County football could look very different in fall

Published 10:21 pm Tuesday, December 26, 2023

WILSONVILLE — Wallowa County football teams appeared to take up much of the time at a recent meeting of the Oregon School Activities Association’s (OSAA) Football Ad Hoc Advisory Committee.

After meeting in a closed session on Dec. 14, the OSAA has released a report on preliminary recommendations.

After playing to a 7-3 finish including a first-round 24-6 playoff win over Cove, the committee is recommending Enterprise High School return to the 2A ranks of football, a recommendation that was expected.

Teams in the 2A classification play 9-man football; the Outlaws have been playing in the 8-man division of the 1A classification.

The recommendation doesn’t come as a surprise, said Josh Harman, the Outlaws’ head coach.

Harman noted that once a team wins more than 67.5% of its games over two seasons — or wins a playoff game — it’s automatically bumped back to its original classification. The Outlaws hit both of those criteria.

Competing with bigger schools in the 2A classification “will be kind of a challenge,” Harman said, but he noted that the 1A division has a number of quality teams as well — and added that the Enterprise football program has grown over the past few seasons to the point where this year’s team drew 35 students.

“I think we’ll be just fine moving up,” he said.

Kate Fent, the athletic director at Enterprise, said the time Enterprise stayed in the 1A ranks allowed the school to rebuild its football program.

”Being able to go 8-man when we only had 13 kids on the teams was a huge asset to sustaining football,” she said, adding that athletic directors at other schools that play 8-man football “have been gracious and kind in accepting us into 8-man. Scheduling with the constant up-and-down of teams is a nightmare, and they work incredibly hard to give everyone a fair shake.”

But the Outlaws may not be the only Wallowa County team playing a different style of football in the fall. The Joseph Charter School Eagles and the Wallowa High School Cougars may also start the 2024 season learning a new variation of the game.

With numbers declining in the 8-man ranks, the OSAA committee has made a preliminary recommendation to change the numbers for enrollment cutoffs.

Currently, schools with enrollment between 60-74 students play 8-man football. The recommendation is to move that number down to 50-74 students.

If approved, 11 teams, including the Eagles and the Cougars, would move from 6-man football to 8-man football in the fall.

The OSAA is taking public comment on the recommendations. Written suggestions and proposals should be emailed to the OSAA at kris@osaa.org.

The next public meeting of the ad hoc committee is Wednesday, Jan. 10 starting at 10 a.m.