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MIDDLETOWN — The varsity football program at Middletown Christian is on hold.
MCS Athletic Director Ray Cox said Tuesday, July 21, that the school’s board of education recently voted to drop the varsity football team back to club status for the 2009 season.
The decision was due to a lack of participation.
“It’s a hard situation,” Cox said. “I especially feel for everyone that has put in so much time and effort into getting this program going again.”
MCS rekindled its football program in 2006 when it played a mostly junior varsity schedule. Before that, the last time the Eagles fielded a team was in 1983.
“Hopefully, this is just a brief hiatus,” Cox said. “We want to get our numbers back up and get this thing going again.”
Cox cited the Ohio High School Athletic Association’s transfer regulations as one of the reasons for the lack of numbers this year.
In the past, a student transferring from one school to another could be eligible to compete right away if he/she obtained superintendent’s approval for the transfer, but Cox said that exception is no longer available and that transfer students are ineligible for one year.
He added that MCS has a policy that allows home-schooled students to participate if they take at least one class at the school.
“However, students taking virtual school classes are considered as students at whichever school they are taking the virtual class from and then can no longer participate for our school,” Cox said.
With those issues in place, Cox said there were about 18 players for the team.
“The question then arose that we may not have enough to field a team,” Cox said. “So the board decided to go back to club status.”
Middletown Christian has backed out of two of its scheduled games — Fort Loramie and Troy Christian — this season, and is looking to replace them. The Eagles eight other scheduled games will go on as planned.
In 2010, the Eagles were set to be the eighth football program in the Metro Buckeye Conference.
“They’ll just go on without us for now,” Cox said. “We are still an OHSAA and MBC school in everything else. This was a football decision only. It was difficult, but it was one that benefits us and our opponents.”
With a junior high program still fielding a club team as well, Cox believes the program will return to OHSAA status in the near future.
“Football has really been a rallying point for us,” Cox said. “It has done wonders for us. We’ll get through this. We just have to weather the storm.”
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