Farmington Hills Harrison was finishing football practice last Thursday when coach John Herrington received a text from North Farmington football coach Todd Schultz.
“He said they had some injuries, there were two Jewish holidays and the lack of commitment,” Herrington said. “They didn’t feel they could field a team.”
In other words, North Farmington was forfeiting its game to Harrison — the school their district (which includes Farmington High) plans to close in two years.
For days, Herrington had heard rumblings from his players about the possibility of a forfeiture, but he didn’t believe them.
“Our kids told me all week they weren’t going to play,” he said. “That’s that social media stuff. I’ve never been involved in a forfeit for that reason in 50 years.”
Schultz, who is also North’s athletic director, failed to respond to messages the Free Press left on his cell phone and his school phone, but North is expected to field a team for tonight’s home game against Redford Thurston.
In an e-mail to hometownlife.com, filled with apologies to Harrison, Schultz said: “We cannot field enough players to cover all positions this week without putting our players’ safety at risk.”
While safety is always important, why did North not have enough players?
In Week 7, North Farmington lost to Farmington, 40-9, to drop to 0-7. Farmington coach John Bechtel estimated North had 30 or so players for that game.
North does not have a junior varsity program, while it does field a freshman team.
But it’s a Class A school with 622 boys. That isn’t enough to field varsity and JV teams?
North is not a horrid program. It was 5-4 in two of the last three seasons and was in the state playoffs as recently as 2011. It has a proud athletic tradition in a number of sports.
Last March, the Raiders played in the Class A state championship basketball game.
However, the era when a coach simply put up a flier stating when practice began was all that was needed to guarantee a big turnout is over. These days, coaches have to sell their program within the school hallways.
Meanwhile, Herrington has built what is arguably the finest program in state history, winning 13 state championships. Despite 42 fewer boys than North Farmington, the Hawks have 42 players on the varsity and 35 on the JV team, but do not have a freshman team this season.
You may think that Herrington doesn’t have anything to gripe about since Harrison got credit for a victory. But this is about more than wins and losses.
“We came off tough games against Oak Park, Adams and Groves, and not a lot of our kids got to play,” Herrington said. “Last week was going to be their chance. We’re just very disappointed our kids didn’t get a chance to play.”
The bean counters from Plante Moran were charged with making a recommendation on which of the three Farmington high schools to close. They took all of the emotion out of the decision. Forget about community and tradition, just do what the numbers tell you to do.
High schools are about more than just numbers.
Harrison is the school the district is closing in two years?
The Farmington school board needs to reconsider that decision.
Contact Mick McCabe: 313-223-4744 or mmccabe@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @mickmccabe1
Week 9 high school football schedule
Farmington Hills Harrison football coach John Herrington