Elsie Allen cancels football season again, but plans to return

Just two years removed from canceling its varsity football season, the high school will now not be fielding any football teams for the 2021-22 school year.|

Just two years removed from canceling its varsity football season, Elsie Allen High School will now not be fielding any football teams for the 2021-22 school year.

Head coach Josh Wendler said the decision, which was made a few weeks before the season began, stemmed from academic eligibility issues. The Lobos were only set to field a varsity team this fall, with nearly 30 players on the roster.

“After all was said and done we only had about 15 kids who were going to be academically eligible to play,” he said Tuesday.

The issue specifically surrounded eligibility rules from the California Interscholastic Federation, the state’s governing body for high school sports. Per the CIF’s bylaws, students must meet several criteria to remain eligible for sports, including maintaining a 2.0 grade-point average and posting a passing grade in at least 20 semester credits (4 classes) by the end of the previous grading period.

Wendler said that he had multiple players who had to get jobs to assist their families during the pandemic or simply just struggled with their grades during the prior grading period in the spring, when classes were either remote or hybrid. They weren’t alone, either, as four out of 10 high school students in Sonoma County had one or more failing grades last school year, according to data released by the county’s 10 public districts in Oct. 2020.

Elsie Allen’s program has struggled mightily over the last decade, posting just three total wins since the 2010 season. It canceled its varsity season in 2019 due to low turnout and instead just fielded a JV team in hopes of building up the program from the bottom up. Wendler was hired to coach that JV team and has since taken over as the varsity head coach. There are no plans to play another all-JV season this fall.

“We had thrown everything into doing a varsity program and then by the time the CIF came out with their guidelines where you had to pass four classes with a D or better, we just didn’t have the numbers to make that happen,” Wendler said. “Then to go from an all-varsity season to trying to schedule bunch of JV games, that just wasn’t going to be feasible.”

Wendler does, however, remain optimistic that the program will return. Before the pandemic he reported the team had about 40 players routinely showing up to offseason workouts. While their numbers dipped a bit in the following months, the Lobos still put together a team and played in the abbreviated spring season.

“We were competitive in all our games,” Wendler said. “Everyone was happy to see us out there. The kids were having a good time. We weren’t going downhill.”

He added that even after the season was canceled this fall, most of the team wanted to keep practicing, but Wendler figured it was more important to keep his players healthy and focused on improving their grades.

“It’s just a matter of we weren’t safely going to be able to put a team out there,” he said. “We also didn’t want to go out there with 15 kids and then week 1 or week 2 we lose three or four and then we have to forfeit the season then. I’d rather let the other teams know and not take away games from those kids because of the potential of us not having enough kids.”

He also said there are no discussions about turning to eight-man football.

“The good thing is that we only had three seniors on the team this year,” Wendler said. “Everyone else was either a junior, sophomore or freshman. Right now, it’s just a matter of do we want to continue to practice and play the last two games of the season, or should we shut things down and try to keep the momentum where it’s at and try to have everyone focus on their grades and stay academically eligible. We all figured that was more important.”

The plan, Wendler said, is to resume workouts in January after the season ends. He added he and his coaching staff have deep ties to the school and remain committed to getting the Lobos back on the field.

“I went to the school,” he said. “I care about it. I want to see it build up. Our whole coaching staff either went to the school or has kids who go to the school. We have a good group that’s interested in taking care of the program and moving things forward and don’t want to see it die. That’s certainly not what this is. It’s just a matter of we weren’t safely going to be able to put a team out there.”

You can reach Staff Writer Gus Morris at 707-304-9372 or gus.morris@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @JustGusPD

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