THE VANISHING MARGIN | PART 2 OF 3
For this series, Lee Patterson sent questions to the head coach and athletic director at every current Arizona 1A football program. He also sought perspective from schools that no longer field varsity teams. This second installment examines the safety and development challenges created by Arizona’s smallest football rosters.
By Lee Patterson
Maryvale Prep coach Thomas Barringer faced a choice with no safe answer.
His 2024 team had only 12 players. As injuries accumulated, the Patriots sometimes entered games with just seven or eight healthy athletes available.
Barringer could limit contact in practice and try to preserve the bodies he had left.
Or he could practice physically enough to prepare those players for the collisions waiting on Friday night.
“Do you practice with the contact needed and risk early-season forfeited games and a possible canceled season?” Barringer said. “Or do you not have much contact in practice and risk athletes not being callused for contact in games, where injuries are more likely to happen?”
Maryvale Prep chose lighter practices in an effort to protect its roster.
The Patriots still suffered three season-ending injuries. Two games included injuries serious enough for someone to call 911. Maryvale Prep eventually canceled its final game, which was supposed to be both homecoming and senior night.
Barringer called it a lose-lose scenario.
It is also one of the central problems inside Arizona eight-man football.
Eight players are enough to line up under the rules.
They are not enough to conduct a normal practice, create a scout team, absorb injuries, develop younger athletes and complete an entire season safely.
Desert Heights Prep coach Kendrick Felix expects between 14 and 17 players this year, a range that has become familiar for the Glendale program.
Those athletes are not divided neatly between offensive and defensive units. The best players rarely leave the field. They play offense, defense and special teams.
When one gets hurt, Desert Heights Prep may not simply lose a running back. It may also lose a linebacker, returner and coverage player.
“Sometimes you can be a player or two from cancelling a game,” Felix said.
A thin roster changes nearly everything a coach attempts to do.
There may not be enough athletes to place a complete offense against a complete defense. The players who most need rest are often the only ones capable of giving the starters a useful look. Contact must be managed, but blocking and tackling still must be taught.
“With a small roster, you don’t have depth,” Felix said. “Your top players are going both ways and get fatigued fast. If players get hurt, the depth gets even smaller.”
The fatigue is not limited to the fourth quarter.
It accumulates throughout the week and the season.
A player may spend Friday carrying the ball, making tackles, returning kicks and covering punts. On Monday, he returns as a starter on both sides of the ball and may also be one of the only athletes capable of imitating the next opponent during practice.
There is no true second unit.
Sometimes there is no second player at his position.
Joseph City coach Martin Roes expects to begin the season with between 20 and 25 players, but he believes that number may be closer to 20 by the end.
Last season, Joseph City began with 18 and finished with approximately 15 because of injuries and academic eligibility.
The Wildcats still had enough players to continue. They did not always have enough to create safe or useful matchups in practice.
“We have less ability to match body type to body type with a smaller roster,” Roes said.
At a larger school, a freshman lineman may work against another freshman or sophomore close to his own size and level of development.
At a small school, the available opponent may be a stronger senior because there is no one else.
One injury can move a younger athlete from a developmental role into full-time varsity duty before his body is ready.
St. David coach Braden Davis sees the same concern. The Tigers expect approximately 23 players, but much of their depth comes from a large freshman class.
The total may look healthy on paper.
The bodies are not interchangeable.
“It’s hard to get good looks in practice, especially if you don’t have enough guys for a scout team,” Davis said. “It’s also challenging, not to mention dangerous, to ask little ninth graders to step up and contribute in varsity games when they are completely overmatched size-wise and skill-wise.”
Doug Meyer, a longtime former 1A coach who now serves as president of Arizona Lutheran Academy, uses an informal benchmark.
Meyer would want an eight-man team to have its eight starters and approximately six substitutes before beginning a season.
Fourteen is not an AIA rule, and Meyer does not present it as one. It is simply the point at which he believes a team begins to have some protection against fatigue, injuries and physical mismatches.
For some Arizona programs, 14 is not the danger line.
It is the roster.
The number also has a way of shrinking.
Mohave Accelerated coach Adam Gibson expects approximately 17 players before classes begin and believes the total could eventually reach 25. Participation at the Bullhead City school has improved during the past three seasons.
That does not guarantee the athletes available in August will still be available in October.
Players get hurt. Grades fall. Family circumstances change. Students move or quit.
The remaining athletes absorb the work.
