Numbers game hampers City League teams

Bowsher's Corey Williams, left, couldn't come up with the tackle of Perrysburg's Austin McKinley in the season-opening 54-14 win by the Yellow Jackets. The six City League teams have yet to win a game this season. THE BLADE/JEREMY WADSWORTH Enlarge | Photo Reprints

Already decimated in membership numbers by the exodus of five member schools at the end of the 2010-11 school year, what remains of City League football appears to be in a downward spiral two weeks into the 2011 season.

As the six remaining CL teams prepare for their third week of non-league play, all enter their games tonight with 0-2 records.

At least as far back as 1992, this is the first time none of the Toledo Public Schools football teams have collectively gone winless through the first two weeks of a season.

With each TPS team entering tonight's contests as clear underdogs, the likelihood is that all six will drop to 0-3.

As the accountants say, the numbers don't lie.

Bowsher, Rogers, Scott, Start, Waite, and Woodward have been outscored 455-102, an average of score of 37.9 to 8.5 per contest, while posting a composite 0-12 record.

In fairness, the TPS portion of the City League has not fared particularly well throughout the last 20 years, posting a record of 61-210 in the opening two weeks of all seasons between 1992 and 2011. The best year was a 6-8 mark in 2000, when the league still included Libbey as a seventh TPS team.

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In the last two seasons, the scores through the two opening weeks became more lopsided. The six teams were outscored 433-113 during an 1-11 start last year.

Although all the TPS teams are winless, the strength of the programs within the depleted City League is wide ranging.

At the high end, Rogers was 9-2 overall in 2009 and 7-3 last year. The Rams' losses this year were to Anthony Wayne (41-22) and traditional Northern Lakes League power Southview (18-0).

Start fell 42-6 in week 1, but that was against rival and Division I state power Whitmer. Last week the Spartans lost 24-19 to Anthony Wayne.

At the lower end, the TPS downfall is much more evident. Woodward, a Division II team which is riding a 34-game losing streak, opened with a 34-0 loss at Sheffield Brookside and a 50-6 drubbing at Danbury. Brookside is a D-IV school which had gone 7-33 the last four years, and Danbury is a D-VI school with just 55 boys in its upper three grades, and its football team was 3-36 between 2007-10.

"Grades and eligibility are the No. 1 things that hammer me at Woodward," first-year Polar Bears head coach Curtis Smith said, "and then we have kids who transfer out. Woodward is a more transient school.

Inexperience, which often leads to mistakes, seems to be a perpetual hurdle at Woodward. Another drawback for the Polar Bears is the lack of a home field during the last three seasons. Woodward has 40 players in its program, including 13 freshmen.

St. Johns' Matt Miller, left, sacks Rogers quarterback D.J. Tucker during the preseason Shoe Bowl games held on Aug. 19. Teams in the City League have been outscored by an average of 37.9-8.5 during the first two weeks of the season. THE BLADE/JEREMY WADSWORTH Enlarge | Photo Reprints

"We had nine unforced turnovers Friday night," Smith said of the loss at Danbury. "We rushed for 301 yards, but we turned it over nine times, and they had 373 yards of offense. They outperformed us.

"When you outweigh an opponent by a thousand pounds, you can't go in there and be soft. We have to be tougher. It's just a mindset more than anything else.

"We don't have a snowball's chance versus St. John's [tonight at Rogers], so we'll use it as an opportunity to get better. We're trying to build things little by little."

Scott dropped its opener 34-0 at Cleveland John Marshall and last week fell 49-0 at Otsego, a D-IV school that was 6-34 the last three seasons.

Bowsher, the preseason City League favorite, was thumped 54-14 in its opener at Perrysburg and last week lost 27-12 to visiting Springfield, which was picked to finish seventh in the NLL this season. Waite lost 37-14 at NLL power Maumee in week 1 and last week was beaten 33-9 at home by Northview.

