BOONE COUNTY, W.Va. (WSAZ) – The Van High School Bulldogs will return to school this fall without a football season.
Head football coach Mark Agosti said the reason is because “our numbers just keep getting smaller and smaller each and every year and we are at the point where it’s going to be hard to sustain a football program.”
Agosti said the decision was made because the football roster only had 13 players, which he said bring safety into question.
“Football being a contact sport, kids get hurt unfortunately,” Agosti said. “But with this roster that we had, a lot of these 13 were very new kids, ninth-graders or kids that’s not played a lot of sports at all and I just didn’t feel like it was worth risking their safety to try and make it happen.”
The absence of football Friday nights will not only impact the bulldogs football team but Van High School as a whole.
“It affects the referees that I have that’s committed to referee the games for me, the parents, I mean,” Agosti said. “If you don’t have football, you don’t have cheerleaders. You know, it’s a trickle-down affect. It affects the entire building actually, and it’s not a good thing.”
Agosti said he’s hopeful that numbers will be back up by next year and that Football Friday Nights will be back in Bulldog country.
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