“You have to rely on the players you have playing up to four ways in a football game,” Gibson said.
That can mean offense, defense and multiple special-teams units. During the week, the same player may also be required to work against the starters because no one else can reproduce the speed or physicality of the next opponent.
The workload can contribute to fatigue and injury risk.
It may also be the only way a team can continue.
Bagdad coach Dalton Mills expects between 17 and 20 players this season after traditionally carrying between 27 and 30.
Bagdad has been one of Arizona’s most successful eight-man programs. The Sultans have won games, built traditions and developed strong community support.
Success has not made the program immune to participation concerns.
“Success is a factor, but it’s hard to do when participation is bleak,” Mills said.
The reasons behind a thin roster differ from school to school.
Injuries and grades can reduce one team during the season. Enrollment changes may gradually shrink another. At some schools, football must convince students to choose the sport at all.
Felix (Desert Heights Prep) said his Glendale campus sits within five miles of three larger schools.
His problem is not that teenagers do not live nearby.
“Students are choosing to not play football,” he said.
Football is also competing for athletes who are already committed to other sports.
At many small schools, football, basketball, baseball and wrestling do not draw from separate groups of students. They divide the same teenagers and increasingly compete for the same months.
Roes (Joseph City) said summer baseball tournaments lead into basketball tournaments. Wrestling offers open mats. Football asks athletes to lift, condition and practice for games that may still be weeks away.
“Most coaches try to dominate the summer with their own games and workouts to the point that there is no room for all major sports to coexist because we share the same players,” Roes said.
Football can be the more difficult sales pitch.
Other sports offer summer games, tournaments and immediate competition. Football often offers weight rooms, conditioning and repetition in the heat.
“The drive and effort it takes to ‘practice’ football instead of ‘play games’ for the other sports is hard to compete with,” Roes said.
San Simon athletic director Chris Lentz believes soccer may also affect tackle football participation at some smaller schools, particularly when soccer is played during the fall.
Soccer requires more players on the field, but some schools have chosen to offer it instead of football.
Another concern is harder for coaches to overcome.
Parents remember stories about repetitive head trauma.
Lentz said his conversations with athletic directors and other stakeholders suggest that participation concerns are not limited to 1A schools. Families at every level are weighing the risk of injuries, particularly repeated head injuries.
Improved equipment and safety procedures may reach parents. So do stories involving chronic traumatic encephalopathy and former players who died by suicide.
“That’s what parents and kids seem to remember, and understandably so,” Lentz said.
The risk does not have to be precisely measured in a family’s living room to influence a decision.
It only has to feel possible.
Arizona’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program has added another complication for some districts.
Davis (St. David), who works as a sports psychologist across 14 school districts, said schools are trying to determine what homeschool and ESA students should pay to participate in athletics when those students do not provide the same traditional funding to the district.
Roes said Joseph City began charging a $500 participation fee to students receiving ESA funds and immediately lost three football players.
At a large school, three departures may disappear into a depth chart.
At Joseph City, they represented approximately one-fifth of the roster that finished the previous season.
“I think schools are also going to have to figure out the right set-point for participation fees for the homeschool and ESA students,” Davis (St. David) said. “Enough to be fair, but not too much to keep kids away.”
That is how quickly the margin can disappear.
A player gets hurt. Another becomes academically ineligible. Three decide a fee is too high. Four choose another sport.
Twenty becomes 15.
Fifteen becomes 12.
The team may still have enough players to begin a game under the rules.
The coach may no longer have enough to conduct a full practice, rest an exhausted starter or keep a freshman from lining up across from a senior twice his size.
The legal minimum and the practical minimum are not the same.
The rulebook begins counting at eight.
Coaches begin worrying long before they reach it.
The danger starts when there is no scout team. It grows when starters cannot leave the field, and one injury removes the same player from offense, defense and special teams.
It becomes impossible to ignore when a coach must decide whether contact in practice presents a greater risk than entering Friday night without it.
Eight players can begin a game.
They cannot provide depth, development or protection from everything that can happen between August and November.
Coming Saturday, Aug. 1: The final installment of The Vanishing Margin examines what can be done to preserve Arizona eight-man football. Maryvale Prep rebuilt through aggressive recruiting and JV development, while coaches and administrators statewide are considering youth programs, community partnerships, cooperative teams, six-man football and broader structural changes.
Editor’s note: Quotes provided in written responses have been lightly edited for grammar, punctuation and clarity without changing their meaning