As the losses mount, things appear to be getting worse for the TPS programs.

Having already lost freshman football last fall, the TPS programs also took a cut in coaching this fall. The six teams now have just four paid coaching positions. Head coaches have a salary range of between $4,000 and $5,500, and three assistant coaches are paid around $3,000 each.

By contrast, some top football programs in the area have six to eight paid coaches, plus numerous volunteer assistants on staffs that approach 18-20 total coaches at places like Central and Whitmer.

"There's four of us with 62 guys out there," second-year Bowsher head coach Craig Lubinski said. "In a high school football game there are five [game] officials for 22 kids, and the prime reason for officials is safety.

"So, you tell me exactly how safe we are with four guys and 62 kids. It's tough. We're competing against schools with nine or 10 or maybe up to 19 coaches."

"It's extremely hard," third-year Scott head coach Mike Daniels said. "Myself and three other coaches have to do double or triple duty. A coach will have to work with linebackers and tight ends and then have to do special teams as well. Losing that coaching position was a tremendous blow."

An even more significant long-term blow may be the loss of freshman football. Freshmen can participate in practice at the varsity level, but the TPS freshman numbers have dropped dramatically because of two factors -- their lack of opportunity to play in games and their reluctance to compete in daily practice drills against seniors and juniors who are much larger and physically imposing.

"There's a huge [size] discrepancy between little league football and high school football," Lubinski said. "And, I'm not talking jumping up to freshman football, because these kids don't even get that anymore. They go right to varsity.

"A lot of these kids aren't mature or ready as freshman to even play JV football, but that's where they've got to play."

The risk of injury prevalent in these mismatched situations far outweighs the reward of very little, if any, playing time for the freshmen.

"We've got some pretty athletic and physically big and strong kids on our varsity," said Randy Bartz, who is back as Rogers head coach after an 11-year stint as athletic director there. "Do you really think a freshman, when he's 14 years old, wants to have to come out and compete with these kids? And, I don't have enough coaches to separate them.

"You can't put a freshman in on the scout team and have him getting killed by seniors. It's not fair, so they stand around most of the time. Then, when you get them in, they know nothing about football."

Start has the most freshmen of all the TPS programs, with 25 ninth-graders among 80 players in the program. That allows the Spartans to keep the younger players isolated in their own practice.

Rogers has six freshmen in its 50-player program, and Scott only has four ninth-graders among its 30 total players.

"I don't do anything with the freshman [at varsity practice]," second-year Start head coach Tyson Harder said, "because I just think pairing up a 14 or 15-year-old against an 18-year-old is how injuries occur. Our freshmen and sophomores, and a few juniors, work together on a separate field.

"You have to keep the kid's interest. If they're not getting any playing time, then they've got to be saying, 'What is football to me if I'm just getting my butt banged around Monday through Wednesday.'"

Freshmen who choose not to come out for football until their sophomore or junior years, lag behind in training, fundamentals, and playing experience, when and if they do return.

"The lack of experience is a big thing because you're reinventing the wheel [each year], having to teach guys and starting over from scratch," Daniels said. "We have some guys who have never played before.

"The freshman programs being dismantled is a big thing. You can't just go out and play football recreationally [11-on-11, with equipment] like you can do with a sport like basketball. Given the choice of having another coach or having freshman football, I'd absolutely take freshman football," Lubinski said. "Now you're using the word 'program' again as opposed to team."

TPS has also lost a significant number of potential freshmen athletes who have transferred out of the system entirely to be able to participate in another school system.

In each successive year with freshman teams, TPS coaches fear a continued decline in competitiveness as their program numbers drop.

"You take away any chance of developing a program by eliminating freshman football," Lubinski said. "You've got to start from the bottom up. It's like building a house. You can't put the roof on first. You have to start with the basement. You can't do it any other way and hope it stays together."

Contact Steve Junga at: sjunga@theblade.com or 419-724-6461.