WARREN, Pa. — The Youngsville High School football team will likely be joined with Warren Area High School’s next season.

The Warren County School District administration informally recommended combining the programs in response to declining numbers at Youngsville that have contributed to unsafe conditions for some players.

In December, District 10 asked Warren County School District to look into Youngsville forfeits that were announced weeks in advance. “Due to injuries and concerns for player safety, prior to the fifth game on their schedule, Youngsville decided that they weren’t going to play weeks seven and eight,” Superintendent Amy Stewart said.

The team had a maximum of 26 players on the roster and played a game with only 15 players.

The school and community had aggressively campaigned for more players prior to the season, resulting in a number of players that was acceptable according to district guidelines. “Everyone at Youngsville worked really hard to try to make this work for the kids,” Stewart said. However, administrators said previously that sometimes the number of students on the roster is not the only factor when considering the status of a program.

“The amount of pressure that is on our students to fill those seats is immense,” she said. “It concerns me in terms of what kind of pressure we are putting on these kids. I don’t want students to feel like they have to sign up. Especially in a contact sport like football. We want you to play football because you love football.”

Stewart said officials told her “when they were playing with 15 and 18 players, many of the players that were left were JV, they used the term JV at best, and some not even at the JV level.”

“If you have JV players, you want them playing JV,” she said.

“Nobody here wants to see a school lose their team,” Stewart said. “We recognize that all those things are tied to the community.”

“There’s a point where all logic indicates that a system is broken,” she said. “We can’t take the approach that we’ll do our best to try to field a team. We just don’t have enough experienced (players) to responsibly field a team.”

“This isn’t about anybody winning,” Stewart said. “It’s not about money.”

“It’s our responsibility to make a decision that’s in the best interest of kids,” “she said. “To knowingly put our kids out there in the future, knowing where we’ve been, just doesn’t make sense.”

“These are hard things to talk about,” she said. “People are going to be angry tomorrow.”

“We are going to be making a recommendation and doing all the paperwork that is required for a co-op,” Stewart said.

That co-op has to be with Warren.

“It’s the only option,” Director of Administrative Support Services Gary Weber said.

Supervisor of District-Wide Athletics Rick Gignac said a co-op with Eisenhower would change that program’s classification from 2A to 3A. That change cannot be made for the 2017-2018 season. Joining with Warren will not add enough students to push that program from 4A to 5A.

There is time pressure.

“If we want to have an opportunity for these students to play football and have a co-op, we have to have that decision in March,” Stewart said.

“We know what sports means to every one of these communities,” Board Member Paul Mangione said. “The irresponsible thing would be to keep lowering these numbers and keep letting this happen.”

“If we choose to do nothing, that team is going to go away,” Mangione said. “If we choose to do something we can hopefully give them a viable option.”

Gignac and Weber presented several options for combining other sports in coming years.

“Rick’s been working with the athletic directors to come up with different models,” Stewart said. “Nothing has to be done right now.”

“By the end of our third meeting, the realization from our ADs was that there needs to be some change,” Gignac said. “I hope we can look at heading to one of these models.”

Some co-op programs could be based at the district’s smallest high schools. “In  your own district, (PIAA rules say) a smaller school can co-op a larger school,” Gignac said.

“It’s like we’re spreading everything too thin, even the kids,” Stewart said. “What we would like to do is just let you take a look at where we might need to scale some seats back.”

“I’m hoping as a board we can look to be proactive and move in one of these directions,” before the board is forced to react to a situation like the Youngsville football program, Board Member Joe Colosimo said.

Administrators discussed, but ultimately decided against eliminating the varsity program at Youngsville and offering only JV. “We definitely discussed that option,” Weber said. “We really felt it was not in the best interests of the students.”

PIAA rules do not allow a school to offer a JV program of its own and participate in a co-op for varsity.

According to Gignac, there is no impact on Title IX requirements because football is still offered to students at Youngsville.