Eight-player thrives, thrills in U.P.

Prep football

By Dennis Grall

For the Daily Press

ESCANABA -- Three yards and a cloud of dust. That was the highly successful version of football applied by veteran Ohio State coach Woody Hayes as big bruisers dominated the game.

It certainly is not the preferred style on the fields of eight-player football. Nope, this version is much more open-field and definitely more exciting, full of big plays and a ton of scoring.

Take Powers North Central as the prime example. The Jets have won the last two eight-player state championships with back-to-back 13-0 seasons, piling up yards and points in their first two seasons in the eight-player game with a large group of skilled athletes.

Their winning streak ended at 27 games earlier this season, but the style they displayed with exceptional athleticism led by Jason Whitens and Bobby Kleiman has caught on with many other programs

The Upper Peninsula, at the forefront of the eight-player game due largely to decreasing enrollments, has been lighting up the scoreboards this year. Teams like Pickford and Cedarville, Rapid River and Stephenson, Ontonagon and Crystal Falls Forest Park are progressing with the same formula as North Central by featuring explosive offenses.

Citing some eight-player detractors who don't think the game is real football, veteran Cedarville coach Scott Barr said "I don't think anyone can argue that it (eight-player) has not been healthy for football. It has been healthy."

The game is thriving in small schools because the eight-player version simply has allowed football to remain in the athletic program despite shrinking enrollments across the state.

"It has allowed us to keep football," said veteran coach Steve Ostrenga of Rapid River, who led the Rockets into the eight-player state finals in 2011 and 2013 and into the playoffs each season they have been at this level. "We did it out of necessity. We may have waited too long," said Ostrenga, recalling their last year of 11-player football when only one sub was available at several games.

Veteran Pickford skipper Josh Rader has an idea why the eight-player game has met approval at so many small schools. "It is a high-octane game. It is a lot of fun to watch," he said. "It puts a lot of pressure on defenses because it is such a wide open game. It makes it exciting for the fans."

No longer do fans have to squint and squirm in their seats to see what is happening among the goliaths in the line. Now the football is visible in the wide open spaces as skilled athletes display dazzling moves, whether the team favors the extremely popular spread offense or uses the more familiar run-oriented approach.

"It is more a one-on-one oriented game now," said coach Ben Mayer of Ontonagon, whose program has consolidated with neighboring Ewen-Trout Creek, which yearly battled small player turnouts just to keep the game alive. Fifteen E-TC students are playing football at Ontonagon, with six on the varsity, highlighted by 6-foot-7 receiver Jacob Witt, who caught a state-record 24 touchdown passes last season.

"Without eight-player, we would have gone under a while back," said Mayer, who played for U.P. Sports Hall of Fame coach Bob "Cubby" Carlson at Ontonagon. He said the Gladiators were forced to use four freshmen and had 130-pound kids on the line in past years.

"Football has changed a lot in the last four years," he said since the Gladiators moved to the eight-player game. "The ball is in the air. It is fun to watch.

Mayer said eight-player also enables his program to offer junior varsity football to younger students, instead of having them knock heads and bodies against older, bigger and stronger players that has the potential to increase injuries.

"There is not as much violence between the tight ends now because we don't play in those tight spaces," said Mayer.

He also recalls putting "wildly undersized kids in the line against bigger schools with monsters from legitimate programs, with kids getting stepped on and squashed on.

"You do have a lot of choices in eight-man. I can put smaller kids somewhere and they will be alright and we can still play football."

Ostrenga said it seems injuries, especially of the serious variety, has also seemed to decrease. "We used to hit a lot more in practice. Now we do a lot of teaching and drill work and conditioning," he said, adding state officials have been in the forefront of trying to reduce injuries with new regulations.

Ostrenga said in the 11-man version, many times it came down to "men playing against boys."

He did say, however, that under the eight-player game coaches "can tend to overuse a player. You get a really good athlete and use him as a crutch in a game."

Ostrenga said it took time to support the change to eight-player football. "I was against eight-man football at first. Now it has made me more open-minded and allowed me to become more understanding." He said eight-player athletes need to have speed, strength, balance and shiftiness.

"Some big guys can't move that well," he said, indicating this version of football requires more agile and nimble athletes to cover the wide-open spaces. "The big thing is understanding you have to get your athletes on the field. You just have eight guys on the field and you are (more) exposed. In 11-man you can hide someone. In eight-man, coaches will find your weaknesses."

Rader agreed, noting "it puts a lot of pressure on the defense because the game is so wide open. There is a little different strategy. It is a disadvantage for the defense because it (the field) is so wide open and there is not a lot of help. You want to take advantage your offense has over the defense in one-on-ones.

"We like to run the ball and throw the ball, so our athletes can utilize the open field," he said.

Barr said eight-player quarterbacks are more difficult to contain than typical pocket passers. "They are more elusive," he said, recalling how the 6-foot-4 Whitens could take the direct snap, survey the field and decide whether to throw or run the ball himself.

In the 2016 state title game, Whitens ran 17 times for a record 352 yards and six touchdowns as the Jets beat Deckerville 58-22. The Jets ran for 469 yards that night.

"You rarely see teams ground and pound," Barr said of the eight-man game, noting he began to rely on the spread offense in 11-man football as he tried to figure out how to match up with the over-powering tailback-oriented rushing attack of perennial power Forest Park, which began playing eight-man football in 2016.

Barr said the kicking game is of vital importance now and that secondary tackling is a tough transition because of the explosive offense athletes.

He said "the hybrid player who has size and speed" is featured in eight-player "and it can eliminate the real big kids," which he said are seldom a factor for small schools anyway.

Another plus for the eight-man game comes in scheduling, where the Class D schools no longer have to face larger Class C programs and they can also find opponents in northern Wisconsin, which also has declining enrollments.

Bark River-Harris and Lake Linden-Hubbell are the only Class D schools still fielding 11-man football teams in the Upper Peninsula. Three other schools, Class D Wakefield and Bessemer and Class C Ironwood have consolidated into Gogebic schools for football purposes.