As we prepare for the 2020 season, I want to provide some perspective on the state of football both within the Razorbacks but also throughout the NHYFSC (the New Hampshire conference we play in comprised of 25 other towns). 15 years ago when I signed my oldest son up in the program, he was a 7 year-old and it was the first year the Razorbacks were part of American Youth Football (AYF). It was this season that Pelham, along with most other towns in New Hampshire, made the switch out of Pop Warner as their national affiliate. We were known as the Pelham-Windham Razorbacks as Windham did not have their own program at that time.
As I look at my son's first year in 2005, our program had 7 teams with most teams having between 25-35 players, including kids who were in high school. We were in the minority as back then, only a handful of towns had teams at each level and many had combined teams of 9/10 or 11/12 for example. When Windham started their own program, we still had a team at each grade or age group but instead of 25-35 players per team, we were between 20-30 players. Fast forward to 2019 and we fielded 4 teams with an average of 22 kids per team. Yet we are still in the top tier of towns in terms of total football teams as Londonderry has 6 teams. Salem, Windham, Man East and Nashua PAL have 5 and 5 others have 4 teams like us. The rest of the towns have anywhere between 1-3 football teams in their program.
I share all of this as participation numbers for tackle football are down across the state with some programs like Goffstown and NorRock, with much larger draw numbers than us, no longer offering tackle football. As we look at our registered boys in PES and PMS, there is an average of 60 boys per grade. To field a competitive tackle football team, you should look to have between 22-28 players on a team. Thus, half the boys in town need to sign up to play Razorbacks at each level to field a solid team…and that is a challenging number for our program or any other town.
We think we can achieve it and hopefully you have seen our advertisement for an early bird registration where we are discounting our registration fee by $100 (for football and cheer). Our reason behind this is 2-fold. First, because we can as we currently have a solid financial base thanks to good fundraising and prudent spending. The bigger reason is we are confident we provide a great experience for boys and girls and want to encourage them to check us out. This is critical for the football side because we must know numbers sooner than later for purposes of buying equipment, forming teams and selecting coaches. We need a commitment from families and we are confident that if your child has an interest in football, they will enjoy what our program can offer.</p>
I would like to invite any current and potential football players or cheerleaders and their families to an Information Night on March 30th @ 630pm at Pelham Town Hall. At this time you can meet various board members and past football and cheer coaches and ask any questions as well as share ideas or feedback on how we grow the program. We will also be available to help with online registration and you can take advantage of the discounted rate. For football players that register, we will also fit them for a helmet as safety is a huge focus four all our athletes and we are in the process of purchasing new helmets and other equipment for the 2020 season.
Lastly, if you are unable to make it right at 630pm, please come when can as we plan to be there until at least 730pm that evening. And one more thing; we will have pizza and refreshments so no need to cook that night if do not want to!
