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The Wayne Eagles, a high school football team that reached the Section V semifinals last fall , has decided to join a group that will sit out the 2024 local playoffs.
Wayne coach Dave Marean said the Eagles plan to play this upcoming season as an independent, and that means the team is ineligible to play in sectionals, Section V's popular postseason tournament.
Marean said it was a big decision by Wayne to trade Section V's Federation schedule for a lineup of games as one of 12 teams in the Wayne-Finger Lakes Independent League. And there are more teams outside this group that have declared independence for 2024.
A total of 17 teams in Section V have made the choice at this point. This further shrinks the number of teams in some of Section V's groups for the playoffs. The eight-game regular season schedules also are impacted, as teams need to scramble to find opponents for games this fall.
All of this disruption comes during a time when there is a desire to improve high school football across the state, but with disagreements about the best ways to accomplish this. Small roster sizes are the biggest sign of trouble, despite the fact that football remains the most popular sport in terms of participation.
"This past year we had 19 kids," Marean said about the 2023 Eagles roster. "We suited up JV players.
"We've been successful, but I try to make decisions that are what is best for our football program. It was a tough hat to wear when you are on the Federation (schedule) committee."
The movement was tough news for Section V football.
Scott Barker, the sports coordinator in the section, said that two to six teams per season have opted for independence during the last five years. The best move the Section V football committee can make at this point Barker said, is to figure out why teams struggle, then have to take a timeout and sit out as independents.
"It might open up a dialogue," Barker said.
Why former Section V football teams are opting for independence
Independent teams can put together their schedules and choose their opponents. Section V's Federation schedule calls for teams to play opponents in their classifications, which are based on the size of schools' student enrollments.
“(Independent status or assistance) is really for struggling programs," Barker said. "They don’t feel they can compete in the Federation.”
In a recent vote, schools decided to keep Federation schedules. But there have been complaints since the switch to this arrangement in 2019. Before that year, schools formed leagues based on location and, to a degree, the size of schools' enrollment.
"Some of them are not happy with Federation scheduling," Midlakes football coach Dave Whitcomb said. "You lose some of your rivalries. There are some mismatches. There is travel involved.”
Monroe coach Terrell Cunningham is not surprised that the Federation versus league schedules discussion came up again.
Last season was one of the best in Section V history for Monroe or any other team in the Rochester City School District. Monroe won all of its regular-season games in Class B by 40 or more points, with the exception of a forfeit by Geneva, and advanced to the state tournament semifinals . East High/World of Inquiry, another team in the city school district, reached the Class A state semifinals .
After that success, there were requests to go back to league schedules or change how teams were matched up during the regular season, Cunningham said.
"Batavia has won seven Section V titles (including six since 2014)," Cunningham said. "Nobody ever said, 'We don't want to play them anymore.'
"We had to show up and take our lumps. In 2020, the COVID year, we didn't win a game. We couldn't say, 'Nah, we don't want to play.'"
A call to help teams in the city school district and at private schools fill out their regular season schedules was one of the reasons and benefits for the switch to Federation scheduling. The other was to keep the strength of schedules of teams in classifications or groups as close to the same as possible.
Football teams who will be independent in 2024: The list
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These independent teams can return to sectional play soon as next season:
- Bishop Kearney/Rochester Academy Charter School (Class C merged team, a private and a charter school)
- Edison/School of the Arts/Early College/Franklin/Northeast/School Without Walls (Class AA merged team in Rochester City School District)
- Finney/Northstar (8-man, merged team of private schools)
- Clyde-Savannah (Class D team, second season in Wayne-Finger Lakes Independent League)
- Geneva (Class B team, joined Wayne-Finger Lakes Independent League for 2024)
- Greece Olympia/Odyssey (Class A team, independent in 2023)
- Lyons/Sodus (Class C team, joined Wayne-Finger Lakes Independent League for 2024)
- Marcus Whitman/Bloomfield (Class C team, second season in Wayne-Finger Lakes Independent League)
- Midlakes (Class B team , second season in Wayne-Finger Lakes Independent League)
- Mynderse (Class C team, second season in Wayne-Finger Lakes Independent League)
- Newark/Marion (Class B team, second season in Wayne-Finger Lakes Independent League)
- Palmyra-Macedon (Class B team, second season in Wayne-Finger Lakes Independent League)
- Penn Yan/Dundee (Class B team, joined Wayne-Finger Lakes Independent League for 2024)
- South Seneca/Romulus (Class D team, second season in Wayne-Finger Lakes Independent League)
- Waterloo (Class C team, second season in Wayne-Finger Lakes Independent League)
- Dansville/Wayland-Cohocton (Class B team)
- Wayne (Class B team, joined Wayne-Finger Lakes Independent League for 2024)
Ripple effect
Each of the Section V football tournaments have room for eight teams, but the classifications continue to shrink.
Class AA is down one to eight teams, since Edison's merged team is again an independent. Class A went from 15 to 13 teams, because the student enrollment numbers at Wilson and Eastridge moved those schools out of the group. Greece Olympia/Odyssey stepped away from Class A after the 2022 season, and played as an independent in 2023.
The move to the Wayne-Finger Lakes Independent League took away from Class B and Class C the most. Even with the arrival of Wilson and Eastridge, Class B is down from eight to seven teams. There were nine teams in Class C in 2023, and now six are scheduled to play this fall, including the new LeRoy/Caledonia-Mumford team, rivals who have merged.
The number of teams in Class D has bumped up from six to eight, but the pool of 8-man teams went from seven to five after the moves made by Finney and Caledonia-Mumford.
Will the size of Section V football tournaments shrink in the future? One reason why sectionals were expanded to eight teams was to reward more teams. More schools, players and their families became a part of the postseason experience, so cutting the size of the tournament would seem unpopular.
Why sit out of Section V football sectionals?
A spot in sectionals is still considered a prize, according to school officials and coaches of teams in the Wayne-Finger Lakes Independent League formed in 2023.
But there are teams that struggle to play competitive games, let alone contend for a sectional title.
"Then you start to lose programs," Whitcomb said. "Kids don't play. There are no JVs and modifieds.
"You have to do things to enhance your program; you have to do some things to help it."
Marean, the coach at Wayne, said the state of high school football "is scary, especially for small schools."
"Is the sectionals the most important thing?" Marean said. "It is to give a good experience. It wasn't an easy decision (to go independent), but we feel comfortable.
"We lost a lot of kids. Talking to multi-sport athletes, they said we weren’t playing the kids they were used to playing in basketball or baseball. It just doesn’t seem the same."
Whitcomb "really saved a lot of programs" by organizing the Wayne-Finger Lakes Independent League, Marean said.
"It brings a league title into it," Marean said. "That’s important, if you are a team that may not compete for a sectional title. We were kind of in the middle (in Section V Football Class B).
"We’ve had success, but at the same point, I‘ve worked too hard to have the program fall. Having practices with 17, 18, 19 kids and practicing with the JV just to get practices in, it's not good for anybody."
Eight other teams believed it was a good idea to opt out of Section V's Federation formation after the 2022 season and form the Wayne-Finger Lakes Independent League. Wayne, Geneva, Lyons/Sodus and Penn Yan/Dundee moved into the league this off season, with the plan to "grow all of our programs," Newark/Marion coach Mike McGavisk said.
"We just had an honest discussion about what the kids wanted, what we wanted," McGavisk said. "We didn’t know who else was going to be independent.
"It became clear that other coaches were feeling the way that we were feeling, and we didn’t know it."
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Football fraction: Why 17 teams are opting to sit out 2024 Section V playoffs?
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