PASSING GAME

AMID FEARS OF LONG- TERM BRAIN ISSUES, FEWER HIGH SCHOOLERS PLAYING FOOTBALL, SURVEY FINDS

Ever since first grade, 14- yearold Henry Wagner had spent his autumn afternoons practicing and playing football. But this year, the Naperville teen traded in his helmet and shoulder pads for running shoes and shorts.

“The day before school registration, he told me he was switching to cross- country,” said Wendy Wagner, his mother, who’s a pediatric physical therapist. “I danced like a schoolgirl. He’s the one who made the decision. But he knew I felt very strongly about the potential risks, and I probably had a big outside influence on that decision.”

Henry is part of a wave of defections over the past decade from a sport that long has been part of the American high school experience and holds marching band, cheerleading and homecoming in its orbit.

The decline in participation is true in Chicago, where school officials would not provide complete figures on individual schools but say the number of schools offering football has fallen.

In late September, Whitney Young Magnet High School — the selective- enrollment school on the city’s Near West Side — canceled the remainder of its varsity football season because it couldn’t field enough players.

There also are fewer kids playing in suburban high schools. A Daily Herald/ Chicago Sun- Times survey of 87 public schools found an 18.7 percent drop since 2008 in the number of students playing high school football. At some schools, the survey found, the number of students playing football plummeted by 40 percent or more.

The survey found the decline has grown steeper in the past two years and has been especially pronounced among freshman, sophomore and junior varsity teams.

Statewide, football participation declined by nearly 17 percent from 2007 to 2016, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.

Coaches and parents give many reasons — among those a broader array of fall sports and activities now offered, as well as a trend toward specializing in a single sport that’s seeing fewer multisport ath- letes than in the past.

But much of the decline has resulted from concerns about safety, according to coaches, athletic directors, doctors and parents.

“I’ve had more parents who weren’t super excited about it in the first place, and then the kid suffers a concussion, and the parents will say, ‘ Don’t worry, Doc, he’s not playing anymore,’ ” said Dr. Nathaniel Jones, an orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine specialist