The days are getting shorter. The nights are getting cooler. The leaves are starting to change color. These signs can only mean one thing: it’s football season. If you haven’t kept up with Cary Academy football lately, there is some very exciting news to share: our team is still undefeated! This amazing winning streak – 25 years and counting – must be one of the greatest achievements in all of sports.
To clarify for the record, we all know we haven’t technically really won — or even played— a football game, but us Chargers like to see the glass as half full. According to an estimate from the National Federation of High School Football, more than 7,000 high school football games occur every week. The same study also reports an average of over 1,000 fans at these games; that equates to more than 7 million people spending Friday evenings cheering for their favorite high school football team each week.
With many high school sports returning to normal after lockdowns and virtual schooling after the Covid-19 pandemic, the timing seems right to dig deeper into the history of football at Cary Academy. Did anyone ever have any interest in starting a team? What would a football team look like at CA? And, most importantly, what could possibly happen to set us on the path to developing a real winning streak?
According to CA Athletic Director Kevin Jones, the idea of football at Cary Academy first came around five years after the school’s founding. A discussion with members of the school board followed surveys of students, parents, and faculty, but the board felt the timing was not right. With many other athletic programs at CA just beginning, they thought that adding a football program at the same time would impact the development of other sports.
“It was a very thorough process,” Coach Jones reflected. A second review occurred about five years later, but the community again felt that CA was not quite ready to develop a football program. Coach Jones explained, “I’m a big football proponent, but there are many factors involved that go beyond just having interest to starting a new sport.” Football, in particular, has many logistics to sort out. Coach Jones continued, “It’s a 24/7 thing. It’s year round. It’s figuring out how to share fields with our other sports.” Also, along with starting a football team comes additional costs, including hiring more coaches and athletic trainers. Safety concerns are also another major factor in Cary Academy’s decision to hold off on a football team, given that football injuries can be especially serious.
Is now the time to reinitiate talks about bringing football to CA? Coach Jones, who is now in his 14th year in Cary Academy athletics, feels “it is always worth revisiting” but recognizes that having a football team is not necessary school to have a strong athletics program.
Most football programs at schools similar to CA actually have eight man football as opposed to the traditional eleven man teams, which could help reduce injuries. However, Coach Jones also notes that a varsity program often means that players would need to begin in the lower school as a feeder program into junior varsity and, then, varsity, making the process more complicated. Coach Jones does not feel that Cary Academy’s high academic standards would make it harder for students successful academically to also be successful athletes. He comments, “Look at a school like Stanford with top academics and a really good football program.”
For those wondering what a football program would actually look like at CA, Coach Jones offers his vision, “I think we would be a spread offense…think Kansas City Chiefs. There would be a lot of misdirection and motion, and a QB who could also run.” As exciting as that sounds, where would these players come from? Fortunately, CA has numerous athletes skilled in various sports, who could perform equally well on a football field. Coach Jones specifically mentioned students on the soccer and lacrosse teams, who are tough, fast, and strong. The track and field team would be a great place to find sprinters, jumpers, and maybe a quarterback (shotput). Coach Jones remarks, “We have a lot of kids with a wide variety of skill sets.”
Football fans, do not lose hope! Perhaps the day will come when your Friday nights are spent cheering on Charger football players, running circles around Ravenscroft, or racing past Cardinal Gibbons. Until then, we will happily keep our undefeated streak alive.