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Catholic league sees fewer players, but future’s bright

League of faith-based middle school teams forms this fall in Pulaski County

Published: October 28, 2014   

By Dwain Hebda
Associate Editor

Dwain Hebda / Arkansas Catholic file
A young fan cheers Our Lady of the Holy Souls in this 2013 photo. Catholic football league officials say the key to turning around declining numbers is to catch kids’ attention early.

As a first-year athletic director, Our Lady of the Holy Soul’s Tina Brune can be forgiven for not knowing certain stats off the top of her head. But when you ask how many seventh- and eighth-grade boys are out for football this year, it isn’t inexperience that causes her to look it up, it’s the vagary of the question itself.

“Well, we have 15 seventh- and eighth-graders from Holy Souls,” she said. “And 15 more that play on the Holy Souls team.”

For years, student athletes wore the same school’s uniform during the week as they did in the weekend’s games, but no longer. These days, even larger schools that can boast of league championships such as Holy Souls couldn’t field a full football team without drawing players from other parochial or faith-based middle schools.

In Holy Souls’ case, this means players from The Anthony School, Christ Lutheran and St. Theresa School and has in the past included players from St. Edward School too.

Over the river in North Little Rock, Immaculate Conception School welcomes players from North Little Rock Catholic Academy and Immaculate Heart of Mary, but even so, the roster has allowed for plenty of playing time for all this season.

“We had 17 on our junior high team when we started, but due to injuries and other circumstances we actually finished a game with only 12 players one week,” said Stacie Wharton, Immaculate Conception athletic director.

The Catholic parochial league’s schools aren’t an oddity in their predicament as football participation has declined across the board in the United States. Last November, the country’s largest youth football organization, Pop Warner, announced the number of players enrolled between 2010 and 2012 declined 9.5 percent. A January article in The Wall Street Journal cited a new survey by the Sports and Fitness Industry of America and the Physical Activity Council, which found 2012 participation by players age 6 to 14 overall was 4.9 percent below that of 2008.

And, football participation among high school players dipped 2.3 percent in the 2012-2013 season compared to four years earlier, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.

Considering college and pro football remain wildly popular spectator sports, analysts are divided over what’s causing the decline.

One theory is parents’ concerns over potential injury, especially concussions. As Bob Cook of Forbes.com writes, it’s gone so far as the New York legislature entertaining a ban on preteen children playing football and 40 percent of adults in a Pennsylvania poll supporting such a ban.

Lacking such legislation, 40 percent of adults polled recently by The Wall Street Journal/NBC said they would steer their son to a different sport altogether because of health risks.

Allan Wharton, Stacie Wharton’s husband who has coached and helped administer parochial league sports for years, said he’s not heard from parents that fear of injury is the reason for keeping boys out of football.

“They’re really not able to hit that hard at this age,” he said. “(The decline in numbers) has more to do with kids being involved in other sports, like fall baseball or soccer, which goes year around.”

The one school that hasn’t seen a decline in participation is Christ the King School in Little Rock. Athletic director Ann Morris said 27 seventh and eighth-graders made up this year’s squad, with no players from other schools on the roster. She chalks up the numbers to Christ the King’s higher enrollment.

“When you have 600 students, it’s not as hard to field a team,” she said. “We’ve been blessed that way.”

Despite the leaner rosters the league is experiencing, brighter days appear to be on the horizon. This year, Holy Souls, Immaculate Conception and Christ the King have all fielded teams of fifth and sixth graders in another league, called the Little Rock Parochial School League, made up from a number of local faith-based schools, both Catholic and not. Player numbers have been healthy: 21 from Holy Souls, 25 from IC and Christ the King split 38 boys into two squads.

Such activity gives Morris confidence that the activity will survive the current down cycle. Another reason for optimism is parochial middle schoolers’ strong connection to Catholic High School — sometimes dating back three generations — which feeds a desire to one day represent the Rockets.

“Our kids support Catholic High; you go the games and you see elementary school kids from IC, Christ the King, Holy Souls, all the Catholic schools,” Morris said. “I’d say 98 percent of our (boys) go to Catholic High and many of them want to do sports. They know that if they have any idea of playing at that level they have to get the basics early.”

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