AKRON, Ohio — The waning weeks of the high school football season bring hopes for the playoffs, senior nights and homecomings. However, for the Akron North High School Vikings, the season came to an abrupt end this week after administrators and coaches determined the school couldn’t safely field a team, largely due to injuries.
Head coach Doug Miller and North’s athletic director, Carrie Stewart, reached the decision to suspend the remainder of the football season on Tuesday and informed the team. Entering the season, the Vikings fielded a squad of 28 players but issues with eligibility and a litany of injuries left the healthy roster to barely more than a dozen.
“It’s definitely not ideal and definitely not what we hoped for at all — or foresaw. I think really the last four weeks we’ve been holding things together with shoe strings at times,” Coach Miller said. “You feel bad for your seniors. They’ve only been with me for a year but they’ve been here for four. They don’t get to finish their last two games. This was our homecoming and our senior night. That’s definitely one of the toughest things that I have to do, making a decision and breaking the news: two things I never want to have to make as a head coach.”
Miller, who is in his first season as the Vikings head coach, said the decision to suspend the season was primarily motivated by concerns about player safety. With such a small roster of healthy players, some of whom have been dealing with nagging injuries, the student athletes had been playing offense, defense and special teams. Having the student athletes play the entire game not only creates the risk of aggravating injuries, but also increases the likelihood that they would suffer new ailments.
“We weren’t doing them any good service by keeping them on the field for 48 minutes,” Miller said. “To that effect, if one of those injuries gets worse and they can’t play at all, then we have to forfeit in the middle of the game as opposed to giving the other teams a chance for playoff purposes.”
Stewart, the athletic director at North High School, said it has been difficult to watch the team struggle with injuries, especially over the past couple of games. Multiple student athletes suffered season-ending injuries early in the year. As the roster was whittled down to just over a dozen players, there were concerns that any further injuries would result in the school being able to field a team — let alone 11 players in suitable positions for their size, skillset and body type.
“We’re just watching week after week, our numbers are dwindling. Injuries, some of them kids are trying to come back from. Some of them we know kids are trying to come back from,” Stewart said. “ I can’t look at a parent after we put a kid on the field and they aren’t prepared to be there and tell them that’s why their kid got hurt. We had to make the best decision for the athletes. I would hate to see anybody lose a season. I’m looking at the seniors that didn’t know that they were going to have an 8 game season. This is it for them.”
The decision to suspend the season also sets into motion a flurry of phone calls for the what were going to be the Vikings’ final two opponents, Butchel and Garfield.
Garfield’s athletic director, Mike DiFalco, told News 5 that he has already placed several phone calls to identify a new Week 10 opponent, which is also scheduled to be Garfield’s senior night and homecoming.
“I’ll look for a team that is in a similar situation to North where they might not have enough players to finish a season and go through their schedule and look at who their opponents are for Week 9 and week 10,” DiFalco said. “Also, there are a couple of conferences with an odd number of teams that may have a bye week in week 10. We definitely want to try to fill it. Week 10 is a tough one but we are going to try our best.”
The process of finding a last minute opponent is something DiFalco and other athletic directors in Ohio have grown accustomed to after the COVID-19 pandemic frequently caused teams to cancel games because of players testing positive.
“This was like an every-week thing. But it was a little bit easier to find opponents because everybody in the state was dealing with it,” DiFalco said. “t’s a tough situation. I know Coach Miller over there. He’s done a great job this season. It’s just unfortunate that he has had a few injuries stretch but he was doing a really great job of building that program. Hopefully next season he’ll get his numbers back right.”
