Low participation numbers have hurt the Lena/St. Thomas Aquinas high school football program for the past few years. Now low school enrollment could help the Titans.
The team opened practice Aug. 5 for its first year playing eight-man football.
The program qualified for the relatively new Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association division because Lena and St. Thomas have a combined enrollment of less than 200.
Lena’s anticipated enrollment this fall will be 105 to 110 students, while St. Thomas Aquinas Academy expects 55 to 60.
The Titans had 26 players in the program last season, when they compiled a 1-8 record against mostly larger schools. The switch to eight-man football levels the playing field for the school.
“I’m extremely excited,” said Jim Torzala, Lena High School athletic director. “It’s going to give us a chance to be competitive.”
On equipment day this season, 25 athletes signed up for the team. Co-head coach Dale Lange is hoping a few more players join the team before its first game.
“We look at it for what we had for kids coming in, and it’s a two-year commitment and we thought for us it would be best to go to 8-man football,” said Lange, whose coaching partner is Eddie Huberty.
The program, which has field a co-op team since 2003, can opt out of eight-man football after two years if it feels it is ready to return to the standard 11-on-11 format.
Twenty-two schools statewide compete in eight-man football. It’s a program that the WIAA started three years ago for smaller schools, and the number of participants has increased each season.
The WIAA doesn’t yet have a postseason playoff system for eight-man football, but a postseason jamboree features the top eight teams in the state. The state is split into two sections, and the top four teams from each section qualify for the jamboree.
Lena/STA doesn’t technically belong to a conference, but a number of eight-man schools formed a division they call the Great Eight North: Bowler/Gresham, Gibraltar, Green Bay NEW Lutheran, Oneida Nation, Sevastopol and Three Lakes.
The switch will be a change for players and coaches.
“I coached high school rugby,” said Lange, laughing. “To think outside the box is not beyond me.”
When Lange found out the Lena/STA program was switching to the eight-man format, he quickly jumped on the Internet and did some research and looked up plays.
“What I found is there really isn’t a lot of difference,” Lange said. “Almost anything that we saw in the M&O Conference as far as teams spreading and covering the field or bunching them up and power play, it’s pretty much all the same.”
The rules are pretty much the same as 11-man football, but the field dimensions are slightly altered. The field is 80 yards between goal lines – instead of 100 for 11-on-11 — and 40 yards wide.
“It’s going to be a faster-paced game, kind of in between the pace of college football and the pace of arena football, or something like that, where they have eight-man football,” Lange said.
Scores often reach the 50s and 60s.
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