AUGUSTA, Maine — Van Buren boasts a proud high school soccer tradition. Its boys team won the Class D state championship as recently as 2006 and its girls squad earned Eastern Maine titles in 2010 and 2011.
But the Crusaders are experiencing the same enrollment decline faced by virtually all Maine’s public high schools. Van Buren had just 89 students in grades 9-12 as of April 1, 2014.
Fewer students typically means fewer participants in school activities, including soccer teams. That left Van Buren athletic administrator Sue Parent little choice last summer but to turn to a Maine Principals’ Association rule that allows the state’s smallest schools to use eighth-graders to fill out high school varsity teams.
“I was very hesitant to use it the first time,” said Parent, citing the myriad differences between eighth-graders and high school seniors. “I’m sure they’re going to need to use it again, but obviously it has to be with the blessing of parents and coaches. Everybody has to be on board.”
High schools with fewer than 40 students of a specific gender may use eighth-graders to complete a team if necessary.
But a recommendation that will be considered by the Maine Principals’ Association’s general membership on April 30 would increase that minimum number to 60 students of a specific gender in order to use eighth-graders on a high school team.
The change is designed specifically to aid small schools in fielding teams in such sports as soccer, baseball and softball.
According to enrollment statistics used by the Maine Principals’ Association to reclassify school sports teams for a two-year cycle that begins this fall, 27 schools with 120 or fewer students will field basketball teams next season. Only 16 of those schools will have baseball programs, including two cooperative entries that draw players from more than one school. Only 17 plan to have softball teams, including two co-ops.
Twenty-five schools with enrollments of 120 or less plan to field boys soccer teams next fall, while 18 are slated to offer girls soccer.
“We’re just trying to keep programs alive for the little guys,” said Anthony Amero, athletic administrator and boys basketball coach at Forest Hills of Jackman, who is a member of the Maine Principals’ Association classification committee that supports the measure.
The practice of Maine’s smallest high schools relying on eighth-graders to complete sports teams is not new.
The state’s all-time scoring leader for schoolboy basketball, Raymond Alley, began his varsity career as an eighth-grader at Vinalhaven en route to amassing 2,306 total points and becoming the 1989 Mr. Maine Basketball.
More recently, Evan Worster of Forest Hills made his varsity basketball debut as an eighth-grader and went on to start more than 100 varsity games before graduating in 2013.
And last spring, eighth-grader Dean Grass started at shortstop for the Bangor Christian baseball team, one of three classmates who helped the Patriots win their third straight Class D state title.
One early proponent of expanding the rule was Wade Morrill, now the athletic administrator at Monmouth Academy and a former coach and athletic administrator at his alma mater, Valley of Bingham.
Morrill said Valley — which would be able to apply the rule with its April 1, 2014, enrollment of 71 — suspended its soccer program for two years during the early 2000s and later fielded a co-ed team briefly in order to preserve soccer at the varsity level.
“I remember playing high school games at Valley when we had a bunch of eighth-graders who could have helped us out in numerous years, but we were playing with 11 kids and no subs,” he said.
“In theory the change gives you a school of about 120 that could use eighth-graders to help fill out some of those larger varsity sports teams. It will help.”
Educators agree that using eighth-graders on high school teams presents some challenges.
“When your population drops, you need those kids, but you have to make sure your kids are mature in order to handle it,” said Parent. “It’s quite a stretch for eighth-graders to be with seniors, and you need to be cognizant of that and make sure everybody’s prepared for it.”
Parent said the 2014 boys and girls soccer teams at Van Buren included a couple of eighth-graders.
“The [older] kids were happy to have them, and they did help them out,” she said. “But before they came onto the team, I had a conversation with the team and prepared them for that. I talked about the fact that they were younger and needed to be treated appropriately.”
Forest Hills’ remote location in the state’s northwest corner requires lengthy road trips, adding another dimension to the relationships forged among high school upperclassmen and eighth-graders as teammates.
“You want the younger kids to have good influences around them,” Amero said. “We have very strict policies as far as behavior and academic issues, and the kids we’ve had around our sports programs have been really good about looking out for the younger kids.”
Amero said Forest Hills often adds eighth-graders to complete its baseball team, in part because the school does not offer the sport at the middle-school level.
“A lot of times you’ll see an eighth-grader playing late in the game when it’s about to be a mercy-rule game and getting a couple of at-bats,” he said. “The first thing we tell those kids is we’re going to try to put them in situations where they can be successful, and the other thing we explain to them is that we’re going to put them in spots where they can be safe.”
Amero and Parent said the eighth-graders who have participated on teams at their high schools have largely enjoyed the experience.
“It depends on the kid, but most of the time they think it’s a privilege,” Parent said. “They like the idea of playing on the varsity.”
