COMMENTARY
Fairmont Senior’s freshman quarterback Taner Woodman toted the ball on a 17-yard run before he was pushed out of bounds just short of the goal line in the late stages of the Polar Bears’ Week 3 victory over Preston. With just under two minutes to play on a running clock, Woodman ran towards the sidelines to get the next play call from his coaching staff.
Woodman nodded his head and returned to the huddle to deliver the play to his teammates. Perhaps the freshman was hiding some disappointment that he would not get a chance to score a touchdown in a varsity game. The coaches instructed Woodman to take a knee. The Polar Bears did so three times and the game ended.
With second and third-team players in the game for Fairmont since the early stages of the second half, it would not have been unreasonable for head coach Nick Bartic to allow his younger players to run one or two more plays and try to score a varsity-level touchdown. Bartic, as many coaches often do, elected to end the game without more points being put on the scoreboard.
Final score: Fairmont Senior 56, Preston 0.
Casual observers of high school sports may have been surprised to see the following scores pop up on the MetroNews High School Football Scoreboard page on September 1 during the second Friday of the season.
Some final scores involving Class AAA teams read: 86-0, 93-7 and 84-6.
Admittedly, the numbers caught my attention, even though blowouts in many high school contests, notably in football, are not uncommon.
The dominant storyline in West Virginia High School athletics throughout the brief summer offseason was the implementation of House Bill 2820. In short, the bill allows student-athletes a one-time transfer option to play at another school without having to establish residence in the district of the new school. Previously, students making such a move would be required to sit out of competition at their new school for a period of 365 days.
The bill passed through the state legislature by a wide margin. While many around the state are drawing a direct correlation between the passing of House Bill 2820 and many lopsided results in early-season competitions, the root causes of blowout games and programs that have struggled to compete at a high level run much deeper.
A common misconception with the House Bill 2080 is that it allows recruiting of players much like we see at the college ranks. That is not true and the SSAC has levied punishment against offending schools.
Blowouts and student-athlete transfers have been happening for years. Has the recently-passed legislation increased the disparity between the haves and the have-nots? To a degree, yes. Is it the only reason for some of the eye-popping numbers on the scoreboards? Certainly not.
Trading places
In covering West Virginia High School athletics at different levels over the last 22 years, an annual rite of summer for me just prior to the start of a new season is to ask around with coaches and fellow media members about which top athletes traded places over the offseason. It would be a regular occurence to attend a preseason practice during the “three-week offseason workout window” and say, ‘Oh, they go here now?’
Previously, the WVSSAC established guidelines where students can enroll at any high school of their choosing prior to the start of ninth grade regardless of whether or not that school corresponds to their residential zone. Otherwise, students could petition the WVSSAC for a waiver to transfer and the majority of such requests were usually granted.
Students also always had the option to transfer back to their home district at any time without having to sit out from competition.
While actual numbers are impossible to quantify, many student-athletes found new homes every year, often times at schools that were close to their home district but perhaps had better programs, better facilities or a better chance for exposure to colleges. Look up and down rosters of some of the state’s top teams in all sports and you can find players that have opted to make such moves.
Should the ability to make such moves be a part of high school athletics? There’s no shortage of opinions on that topic and that is not the point of this commentary. The simple point is, student-athletes electing to transfer has been commonplace for decades and one piece of legislation didn’t launch this practice.
Sportsmanship issues
Mechanisms have been in place in many sports to keep wide scoring margins in check as much as possible. In baseball, a game is stopped if there is a spread of ten runs or more after five innings of play. Softball has a similar rule in place with an eight-run spread. This is the first year of a so-called “mercy rule” in soccer. A spread of ten goals will end the match.
In football, a spread of 35 points entering the fourth quarter will automatically trigger a “running clock”. In that scenario, the clock will only stop on scoring plays, changes of possession and timeouts. Coaches can also mutually agree to shorten quarters in the second half of games. This is a common practice where coaches meet at halftime and agree to play less than the regular 12-minute quarters.
In the previously-mentioned win for Fairmont Senior over Preston, both head coaches agreed to play 10-minute quarters in the second half after the Polar Bears led 42-0 at halftime. Coaches can agree on any length of time to be played. Fairmont Senior coaches had substituted reserve players in throughout the first half and all of their starting players were pulled after the opening possession of the third quarter.
