Raiders drop FB, Jay has opening

The Raiders will not have a varsity football season in 2020.

Jay County is now in need of an opponent for Sept. 4.

The Southern Wells athletics department announced Thursday afternoon on its Facebook page it will not be fielding a varsity football team for the season set to begin Aug. 21, citing a lack of numbers and inexperience to field a team.

“We have a small group of young men that are ready to sacrifice themselves in the name of Raider Pride, but this group is simply too small and too inexperienced,” athletics director Ben Burman said via the Facebook post. “We have made the decision to play a junior varsity schedule for this year.

“This decision was made with two goals in mind — protect the safety and well-being of our athletes and to give this group a year to compete at the appropriate level in order to build for the future.”

Just eight days before the regular season is set to begin, Jay County must now find an opponent for week three.

According to John Harrell’s website as of this morning, there are only eight other schools in Indiana without a week three opponent — Calumet (Class 3A), Indianapolis Shortridge, Lowell (4A), Park Tudor (1A), Purdue Polytechnic, South Bend Clay (4A), Switzerland County (2A) and Wheeler (2A).

Jay County athletics director Steve Boozier said this morning he sent a mass email to all athletic directors within the state, and Patriot football coach Tim Millspaugh will be using his contacts within the coaches’ association in order to try to fill the gap in the schedule.

“We’ll just use all of our networks and resources and hopefully find a game,” he said.

In 2013, the year before Jay County joined the Allen County Athletic Conference, the Patriots hosted Wallaceburg, a team from Ontario, Canada.

In normal years, Boozier might be willing to cross state or international borders to find an opponent, but he said with the ever-changing rules and guidelines because of the coronavirus pandemic he doesn’t want to try to look outside the Hoosier State.

“I don’t see that as an option,” said Boozier, who had to reschedule Saturday’s football scrimmage against Bellmont as the Adams County school had to suspend all athletics for the remainder of the month because of an uptick in COVID-19 cases in northern Adams County.

“Right now we already have so many differences from county to county,” he added. “I don’t want to get into state-to-state. It’s hard to keep up with all the differences.”

Jay County will now scrimmage Centerville on Saturday, with a 10 a.m. start.