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Option 2 for football?

Midd-West, Mifflinburg discuss possible cooperative

MIDDLEBURG — With a ticking clock, Midd-West’s school board took a look at a second option to preserve football for the school’s student athletes when its cooperative agreement with East Juniata expires at the end of this season.

This time, it was another cooperative that was discussed, at the board’s workshop meeting Monday.

“We were forced to start looking at options that we would pursue for our students,” Midd-West superintendent Rick Musselman said of the position the school was in after Juniata County School District voted to end the current co-op between Midd-West and East Juniata.

Musselman said he contacted other schools — Selinsgrove, Mifflin County and Mifflinburg all connect to Midd-West — and that Mifflinburg was willing to listen. Monday, Mifflinburg superintendent Daniel Lichtel and several board members opened a dialog with their Snyder County counterparts.

Lichtel told the Midd-West board he felt it was important to have options for the students, the same position Midd-West has staked out.

“Football is a source of pride in our community and our school and we would like to see that grow,” Lichtel said. “Extracurricular activities are good for kids and having them be involved in something helps them later in life.”

Growth has been a problem for Mifflinburg, where the participation level has dwindled. Only 35 players are on the team there this year. Midd-West projected 54 players this year in grades 9 to 12 — it has been the majority contributor to the East Juniata team for several seasons — and had 40 signed up as of Monday, the first official day of the fall sports season.

The Mustangs have sent between 27 and 40 varsity players to Cocolamus each of the past four years. Lichtel told Midd-West board president Victor Abate that the numbers are trending downward at his school, which he attributed to the popularity of other sports.

“Your numbers must be having an impact on your ability to compete,” Abate said — and Lichtel agreed.

“As that number continues to dwindle, one concern that I have has to do with student injuries. A key student injury may affect somebody who is playing on both sides of the ball,” Lichtel said. “I feel OK where we are but would be concerned if our numbers continue to dwindle.”

A co-op would be new territory for Mifflinburg, but that doesn’t faze Lichtel.

“There are a number of matters on which we already share services in other regards with other school districts nearby,” he said, identifying transportation and personnel among them. “Football can be a difficult issue to get past the public. I’m struggling to advocate one way or another — I think this is a decision their board needs to make, what they would like to do.”

The framework shown to board members at the meeting had similarities to the current agreement between Midd-West and East Juniata — Midd-West would provide transportation for its players, and pay a pro rata share of operating costs.

Other issues discussed included academic requirements for participation, roster cuts, varsity awards, booster funding, band and cheerleaders. And Midd-West board member Christopher Nesbit questioned how a new co-op would affect classification.

It would increase — for Mifflinburg, and put the Wildcats just 20 male students away from a two-classification jump using current figures. That would mean a postseason impact that would take the program out of District 4; even a single step up in class puts Mifflinburg in the mix with some of the district’s strongest football schools.

“I don’t know that that’s a good motivator,” Lichtel said. “I think if we put a team together that made the postseason, then it doesn’t matter who we play. It shows we’re a competitive team.”

Without advocating either position, Musselman pointed out that a new co-op is likely to be budget neutral, while a new team carries a steeper price tag.

“We did look at what it would cost to fund our own program,” he said.

One board member, Thomas Rubillo, spoke in favor of the idea of beginning a Midd-West program.

“I personally would love to see Midd-West do our own thing here. Our numbers are increasing,” he said. “And the dollar figures we have discussed … yes, it was an increase in cost but it was not that unreasonable.

“This is just a thought: What if things might be reversed? My fear of us entering into another co-op is a few years down the road we could end up in the same position.”

Anatomy of a co-op

When two or more schools want to have a sports but are unable to begin independent programs, they can form a team together as a cooperative agreement, and play under the flag of one school with PIAA approval.

This is how Midd-West students have been playing football since 2001, when the school district made an agreement with Juniata County School District to form a co-op with East Juniata. The co-op is ending after this season.

A co-op started this fall on an emergency basis allowed Belleville Mennonite School to keep field hockey available to its female students. Belleville Mennonite did not have enough players on its own to field a team, so interested girls will play at Huntingdon for the next two seasons (the minimum allowable time for a co-op under PIAA rules), and possibly longer.

Juniata and East Juniata have several co-op sports within their district. And Greenwood has several co-ops with Newport, with each school hosting more than one.

Once a cooperative is formed, the PIAA will reclassify that team based on its population. PIAA classes for individual teams are derived from male and female student population counts in grades nine through 11 conducted each odd-numbered year, and are proportional based on the number of schools sponsoring each sport.

Co-op classification is based on the total single-gender population from the largest school in the co-op, and half of the others.

Midd-West has 241 male students in the current cycle, which would put it in Class 3A as an independent football team. East Juniata’s 137 male students would put that school in Class A. But when they combine, the total jumps to 310, which makes East Juniata a Class 4A team.

Using current numbers — they will change next school year — 257 Mifflinburg students (Class 3A) and half of Midd-West’s make a co-op population of 378. That’s Class 4A this year, but is only 20 students off of Class 5A, which means a co-op beginning next year could be in the higher class when all numbers are taken into account.

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