GOBLES, MI - For Gobles athletic director Chris Miller, the decision wasn’t so much 8 or 11, but football or no football.
Faced with a shrinking student enrollment and low turnout on the football field for the graduating classes of 2021 and 2022, Miller and the Gobles school board decided to transition to 8-player football for the upcoming season.
"We've been looking at what our number are projected to be for this coming year and the following year; we've been looking at that for probably four or five years, knowing our numbers were going to go pretty low unless something drastically changed," Miller said. "They were not going to be good, and there was no way we were going to be able to possibly field an 11-man varsity team."
As its enrollment shrunk from 301 students in 2015 to 203 in 2020, Gobles faced a challenge similar to that of other Southwest Michigan schools, such as Climax-Scotts, Colon and Martin, who have moved to 8-player football in recent years.
But rather than embracing 8-man as the future of high school football in its town, Gobles is gearing up for a return to 11-player as soon as 2022, thanks to large numbers in the 2023 and 2024 classes.
"We're going to play 8-man for two years and the JV teams will stay at 11-man," Miller said. "We have between 22 and 24 incoming freshmen that are signed up to play 11-man, along with a couple sophomores. Our plan is to keep those freshmen down so we can keep all those kids together, and hopefully by doing this, those kids will mature, have a lot of success and bring back more enthusiasm for football."
Without a deep talent pool to pull from, Gobles' best athletes ended up seeing a lot of time at key positions at the varsity level as early as the their ninth-grade season, and that resulted in canceling JV games
"The biggest thing we're trying to get way from, which we've been doing for the last two to three years is pulling up freshmen to the varsity," Miller said. "These kids are not physically mature enough to be going against 17, 18 or 19-year-old grown men. In turn, it caused a lot of those young kids to hang up their cleats and decide not to play the game. As a school and as a coaching staff, we decided we're going keep all the kids together to build confidence, be somewhat successful and hopefully we'll be ready to go into 11-man when they're juniors."
Gobles has certainly taken its lumps in recent years, posting a 6-21 record over the last three seasons, but before that three-year stretch the Tigers made the playoffs in five of six seasons from 2011 to 2016, and before that, they made the playoffs for 10 consecutive years between 1998 and 2007, including back-to-back state runner-up finishes in 1999 and 2000.
RELATED: Presenting Gobles’ 5 greatest athletes since 2000
That history part of the reason Gobles wants to move back to the 11-player game, but it also has to do with the anticipated surge in numbers.
"I think as a traditionally rich program, the community here would much rather see 11-man if it's feasible, but if my numbers drop like a son of a gun, we'll stay 8-man," Miller said. "But I could have more than 40 just on my JV team, and it’s all about giving kids opportunities, and I think there are more opportunities in 11-man."
In a community with a rich football tradition, the move from one form of the game to another can ruffle some feathers, but Gobles JV coach Greg Eichler said the town is behind the program and supports the kids, regardless of how many are on the field.
"I think they're excited for 8-man, and our community supports us 100 percent," he said. "They love football, athletics and Gobles -- period -- and any opportunity for people to see us compete, whether it's with 8 or 11 is a great thing.
"It's change, so it's going to make some people uncomfortable, and there will be people that are unsure of it, but they'll have to adapt and hopefully enjoy. The big thing is that our kids are able to go out and play the game they enjoy."
Fourth-year varsity coach Thad Schafer confirmed his players are excited to get back on the field for the new brand of football.
"I think it's going to give us chance to be more open with the offense, and most of the kids seem excited about it," he said. "We explained to them that we're doing everything we can to have football this year, and going to 8-man allows us to have a varsity and junior varsity season, instead of pulling the freshman up year after year and not having a JV."
While the move to 8-man alleviates the numbers problem, it has created some issues with scheduling, as Gobles currently has just seven games on its docket, including two against rival Bloomingdale and another home-and-home series with Merrill, which is 150 miles northeast in Saginaw County.
RELATED: Bloomingdale’s move to 8-player football brings hope, but no playoffs in 2020
Simultaneously maintaining an 11-player JV team and an 8-man varsity squad also presents a set of challenges, but it's something the coaches have been preparing for, and at the end of the day, the fundamentals of football remain the same regardless of how many people are on the field.
"It's a challenge, and it's something we're up for," Eichler said. "There are going to be different schemes, and we'll be doing some different things, but we're going to try to keep similar terminology the best we can. We're going to have to work together and support each other. A couple of the positions will be different, but we're trying to keep their keys, their reads and their techniques similar.
"11-man is different from 8-man, but at the end of the day, you're still playing football and trying to score touchdowns and make tackles."
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Gobles to start 8-player football in 2020 with eye on resuming 11-man in 2022 - MLive.com
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