Head Games

Last week, The New York Times kicked off a special series on the future of high school football with some startling statistics: Nationally, participation in traditional 11-man football in public schools has dropped 10 percent in the last decade, and it’s down, mostly significantly, in 48 of 50 states. Pennsylvania and Mississippi are the lone holdouts, and there the levels are flat, at best. “Football has long been a fundamental part of the American identity, and it likely will be for years to come,” the Times story noted. “But it has become mired in controversy over safety, and it has to compete harder each year with the popularity of other sports.”

The Times series began as the Express News Group was just wrapping up a three-part series of our own on the topic, localizing it to the East End, where the impacts are being felt acutely. It’s a microcosm of the rest of America, but some of the factors, including the increasing interest in other sports, are arguably in play to a greater degree here. East Hampton High School has been the canary in the coal mine, struggling to maintain a program until finally dropping the varsity program altogether in 2016.

On the other hand, Southampton has been able to field a varsity team, despite declining numbers. In Hampton Bays, there is no longer a youth program feeding the varsity, a sign of instability in years to come, but the varsity team has experienced a healthy turnout in recent years. And Westhampton Beach has bucked the trend with a stretch of success that, despite the headwinds, has built a winning tradition that makes it “an attractive option for athletically inclined children and their parents in the community,” as our reporting noted. It shows that when football is ingrained in a community’s culture, and has sustained success, the sport can weather the storm.

There are so many influences at play. The fragmented nature of scholastic life on the East End, with the region divided into smaller districts. A growing interest in other sports, especially soccer. A burgeoning Hispanic population that has gravitated toward the more international version of football.

But at the heart of the issue is a growing concern, among both athletes and their parents, about injuries, and particularly head injuries. The last 15 years has been devastating to the sport in general, with the discovery of CTE, and increasing evidence that it is a fundamental result of the sport and its hundreds of collisions, big and small, in every game. The Times noted in its reporting that, despite better equipment and rule changes, head injuries in general are more common in high school football than in any other scholastic sport — nearly twice as common as in ice hockey, three times the rate in soccer, and nearly five times the rate in basketball.

As at the professional level, there have been efforts to address the concerns at the high school level: new protocol surrounding concussion identification and treatment, more awareness of the issue, rules that penalize aggressive hits, and coaches teaching players to tackle in ways safer to both players involved.

East Hampton might offer a hint at a future strategy: Joe McKee, the varsity team’s former head coach, has sparked a flag football program for younger kids that has grown by leaps and bounds since its founding in 2016 — and includes girls as well as boys. He sees it as a way to one day revive tackle football in East Hampton by removing some of its danger among younger players, giving coaches a chance to “make football fun for all kids,” a spark that might be fanned later when contact football becomes an option again: “When they get old enough and strong enough and mature enough they can decide if they want to get into tackle.”

There are remedies for smaller schools — eight-man tackle football, for example, is gaining in popularity nationally in response to decreasing rosters, and JV players often can dress for varsity games thanks to scheduling adjustments — but they simply do not get to the heart of the biggest concern: that the sport, at any level, carries too much risk of debilitating injury. The rising tide of CTE cases suggests that the damage might not even be apparent until years later. It’s a terrible fear for both young athletes and parents alike.

Demonizing football, however, ignores much that makes the game special. As Westhampton Beach varsity football head coach Bryan Schaumloffel said in the final part of the Express News Group series: “I love the game of football. … It’s a contact sport, it’s a tough sport, it’s a grind, and I think the positives of football outweigh any of the negatives that come along with it.”

Ultimately, the fate of football at the high school level will come down to thousands of individual decisions by parents and children. If the sport is worth saving, flag football and eight-man teams are both part of the equation, as are increased efforts to reduce the most dangerous plays and to be more vigilant when concussions occur.

“Football’s golden age may be behind it, but whether it is in a slow fade, on the verge of a renaissance or heading for a collapse is a matter of debate,” the Times said last week. That debate is happening in real time on the East End. Its outcome here is very much up in the air — and it could be a signifier to where the national discussion ends up as well.