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Avella football ... doomed before they even start?

By Colin Dunlap ][ 7:41 p.m. Sunday

I don't like absolutely hate having to write things like this, but sometimes the news isn't all good.

Anyhow, here goes: The Avella football team is hurting, big time. And I'm not talking about getting outscored, 78-334 last season as they went 0-9. No, I'm not talking the program being in serious jeopardy of existing. 

I just got word that yesterday's scrimmage between Avella and Laurel, which was set to happen at Avella, was called off because, quite simply, Avella did not have enough healthy players. They had about 18 players when camp began on Monday, then a few injuries occured throughout the first week of camp dwindling the numbers. On Friday, Avella made the decision to nix the scrimmage with Laurel.

The next step is this --- in the very near future (as soon as tomorrow, one would think) Avella brass is going to have to sit down and ponder whether or not the Eagles will have enough manpower to even go through with their season.

Stay tuned. It will be interesting to see what happens.

Also, let's start a discussion on this blog. You tell me, what should Avella do?

Posted Aug 17 2008, 07:41 PM by Colin Dunlap
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Comments

papacoach wrote re: Avella football ... doomed before they even start?
on Sun, Aug 17 2008 9:31 PM

First of all just trying to run an effective practice with ,now, less than 18 players is asking for injury trouble. Even assuming they were all highly motivated professionally conditioned players the constant abuse their bodies would undergo is unfair to these boys. I would imagine if you polled the team that all would vote to continue the season but this may be one of those times that the experience and wisdom of their coaches and administrators must override the enthusiasm of youth and cancel the season.

Colin Dunlap wrote re: Avella football ... doomed before they even start?
on Sun, Aug 17 2008 9:50 PM

points well take, papacoach.

BFGrad wrote re: Avella football ... doomed before they even start?
on Mon, Aug 18 2008 3:43 AM

Colin, it's inevitable that the very small schools, like Avella, are going to have to merge with one or more neighboring districts. Duquesne is gone and Monaca will be next when it merges with Center.  The population in this part of the state just no longer supports the number of individual school districts here.

I suppose Avella could try and work out a co-operative agreement with a neighboring school, but that probably won't work for this year. They would have to shutter football for this year and go forward with the co-op next year.