also supports the eight-man football program, while other states such as South Dakota and Minnesota participate in nine-man, which is comparative to eight-man football.

Thomas Ulses, principal at Spalding Catholic, commented that eight-man football has been a positive addition to the high school. The team had a record of 1-8 this past year. The school hosted its first junior high eight-man football team this year.

"Our parents and community members have been very willing to pitch in to help take care of many things that are involved in running a football program," Ulses said. "They take pride in volunteering themselves to help our school and students."

Wes Schanck, Spalding Catholic's head football coach, said a lot of positive remarks regarding the new program he has coached for the last three years.

"The people are really getting behind the program," Schanck said. "They are beginning to know what football is all about - a lot of people had no idea about the game of football because they just didn't have it. Winning that last ball game was a highlight for the boys, the school and the community."

Kenneth Hajek, principal of St. Mary's in Remsen also said that the new eight-man football team has been a positive addition to the athletic programs at the high school. St. Mary's had an 8-2 record this year. They were district runner-ups and they were state play-off qualifiers. St. Mary's had many boys on the team make District 2 first and second teams.

"It (football team) has been received positively and the attendance and support at the ball games are getting better every year," Hajek said.

Both Ulses and Schanck stated that with the implementation of the eight-man football program there can have both positive and negative outcomes - eight-man football gives the young men a chance to participate in another sport during the fall and increases school spirit, but on the other hand there is a lot of traveling due to the limited number of schools currently with teams. Schanck said that it wasn't uncommon for the team to travel 100 miles on some Friday nights to play a game of football.The program also requires a lot of money, but Ulses said "that the program was well worth the additional money."

Both schools started the program from scratch and are seeing progress with attendance and support of the program with each new football season.