Milledgeville joins ranks of 8-man football

MILLEDGEVILLE – The Battle of the Blacktop could be back on the football field in 2021: The Chadwick-Milledgeville Community Unit District 399 Board of Education on Monday voted unanimously to move to 8-man football for the 2021 season.

“It’s obviously an adjustment,” Missiles coach Jason Wroble said. “I’m going to have to talk to some local coaches, see how they went through it and what they all did. Obviously Polo’s going to be a good resource, and River Ridge.”

Milledgeville’s Blacktop rival Polo made its move to 8-man football for the 2019 season, dominating the regular season and winning the school’s first state championship in any team sport. A Missiles move to 8-man opens the door to reignite that rivalry, last played in 2018, a 26-8 Missiles win Week 2 as Milledgeville made its own unbeaten run through the regular season.

Milledgeville will play one more season of 11-man football this fall, but Wroble is already studying up on what he will need to do to prepare his team for ‘21.

“Throughout this process, I brought a lot of information to the board about what 8-man is, because that was one of the questions I think that people had,” he said. “I’ve learned a lot from my discussions with different coaches who participate in 8-man now, so I’ve learned some. It’s still tackling and blocking and running the football, but there’s some new schemes you have to learn along the way.”

The Missiles went 1-8 in 2019, 1-5 in the NUIC South. Milledgeville played five games against teams that reached the playoffs, losing those five by a combined score of 196-38.

Other area schools have also made the move. AFC will also join the 8-man ranks in 2021.

“With our class sizes getting smaller, we knew we had to do something if we still wanted to continue to have football as a sport,” AFC athletic director Traci Gittleson said.

Gittleson said there was some discussion of a co-op, but the only logical co-op partner for the Raiders would be Amboy, and both schools wanted to keep their football programs going if they could. Amboy is also talking about a plan to move to 8-man football in 2021.

AFC made the move after examining the landscape, looking at its own projections on participation numbers in the coming years as well as the other teams nearby making the move.

While Polo’s first year of 8-man football included games against far-flung schools like Edwardsville Metro East Lutheran and Danville Schlarman, with more area teams playing 8-man, shorter bus trips to games will become more common.

“Certainly the fact that other schools made the move to 8-man made it a little more enticing, a little more doable,” Wroble said.

Meanwhile for AFC, Gittleson said it was still not an easy decision.

“I know that our board had their concerns because to them, football is an 11-man sport,” she said. “But 8-man seems to be gaining popularity in the state.”

That growing popularity helped sway Milledgeville on Monday, and the Missiles are now the latest team to make the switch.