Centennial to forfeit against Howard
Eagles to drop game Friday because of lack of players, but plan to finish season
The Centennial varsity football team will forfeit its home game against Howard on Friday night because of a lack of players, Howard County Public School System’s Coordinator of Athletics John Davis said Wednesday.
Centennial disbanded its football team for the 2017 season because of a “lack of sufficient players and concern for student safety,” according to a HCPSS news release.
The Eagles don’t plan to disband this season. Davis said the plan is for Centennial to forfeit its game against Howard and “get healthy” before playing the final three weeks of the season against Reservoir, Hammond and Oakland Mills.
“Everybody wants to move forward with the season, but they just don’t have enough healthy kids right now to line up this week,” Davis said. “The plan is this week they’re going to get healthy, get back and then play against Reservoir [on Oct. 19]. Whatever happens happens after that, but the plan is to play the last three games. ... I think they should be good going forward because they are getting a few kids back next week. They’ll be able to play next week.”
The decision to forfeit was made this week following a conversation between Davis, Centennial Athletics and Activities Manager Jeannie Prevosto and head varsity coach Billy Martin before the Eagles’ game at River Hill on Oct. 5. They had 16 players dressed and 15 played during their 56-0 road loss against the Hawks, Martin said, and seven players were out because of injury. Thegamehadarunning clock throughout.
Martin said that the team had 25 players on the varsity roster for the first game Aug. 31 against Glenelg, but have been seeing one or two players sustain injuries each week to create the current predicament.
“Just from the Long Reach game three weeks ago to the River Hill game on Friday we lost three guys that started both ways and were playing basically the whole game,” Martin said. “With limited numbers to begin with, it’s tough to sustain those kind of losses. So we started thinking about the big picture and, with three to six kids due back from injury over the next week, we feel like if we take a week off then we should be able to get healthy enough to compete the rest of the way.”
At practice on Wednesday, Martin said the team had just 13 varsity players medically cleared to participate.
“That’s just not enough, especially going up against a 4AteaminHowardthat’s got 70kids on their team,” said Davis, whoadded that the decline of participants was a result of “everything.”
“There’s normal attrition. You’ve got kids that are not available due to injury, different disciplinary reasons, you’ve got kids that do quit and all that, but it’s not a big portion.”
Davis said that when healthy, Centennial has more than 20 players. He added the team hopes to reach that markheading into the rest of the season.
The junior varsity game against Howard will be played Friday at 4 p.m. as scheduled, while Centennial and Mount Hebron varsity boys soccer will be played in the 7 p.m. time slot at Centennial.
“Our kids are disappointed because they want to play football, as I’m certain their kids are as well,” said Howard Athletics and Activities Manager Michael Duffy, who added that Prevosto informed him of the forfeit Tuesday. “Kids on both teams are competitors. They want to play a game, but they understand it’s an unfortunate situation.”
Duffy added that upon hearing the news, Howard coaches and players turned their focus to their home game against Hammond on Oct. 19.
Centennial, a Class 3A school in Ellicott City with an enrollment of 1,614 students in 2017-18, is 0-6 this season and has been outscored 292-0. It went1-9in 2016 and0-10 in 2015 and 2014 after winning seven games in 2013. The Eagles made their only appearance at the state tournamentin1980 andfinished as semifinalists.
Centennial had more than 40 players between varsity and JV at the first day of tryouts on Aug. 8.