Members of the Mount View football team run during practice Thursday in Thorndike. The Mustangs are struggling with numbers but hope to complete the eight-man season with enough players. Anna Chadwick/Morning Sentinel

THORNDIKE — The scoreboard read 68-0, his eight-man football team on the losing side of a Week 2 game.

But given where he was just a week earlier, Mount View High sophomore Brody Ward didn’t care.

“It was amazing,” Ward said of his team’s blowout loss last Saturday against Spruce Mountain. “I felt pretty sour about (not finishing the game against Telstar), so to see the fourth quarter on the scoreboard, it was just another step toward greatness and building the program, I think.”

Ward was one of several players who suffered game-ending injuries during the Sept. 7 season opener at Telstar in Bethel. The Mustangs dressed 12 players, but were down to just nine before coaches and officials agreed to halt the game with roughly eight minutes left in the second quarter and Telstar up 40-0. The Mustangs did not have to forfeit the game, but the Rebels were awarded the victory under Maine Principals’ Association rules.

Mount View was one of two eight-man football teams that failed to complete its season-opening game because of injuries. St. John Valley (a co-op of Madawaska, Fort Kent and Wisdom) was the other.

“With our injuries, I didn’t think it was safe for us to continue playing and to have our kids continue to get beat up throughout the game,” said Mount View’s head coach, Gerald Hartley. “I want the kids to still love and enjoy football, and with the way it was going, they weren’t enjoying it, so I pulled the plug on it at that point.”

The situation at Mount View, which dressed just 13 players for its Sept. 14 game against Spruce Mountain, underscores the struggles some schools still face to compete with enough healthy players at a time when participation numbers are rising across the state. Last season, 3,391 athletes played football on Maine varsity, junior varsity or freshmen teams – the highest total since 3,450 students played in 2017.

There has been a rise in the number of football-related injuries nationally for two consecutive seasons, according to the National High School Sports-Related Injury Surveillance Study, conducted by Datalys Center. The survey estimated there were 562,530 injuries from both practices and games in 2023-24, up from 552,396 in 2022-23 and 478,688 in 2021-22. The MPA does not track football-related injuries in Maine. According to the survey, 16.9% of the reported football injuries were to the head. Knee injuries (16.5%) were the second most common.

“We’ve had a lot of conversations in the last three years with (our coaches) about whether to go to a JV schedule or stick with varsity,” Mount View Athletic Director Krysta Hustus said. “Ultimately, we decided that sticking with varsity is the way to go, just to keep kids excited to play. We’re a little worried that, if we go JV-only, we’ll lose even more kids, because it’s not that same competitive aspect that varsity has.”

PRESSURE TO COMPETE 

Mount View is one of several football programs in Maine during the last 10 years that either stopped playing or had games halted because administrators felt that small rosters and injuries made it no longer safe. Falmouth High, for example, forfeited its game against Portland last season because of injuries. Boothbay (2016), Telstar (2015), Camden Hills (2015), Sacopee Valley (2013) and Traip Academy (2017) also halted play because of low numbers.

In 2019, two Class D 11-man teams – Orono and Dirigo – canceled varsity seasons because of small rosters. Both programs then moved to eight-man football, although Dirigo returned to the 11-man game this fall.

After the Telstar game, Hartley said he talked with Hustus about the plan moving forward. The team played its game against Spruce Mountain, as a few players returned from injuries. Hartley, who took over for Rick Leary following the 2023 season, said this week that he now has 17 healthy players.

With a bigger, healthier roster, Hustus and Hartley said they are confident Mount View will finish the season. 

There is pressure to do so: Under MPA rules, a team that fails to complete its schedule is prohibited from fielding a varsity team the following season.

Mount View volunteer coach Dave Evans explains positioning to players during practice Thursday in Thorndike. Anna Chadwick/Morning Sentinel

“The last thing we want to do is drop out and not finish the schedule and have to play a JV schedule for the next two years,” Hustus said. “That’s what we’ve been avoiding by staying varsity these past few years. For these kids to work this hard as freshmen and sophomores and then have to drop out and have to play JV as juniors and seniors, that would just be deflating for them.”

MPA Director Mike Burnham said this week he was concerned to see that Mount View and St. John Valley had their Week 1 games halted early but was encouraged to see them finish their Week 2 games. After its season opener at Houlton was stopped with the Shiretowners leading 46-0 in the second quarter, St. John Valley was able to complete its second contest, a 54-22 defeat to Washington Academy.

The MPA does not set a minimum number of players needed for 11-man or eight-man teams. Nor does it offer a recommendation, although programs with fewer than 20 players are urged to compete in eight-man. Some states, like New York, require eight-man teams to play with at least 12 players, to allow for subbing.

William Heinz, a sports medicine specialist and a liaison to the MPA Sports Medicine Committee, said the onus falls on schools to determine how many players are needed to safely play a game. 

“The coach is the best judge of (what a safe number is), and coaches are pretty good these days,” he said. “They’re not like the knuckleheads we used to deal with back when I played; they’re not going to put their kids out there and get them injured.”

SMALL NUMBERS

Mount View has struggled with its numbers since it moved to eight-man football in 2021. The Mustangs opened fall practices with 15 players that year before fielding a roster of 21 in 2022. Although the team began with 26 players in 2023, it finished with just 17, as injuries mounted.

Competing with small numbers is a daunting task. Duane Crawford coached at Ellsworth from 2012-19, with the last year of his tenure coinciding with the inaugural season of eight-man football. The Eagles had 15 players when fully healthy but played with as few as 12 or 13 on multiple occasions.

Members of the Mount View football team sprint during practice Thursday in Thorndike. Anna Chadwick/Morning Sentinel

“We went down to play (Mt. Ararat in Week 3), and we had kids who played 144 snaps,” Crawford said. “It’s tough on the kids, and you’ve really got to condition well.”

Crawford said that if his team had season-ending injuries to key players, they probably would have had to forfeit games, or the season. 

Hartley and Hustus said it’s imperative for them to build the middle school program in order for the high school program to survive. Mount View Middle School, which had just two players sign up over the summer, had to cancel planned games this season. But thanks to some in-school recruiting, the middle school team now has 17 players and is currently practicing.

“We’re slowly getting there; we just have such an issue getting to the middle school kids before school actually starts,” Hustus said. “Once we started school and were able to get the kids in front of us and say, ‘Hey, want to sign up for football?’ I think that really made a difference. I am looking to see if we can get back into some games for October.”

Hartley knows it won’t happen overnight, but every program has to start somewhere. One of his biggest supporters? Orono Coach Bob Sinclair, whose team was in a similar spot in 2021, when it went 0-8 and allowed nearly 50 points per game after forfeiting the 2019 season. Now, the Red Riots are reigning Small School state champs and have the state’s longest winning streak at 12 games.

“Bobby has been really encouraging, and I keep bringing up that Orono program, because they were where we are right now with low numbers and only one junior,” Hartley said. “We look at success not by the scoreboard, but by how we look. We had some first downs in the second half (Saturday) and moved the ball. … We have great kids, and our goal is to improve every week.”