Few Players, Injury Concerns End Football At Maplewood Richmond Heights High School

Maplewood Richmond Heights High School is one sport short this fall season, after board members voted this past summer to put the football program on hiatus for the 2015-16 school year.

The decision came just five years after the team went undefeated during the regular season and was runner-up in the state championship.

Nelson Mitten, president of Maplewood Richmond Heights School Board, said the decision resulted from lack of interest by student-athletes and in consideration of a growing number of injuries last season.

In a press release, the board said it would continue to monitor student interest in football in the future.

“I attended a few games (last season) and was noting that we seemed to have a higher number of significant injuries than in the past,” Mitten said. “We had to cancel one game as a result of injuries.”

The Maplewood Richmond Heights Blue Devils had 20 students on roster last season, three shy of what the Missouri State High School Activities Association recommends for the sport. Last year the Blue Devils had three wins and seven losses.

Before coming to its conclusion, the board surveyed students and found that 12 to 15 boys expressed interest in playing football this year, and only five were returning from the 2014-15 squad.

“That means that you’re going to have a lot of freshmen and sophomores,” Mitten said. “And, at that point in time, the numbers, combined with the concerns in safety, showed there was really no point in having a team this year.”

Shedding light on the discussion are the rising numbers in the high school’s soccer program. Where the football roster has seen its numbers deflate the past few seasons, Blue Devils boys soccer has continued to expand.

In the past four seasons, the football roster has declined by more than half, dropping from 48 players in 2012-13. During that same period, boys soccer has gone from 19 players in 2012-13 to 31 players on the varsity squad this year.

“In some degree, the students may be laying their feet as to where they want to go, literally,” Mitten said.