Orange, Southern Durham, Chapel Hill, Cedar Ridge, Northern Durham and Hillside. Yes, those are the six teams in Northwood’s conference, but they are also the teams in the Big Eight 3A conference that have middle school football in their county.
Chatham County still falls behind in the world of middle school football. Every other team in the conference having it poses a potential disadvantage to the Chargers. According to varsity football head coach Brian Harrington, half of the current junior varsity team has never played football before or had only played ages 6-10.
According to Pollard Middle School athletic director, Aaron Kivette, there have been board meetings about adding middle school football to the county. However, the Board of Education decided to table the discussion about adding football and wrestling to middle school until their 2018 retreat. For now, the football coaches at Northwood must do the best they can with who they have.
“[The young players] really haven’t had the experience of tackle football,” Harrington said. “We have to teach them tackle football. Indirectly, [not having middle school football] affects varsity because it takes them two years to figure out, and we really don’t know what their full potential is until it’s too late.”
Harrington added that the biggest hoop for the new players to jump through is the fear of getting hit. He believes if they had experience in middle school, they would be able to get over that fear faster. The difference between full contact with kids who are 12-14 is much different than contact with kids who are 5-11.
Other teams in the conference are able to implement their playbooks into the middle school system, so the players coming in already know the plays. For instance, at Orange High School, the head coach makes sure that the middle school teams run the exact same offense and defense as Orange.
“That’s what all the good teams do,” Harrington said. “The head high school coaches have clinics for their middle school coaches and teach them how they coach football. By the time the kids come to high school, they know what they need to do. [If we had it], our kids would know how to play Charger football.”
One of the other benefits with having middle school football is implementing team chemistry at an early age.
Freshman Malachi Ees, who plays on JV, says that teamwork would be better had they played football in middle school.
“We would all already know how to play with each other,” Ees said.
Along with team chemistry, middle school football would get kids accustomed to more competition that the recreational leagues fail to provide.
“Middle school is a bigger deal than rec because you are playing for your school,” freshman Trey Robinson said. “It would give guys a heads up for high school football.”
Harrington said that adding middle school football would also simply give kids another thing to be involved with.
“I love athletics,” Harrington said. “I have found out that the kids in athletics are the ones who do not cause problems in school, graduate on time and have discipline. Athletics does more than just entertain on Friday or Tuesday nights. Just being on the team requires the student to pass their classes. I just wish they gave football a chance at the middle school level.”
So why does Chatham County still not have it? According to Kivette, Chatham County having 700+ acres of land would make it difficult. Long distances between schools is the reason the county has several small middle schools. This would then force teams to be made up of two schools, making practicing challenging. Beyond logistics, the main reason for the lack of middle school football is cost.
Football is the most expensive sport for the school to provide. Helmets run anywhere from $200-400 and pads can be $100-300. There are also pants, socks and jerseys. Football requires more coaches and time than any other sport. Practice equipment, like tackling dummies, can be upwards of $1,000. Despite these high costs, Harrington says that football at the high school level turns a profit and is even able to provide financial assistance to other teams at Northwood. However, Harrington is unsure whether middle school football would be able to draw in enough ticket and sponsorship sales to stay afloat.
Currently, Chatham County has a youth football program called the East Chatham Chargers (ECC). These teams practice three times during the week and have games on Saturdays where they play surrounding area youth football teams. The league offers teams for ages 5-6, 7-8, 9-10 and 11-12. The program does not offer any football for kids over 12 years old and players cannot be over 155 lbs.
Robinson feels ECC helped him prepare for the high school level.
“I have more experience than some of the people who [didn’t play ECC],” Robinson said. “I know the game of football better.”
Since the program costs money out of pocket, there is a greater emphasis on equal playing time than on a school-sponsored team. This takes away from some of the factors that high school football brings.
“[High school football] is more intense,” Ees said. “ECC is just boring and too simple.”
With this lack of a middle school age group, kids in Chatham must either travel to other counties to play or take a break.
Senior Dylan Hamer traveled to Durham to play with the Firebirds because there was not an age division for him in eighth grade.
“The competition was better with the Firebirds,” Hamer said. “With the Chargers, we only played against teams in the region, but with the Firebirds, we went all around the state. We eventually were able to play in Orlando, Florida for the National AAU championship.”
The break that ECC forces the kids to take can be harmful to their skills or even cause them to quit football altogether. Harrington has noticed kids picking up different sports in that time and then sticking to those sports without venturing out.
“You get a kid that age,” Harrington said. “He can’t play football, so he says, ‘Well, I’ll play lacrosse.’ Then once he gets to high school, I’ll ask him if he wants to play football, and he tells me, ‘No, I play lacrosse.’ They don’t realize that they can do both, or even three sports.”
Despite the setbacks the football team faces due to the absence of middle school teams, Harrington is proud of the Chargers’ efforts.
“I think the coaching staff here does a very good job,” Harrington said. “We are beating teams that have middle school football.”
– By Tanner Althoff
