Dorchester Times: Is Six-Man Football An Option At DHS?

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Is Six-Man Football An Option At DHS?

There's quite a discussion taking place on the Dorchester Times' Facebook page. It centers around a question we posed to our Facebook followers: Should Dorchester High School play 6-man football in 2015 -- after the two-year cooperative agreement with Milford has concluded?

Entering the second school year of Dorchester's football merger with Milford, we see benefits, including better competition and a chance to have a sustainable program in an era in which students are not pushed to participate. However, there are also clear drawbacks:

Decreased participation. Boys who would likely go out for a stand-alone DHS team don't want to ride the bus to a nearby town everyday.
Fewer opportunities for Dorchester kids to start/play on merged athletic teams.
Loss of revenue suffered by DPS due to no home games at Nerud Field.

Six-man football may or may not be a feasible option for DHS next season. There are only a handful of Nebraska schools -- 18 to be exact -- that play the six-man game, but the number is definitely growing. Currently, six-man football isn't even a sanctioned program of the Nebraska School Athletics Association, which may not be a bad thing.

The nearest school to Dorchester participating in the state's Six-Man Football Association is Deshler. Most of the six-man schools are much further west.

The most obvious negative to playing six-man football would be the travel time. (Another drawback is you need to be a mathematician to tally some of the high scoring games.)

However, with an organized effort and some phone calls by eastern Nebraska school administrators and coaches, we are certain that six-man football could return to its glorious past.

As we wrote on our Facebook page, Dorchester's six-man teams of the 1950s were quite successful. The reality is, the size of Nebraska's small schools today resembles 1950 more than they do 1980. Our urban areas have grown, while rural areas have lost population, especially among farm families. Fewer students are participating in sports, even when class sizes are healthy.

So tell us: Is it time for DHS to bring back six-man football? Check out the Times' survey in the left column of our webpage (non-mobile version) and vote.

11 comments:

AnonymousSeptember 11, 2014 at 9:18 AM
I believe that at one of the public meetings there was a question asked if six man football was an option

A board member, the athletic director and a know it all community member all said it was not an option.

Maybe it's better to have a team and travel 4 weeks of the season than the options our kids have now.
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AnonymousSeptember 11, 2014 at 1:17 PM
You do realize Dorchester would barely even have enough to play 6 man football?
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AnonymousSeptember 11, 2014 at 5:33 PM
Parents, this message is for you. Tell your kids they must go out for activities, that they can't just be slugs living in your basement once class is over. The real world doesn't work that way, why let kids get the idea it does? They'll be living in your basement when they're 30.
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AnonymousSeptember 11, 2014 at 7:08 PM
So this article is stating that a 10 minute drive is too long of a drive for kids to ride to practice?? So 20 total minutes out of a students life is too much to ask for? This just sounds like a scapegoat for kids not to play. If it was in their heart to play they would take an extra 20 minutes out of their time.
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AnonymousSeptember 11, 2014 at 10:20 PM
I don't think that is what the authors were saying at all. But obviously, the kids aren't going out. How many junior high kids are out for football, two??? They are the ones saying they don't want to play for another school.
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AnonymousSeptember 12, 2014 at 12:53 PM
Ask the principal for positives and negatives regarding six man as I believe he came from a school where they used to play six man football.
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AnonymousSeptember 12, 2014 at 2:50 PM
The team is Milford-Dorchester. Not just Milford. It's lack of kids being pushed. There is transportation for the kids to every practice. Also the kids should want to play for the love of the game. I would rather see Dorchester have something rather then having to for-fit games (like the problem we ran in two a couple years ago that is embarrassing for the entire town.
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AnonymousSeptember 12, 2014 at 3:28 PM
All this fuss about a football team, and not one comment on the article about the art program..

What a shame, just tells us a little bit about what is messed up in society
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Old No. 64September 12, 2014 at 5:00 PM
Here is an amazing, earth shattering, jaw dropping, cage rattling, toe curling idea...

