Among the reasons for shrinking participation in high school football, perhaps none is given greater weight than concussions. So when the Chisholm program had "eight or nine" players suffer concussions last fall, its future dimmed.
"That was the start of this," athletic director Mark Morrison said.
He was referring to the Bluestreaks' lost season and - at the risk of sounding hyperbolic - potentially their downright demise. They pulled the plug in August after just 20 players came out. Injuries and attrition have further ravaged the roster as Chisholm tries to piece together a partial schedule. About 15 mostly underclassmen attend daily practices.
This would have been the Bluestreaks' fourth straight year of 11-man football. They played nine-man through 2014, but the school's enrollment necessitated a move up. Chisholm went a combined 7-20 in Class A, including a winless and noncompetitive 2017.
"That definitely hurt us," head coach Donny Quirk said.
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As Morrison spoke by phone earlier this week, he spouted revealing numbers. There were 14 seventh-graders and 11 eighth-graders in the program a year ago. Of those 25, 11 remain. Five seniors hung up their cleats in the offseason.
Even more jarring: Morrison said of the 179 Chisholm students, in grades 7-12, that competed in at least one sport in 2017-18, a stunning 114 were girls (64 percent). Thus, the lack of interest isn't felt exclusively on the gridiron. According to Morrison, the Bluestreaks baseball team started a section playoff game last spring with an outfield consisting of a seventh-grader, an eighth-grader and a freshman.
"It's for all boys sports," he said of a school with a Minnesota State High School League enrollment of 180, though Morrison puts the actual number closer to 230.
Where does Chisholm football go from here? Morrison is kicking around several options. When this season concludes, the Bluestreaks will have played five nine-man games - three varsity, two JV. Expect something similar in 2019, a hybrid schedule with nine-man and possibly 11-man contests. Morrison, who indicated he's open to discussing a potential co-op with Hibbing, doesn't anticipate Chisholm fielding an official varsity squad next year.
Kids just aren't coming out.
"We have almost as many cheerleaders as we do football players," Morrison said.
Quirk said the Bluestreaks would look at petitioning the MSHSL to return to nine-man. Currently, they're slated to remain in Class A for the foreseeable future. The coach thinks that could amount to a death sentence.
"I don't think we'll survive that," Quirk said. "I don't think there will be a flood of kids showing up next year."
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It's become a tough sell, Quirk said. The lack of competitiveness, plus concussion concerns, has deterred would-be participants, leaving the club in limbo.
"We're trying to figure out a way to hold on," Quirk said.
Troubling trends
Chisholm is hardly alone in a region that seems to lose at least one team annually. Duluth Marshall and Cherry folded in 2016, and Northeast Range did the same this past summer - though both the Tigers and Nighthawks expect to be back in 2019.
Twelve of 17 Northland coaches responding to a News Tribune survey said their numbers have dropped; the remaining five said they are holding steady or increasing slightly.
Even a traditional nine-man power like Cromwell-Wright, while a small school to begin with, hasn't had a roster this slim in Jeff Gronner's 21 seasons as a coach - six as an assistant, 15 as the head man. The Cardinals have been dressing 17 players. One Friday night last month, that number was 14. In Friday's win over Isle, it was 15.
And this is a team that has appeared in three of the past four state tournaments, and one that is riding a 27-game regular-season winning streak.
"You would think having the success we've had would keep the older kids out and bring new ones in," Gronner said. "For some reason, it doesn't anymore."
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It's a similar story at Moose Lake-Willow River, which routinely was in the 70s. Recently, the Rebels' roster has hovered around 50.
Doubly alarming for Cromwell-Wright is that seven of its 17 players are seniors. The next two years, Gronner said, could be a struggle, until larger classes hopefully provide reinforcements.
"I'm going to do what I can to have a team next year," Gronner said.
The area's larger schools aren't immune to the downturn. Grand Rapids has 45 varsity players this fall, down about 10-12 from the past four years. Thunderhawks coach Greg Spahn expects that to rebound via healthy classes in grades 7-10.
Duluth Denfeld, meanwhile, had 32 players in uniform for its Sept. 7 home game against Cloquet. That's what South Ridge, about a fifth the size of Denfeld, dresses for its nine-man games. The Hunters, who graduated 24 seniors last year, average between 35-42. At 3-3, they are off to their finest start since 2009, but coach Frank Huie isn't taking anything for granted.
"We have all kinds of talent, but we don't have the depth," he said. "We lose two kids, holy cow."
Denfeld currently has only 11 freshmen, Huie said, but there could be as many as 26 in 2019. Indeed, "cyclical" aptly describes the situation in most places. Ebbs and flows are unavoidable. One outlier can be found in Cloquet, where 62 Lumberjacks, sophomores through seniors, typically suit up. Coach Tom Lenarz said Cloquet has held stable at about 20 players per grade.
Many coaches noted the importance of being creative. Time was, football - especially winning football - sold itself. A mailing would go out in mid-summer announcing the first day of practice, and the field would be crawling with testosterone-laced teens. That's not reality anymore.
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Coaches have to promote their sport and brand the experience while jockeying for kids' attention against a host of alternatives. The list of fall sport offerings has grown, specialization is increasingly prevalent and online gaming is wildly popular.
Likewise, coaches must compete with perception. The concussion issue hasn't abated, which irks many who believe the ubiquitous popularity of football magnifies any negative, real or perceived.
"I've been in this business since 1980 and it's as safe now as it's ever been," Huie said.
Nationally, involvement in 11-man football dipped 2 percent from 2016-17, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations. Overall, participation has declined 6.6 percent in the past decade, as reported by the Washington Post.
Still, there are more than a million teens playing the game across the country, making it - by far - the most-preferred prep sport. Track and field ranked second among boys with 600,000.
