Glens Falls Chronicle Serving the Glens Falls/Lake George region; Warren, Washington and northern Saratoga counties since 1980
By Ben Westcott, Chronicle Staff Writer
Hudson Falls won’t field a varsity football team this season, Athletic Director Ryan Carpenter told The Chronicle, citing low participation numbers. The program will only field a JV team this fall.
“We lost a lot of players after last year to graduation, and over the past few years we’ve seen a decline in participation numbers within our football program,” Mr. Carpenter said.
“We only see a small number of potential upperclassmen coming back this year, many of whom have minimal to no high school football experience.
“Having to throw underclassmen onto a varsity field, without giving them the time to develop and experience the high school level, certainly poses some safety risk for us, and we don’t want to put the kids in that position,” he said.
“We believe this decision is in the best interest of our student athletes and the overall health of our football program.”
Mr. Carpenter said his goal is to field a Hudson Falls varsity football team next year. He says there are encouraging signs.
“We have a good number of underclassmen that are coming up,” he said. “Last year was the first year in a while that we were able to field two modified football teams, and we’ve had a successful flag football program with our youth students for the last couple years.”
He noted, “We want to help them develop, keep them interested in the sport, and continue to rebuild the program. We hope that by fielding a JV team, maybe some more underclassmen will be interested in participating so they can be competitive and build from there.”
Mr. Carpenter said that, unfortunately, the players who are missing out on varsity football this season won’t have the option to play for another school.
“We already merge with Fort Edward for football, and if we were to look to have any other districts merge with us, we would have had to do that at the beginning of the 2024 calendar year,” he said.
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