Why play a second half at all in such a lopsided contest? There could be several reasons. The losing team can keep their starters in the game, possibly build some confidence and find plays that may work against future opponents. The winning team can get some valuable reps for their second and third-team players, usually comprised of freshmen and sophomores.
Playing time is often the greatest reward a coach to bestow upon a player. For second or third-team players that practice and grind through an offseason and preseason just like starting players, getting snaps in a football game validates their commitment to the program, regardless of whether or not that game features a lopsided score.
Competitive balance
Returning to the three scores mentioned earlier from Week 2: 86-0, 93-7 and 84-6. It is shocking to see a pair of programs with such storied histories as Capital and South Charleston fall on hard times so quickly. The Cougars won the Class AAA state championship in 2014 and they advanced to the semifinals as recently as 2018. South Charleston was the last team left standing in 2020 and both programs have produced top-level Division I players.
Both programs have seen some of their best players leave for out-of-state programs and neighboring schools in recent years. Many of those transfers occurred before this offseason. In 2022, the average margin of defeat for South Charleston and Capital was 45 points and they combined to win just four games.
While a basketball team can get by with five starters and a couple of bench players, depth for a football team competing in the state’s largest classification is critical. Both teams have struggled mightily to get players to join the program. And those who have made the decision to fight through the adversity and give their best efforts on the field may be in the younger classes and are not yet optimized for varsity competition. Fellow Kanawha County school St. Albans is also battling low numbers.
While these programs may not be losing 15-20 players to transfers every year, it is reasonable to assume that players are less likely to go through the physical demands that the game of football requires if they don’t believe their team will have success. Losing star players year-by-year can cause that.
It appears that the highest concentrations of transfers have been found in Kanawha County and the I-64 corridor between Charleston and Huntington. That makes sense when you consider a high volume of upper classification schools in a condensed area. A student would be less likely to search for a new school if the closest school is 45 minutes to an hour away.
It is safe to assume that nobody is comfortable coaching in or playing in a game with a 70-point margin on the scoreboard. Winning coaches often go to great lengths to keep the score down, such as taking kneel downs earlier in games than the situation might otherwise call for or running very conservative plays designed specifically to keep the clock moving.
Do some coaches operate outside the bounds of sportsmanship? Perhaps. My guess is that list is a brief one. The vast majority of coaches do their best to manage lopsided games with as much respect to their opponents as possible.
In Week 1, Parkersburg South defeated Capital, 83-26. PSHS head coach Nathan Tanner discussed measures he took once realizing that the game was well in the favor of the Patriots.
“We ended up sitting all our varsity kids after the second quarter,” Tanner said. “Our JV [junior varsity] game this week actually got cancelled so a lot of those JV guys got valuable reps in the second half. We worked three quarterbacks in the game. Our three-deep and even four-deep players got reps, live game reps. Those are very valuable.”
Tanner raises an important point about declining participation numbers in football around the country and in West Virginia. Fewer programs are able to field junior varsity and freshman teams, making it more difficult for young players to get game action. Being rewarded with playing time is the best way to ensure that players will stay engaged with their teams in future years.
Ideally, fans would be able to attend a game with the expectation of seeing a competitive contest every time. That has never been reality in high school sports. Dominant programs can be found in every sport. That is why state championship seasons authored by squads like the 2021 Ritchie County football team are so celebrated. Underdogs vs. Dynasties can create compelling drama.
Where do we go from here?
On Wednesday, Governor Jim Justice mentioned at his regular press briefing that House Bill 2820 should be revisited. He did so while acknowledging that he did not oppose the bill’s passage at the time, saying that any veto attempt would have likely been overridden.
If the legislation does come up for discussion in the future, any return to previous policies installed by the SSAC will still lead to student athletes trading places, perhaps not at the level they happened throughout this most recent offseason.
Later this year, a decision will be finalized on whether or not to add a fourth classification to many high school sports in West Virginia, similar to what has been in place in basketball for the last three years. Football could be one of those sports. Perhaps, schools with declining enrollment and thus fewer student-athletes roaming the hallways can have more opportunities to set their schedules against schools close to their size. Teams are free to schedule opponents as they wish but to be playoff-eligible, they must play a certain number of teams in their class or higher.
In the meantime, we will see more blowouts on the scoreboard but hopefully those can become more infrequent as the season progresses.
One piece of legislation crafted five months ago did not create the disparities we see on Friday nights, nor did it help solve the problem. Both of these things can be true.