Get a darn 8 man team back.

Focus on the junior high on down. Set a goal by a date certain. I fear there is no vision or goal setting taking place, just a wait-and-see attitude. You'll get burned by doing that every time.
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Dorchester: A Good Little Family Town

Dorchester, Nebraska (est. population 630) is located in northern Saline county. Close in proximity to Interstate 80, Dorchester is only 25 minutes from the state capital of Lincoln (est. population 250,000) and about 55 minutes from Omaha (metro population 725,000).

Dorchester's median resident age is 37 years. In 2005, Dorchester had a median family income of approximately $35,600. The median house value was about $63,000. About 95 percent of Dorchester residents commute to work via Interstate and highways.

The village has a quality public school, which received a $4.1 million expansion and modernization in 2008; it offers a small classrooms and individualized attention. Total enrollment of grades K-12 is around 230-250 students.

Ancestries of the Dorchester area are primarily German (42.4%), Czech (24.9%), Irish (12.5%), English (5.4%), and Dutch (4.9%).

Dorchester Historical Facts

* On July 4, 1871, the railroad reached Dorchester.
* Incorporated in 1881, Dorchester's population grew from 200 to 500 by 1882.
* In 1882, Dorchester had 90 buildings, 35 of which were businesses or public facilities. Brick buildings lined both sides of Washington Avenue for two blocks.
* Dorchester's longest-running newspaper was The Dorchester Star, which was published until the late 1940s.
* By 1889, Dorchester's population is said to have reached 800, while the town housed an opera house, a two-story brick schoolhouse with a bell tower, and four churches.
* By the 1910s, Dorchester had electricity, a water tower and a fire department.
* Dorchester's main arteries, Highways 6 and 33, were graveled in the 1940s.
* Dorchester's first irrigation well was drilled on Chris Weber's farm and rural electrification was finished following WWII.

A Village with History

Dorchester is one of the "alphabet towns" on the Burlington & Missouri River Railroad line built west from Lincoln. The town site was selected for its pleasant location in the northern part of Saline County, about eight miles west of Crete. This situation is an attractive one, being on the level prairie land, midway between the West Blue River and Turkey Creek. The first named stream is three miles north, and the latter about the same distance south from the town. Dorchester was platted in 1870 and incorporated in 1881. The name "Dorchester" came from either for a suburb of Boston by that name or a town in England. No one is sure. Two of the very first settlers were James Seely and Edward McIntyre, who both made Dorchester their permanent home.

Dorchester: In The Beginning

Here is a look at Dorchester around 1890, less than a decade after its official incorporation, as documented by Andreas' History of the State of Nebraska:
* POPULATION: "About 300, and is made up of a substantial and progressive class of citizens, who are moral and industrious. ... The town grew but very little until the year 1879, for the reason that Pleasant Hill, on Turkey Creek, a short distance south, was the county seat and naturally drew a trade for quite a large scope of country."
* BUSINESS: "The business and professional interests of the town are represented by three general merchandise stores, two drug, one grocery, one furniture, two hardware, and two millinery stores, one bank, two restaurants, two hotels, three livery stables, a post office, one newspaper office, two elevators, two lumber yards, two coal yards, two blacksmith shops, two lawyers and four physicians."
* SCHOOL: "The schoolhouse is a good one. The schoolhouse was built in 1872, since which time the public schools have been continually kept up. The present schoolhouse is 24' x 40' in size, two stories high. The school is graded and consists of three departments. The house is found too small, and arrangements will soon be made to increase its size."
* CHURCHES: "There are three substantial churches."
* HOMES: "The residence portion of the village is made up of neat houses of different styles of architecture, but none of them very large."
* NEWSPAPER: "The Dorchester Star, which was established August 21, 1881, by H. C. Bittenbender, who edited it until January 19, 1882, when he sold it to Ryerson & Bullock, the present proprietors. The Star is a bright weekly paper, five-column quarto, in size, and is Republican in politics."