John Raffel
Sports Scene
This won’t be just an ordinary season for the proud tradition of Portland St. Patrick football.
It’s the second season of 8-man football as a Michigan High School Athletic Association sport. This year, 32 schools have committed to the sport, compared to 21 in the 2011 season, and this year, Portland St. Patrick is joining them. For the second straight season, the title game will be in the 8,000-seat Superior Dome at Northern Michigan University on November 16 or 17, a week before the 11-man state finals. There will again be a four-week playoff involving 16 teams, based on the state’s playoff points system.
The 32 teams this season are:
Akron-Fairgrove, Battle Creek St. Phillips, Bellaire, Brimley, Buckley, Burr Oak, Caseville, Carsonville Port Sanilac, Cedarville, Deckerville, Engadine, Eastern Washtenaw Multi Academy, Ewen Trout Creek, Jackson-DaVinci, Kingston, Litchfield, Marine City Cardinal Mooney, Michigan School for the Deaf, New Haven-Merritt Academy, North Huron-Port Hope, Owendale-Gagetown, Peck, Portland St. Patrick, Posen, Rapid River, Rock-Mid Pen, Eben Junction-Superior Central, St. Joseph Michigan Lutheran, Tekonsha, Traverse City Christian, and Waldron.
The 32nd team is Tri-Unity Christian/Potter’s House Christian/West Michigan Lutheran, but it is too large to qualify for the playoffs. Seven of the schools are in the Upper Peninsula.
Pat Russman, St. Patrick’s athletic director, is coaching the team. He first coached the varsity team in 2007, he’s been a coach since then. His team was 5-4 his first two years, then 2-7, 0-9, and 3-6.
Last season, St. Patrick had 23 players in the whole program. There wasn’t a scheduled junior varsity game, although St. Patrick tried to find scrimmages for the junior varsity players.
St. Patrick entered the off-season realizing it wasn’t going to have a junior varsity team.
“Our sophomore class has six boys total in the grade,” he said.
With a projected student enrollment of 105, St. Patrick made the decision to go with 8-man football.
The Shamrocks were able to come up with a schedule, albeit a unique one. They’ll have nine games, but they’ll play four opponents twice. A home game and an away game are scheduled with Battle Creek St. Phillip, Tekonsha, Burr Oak. and Waldron. St. Patrick will play Litchfield once. The longest trip is expected to be a two-hour jaunt to Waldron.
Russman enters the season with 27 players on his roster. He’s looking to play some junior varsity games but isn’t finding many opponents.
To play 8-man ball, St.. Patrick had to leave the competitive Central Michigan Athletic Conference, which includes such powers as Fowler, Fulton, and Pewamo-Westphalia.
With 8-man football, there are to be five players on the line rather than seven. Eight-man ball also usually means one less running back.
“We’re doing well, but it’s hard to tell since we haven’t seen any opponents yet,” Russman said. “You need to see how you’ll do against someone else.”
When it comes to 8-man football, “the biggest adjustment we’re running into is knowng the rules. We’re not used to them,” Russman said.
Another major adjustment Russman pointed to is that defensive players have to realize that there are three fewer teammates to help make tackles. That makes it more important to perfect the solo tackle.
Under the point system, Russman likes his team’s chances of making the playoffs. In 11-man football, it was tougher for a Class D team to get six wins in a conference with larger schools, he noted.
Last season, Carsonville Port Sanillac defeated Rapid River 59-20 in the state title game. Timothy Brabant is coaching at Carsonville Port Sanilac again this season.
Brabant’s team also won the 8-man crown in 2010, before it was officially recognized as an MHSAA sport.
“I think it’s going to be pretty fun,” Brabant said. Carsonville Port Sanilac does not have enough players to field a junior varsity squad, and he commented that “this gives schools a chance to field JV teams that we normally couldn’t field. We can have more players go one-way. Smaller kids can be more successful. The biggest thing I like about it is that the regular public school has a chance to make a deep playoff run. In the 11-man format, a lot of private and Catholic schools wind up winning it every year. Whether they recruit…a regular school has a better chance to win the state title.”
Brabant notes that some parochial schools are in the 8-man field, such as St. Patrick. “But there’s not many,” he said. “It’s dominated more by the public schools.”
Brabant likes his team’s prospects for another state title.
“The main thing is keeping the kids hungry,” he said. “Winning can make you soft. We have a lot of kids who have played on the past team. We need to keep them focused on one team at a time.”
Brabant likes the venue in Marquette for the title game.
“The UP schools have to travel to Detroit to play the state championship game,” he said. “So this gives them an opportunity to host a state championship. It’s fun for us to go up there in a new scenery. The dome is really nice. The facilities are nice.”
Brabant expects the popularity of 8-man football to grow.
“Its going to be fine,” he said. “The number of schools has almost doubled. The first year we had 8-man football, it was only eight schools. It’s going to keep climbing as school enrollment drops.”
It was easier to get a “local” schedule this season, Brabant noted.
“We didn’t have problems getting a local schedule,” he said, “There’s a lot of less travel time.”
There are also more 8-man leagues to accommodate the programs, Brabant added.