The WIAA announced this month that five schools in the southern part of the state and eight in the north are going to play eight-man football. Once there are enough schools, playoff options will then be offered and expanded. Milwaukee's School for the Deaf has had a very successful 8-man football team for many years.
With some smaller schools finding it difficult to fund football teams and struggling to find large numbers of participants, this smaller version of the game is gaining popularity. It uses three lineman, a quarterback, and four backs. Other states, notably Alaska, play a lot of 8-man football.
Clearly, it's not only rugby that has a challenge in some places finding enough players for a large team sport.
At the same time, we are reminded about how rugby is a true particpant sport with 15 players on the field. Every rugby team we've seen has athletes getting on the field a lot. It's not like basketball or even soccer, which, while being great sports, often have lots of players sitting on the end of a bench waiting to get in.
This also reminded our board members here about the discussion over whether Wisconsin should have a Rugby 10's division with ten players on the field for smaller teams. Maybe for it's division III (B-side or JV level) competition?
Any comments from our readers on this one?
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