Participation in football is declining across the country, but that isn’t the case for Mount Vernon High School.
The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) released a recent report that concluded football participation in high school has declined for the first year since 1988-89. Consequently, student-athlete participation across all sports has declined overall since that same school year.
The NFHS used data from high school member associations across the country to compile the report.
Football participation hasn’t been a problem at Mount Vernon High School, where head coach Mike Kerr said he has seen athletes enter the sport at every grade level.
“Participation at Mount Vernon has increased dramatically,” Kerr said. “When I first started, we had less than 40 players in grades 9-12. This year, we have 52 players in grades 10-12 as well as almost 30 freshmen. Our middle school numbers have grown substantially as well.”
NFHS, along with the Aspen Institute, reported that from 2008-19 to 2018-19, participation in tackle football fell by more than 620,000, from about 2.5 million to less than 1.9 million in children aged 6 to 18.
The organizations concluded that the next two years will see tackle football participation dip below 1 million athletes, which has not been observed since 1998. Even top-tier collegiate games have seen attendance levels decline by more than 10% per school.
It seems almost certain that 2020 or 2021 will see overall high school participation in tackle football drop to below 1 million players, a level of participation not seen since 1998. Over that same decade, season attendance at top-level college games (Football Bowl Subdivision) declined by almost 10% (per school).
Kerr said that the athletic staff is always mindful of their players' health and are mitigating COVID-19 risks among players.
“We try to meet in smaller groups instead of full team meetings, and when we do have full team meetings, we attempt to spread out and keep the meeting times shorter,” he said. “Players are still wearing masks at school and on the buses.”
Kerr said that there wasn’t the same level of anxiety with players as there was last year, but the players were mindful of “having to be quarantined and miss games and practices.”
Kerr said that despite the Yellow Jackets' slow start (1-4), the team has made progress, but it will need to shore up on the fundamentals to have a successful season.
“This team believes in themselves and each other, has great leadership and works extremely hard,” Kerr said. “Going forward, we just need to maintain focus and clean up a few mistakes. Our offense has been our strength so far, averaging over 350 yards a game.”
Kerr added that the defense has created turnovers thus far but needed to get opponents off the field on third downs and give the ball back to the high-powered offense moving forward.
