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By Melanie Lekocevic

Capital Region Independent Media

GREENVILLE — The Greenville school district is considering adding football to the Athletic Department’s offerings.

The district has never had a football team and is now looking at two options — starting their own team and merging with another school district’s football team.

Denise Wickham, director of Health, PE and Athletics, presented options and costs to the board of education at the January meeting. The department had been looking at a three-way merger between Greenville, Cairo and Catskill prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Wickham said, but the current proposal looked at merging with the Coxsackie-Athens school district.

Bringing football to Greenville is a popular concept with students, she said.

“If you ask, are our students interested in football? Yes, they are,” Wickham said. “In the short amount of time I put out a survey last week, we had 76 responses from students.”

The survey asked if students would play football if the district offered it. Of the respondents, 71.1% said they would be interested, 5.2% said no and 23.7% said maybe. The highest number of positive responses came from students in seventh and eighth grades, with 18 each, followed by 14 tenth graders, 11 students each in grades nine and eleven, and four in sixth grade.

The Greenville teams, in all sports, compete in the Patroon Conference. The conference only offers football at the varsity and modified levels, not junior varsity. A good percentage of the positive responses came from younger students, who would presumably begin at the modified level, Wickham said.

“We don’t have a JV level for most of our programs so we could start at a modified level and there seems to be quite a bit of interest at the lower levels,” Wickham told the board.

Football is open to both boys and girls, she added.

The survey also asked if the student plays a fall sport, would they switch to football instead, to gauge the possible impact on the district’s other sports. Of the total respondents, 60.5% said they would switch, 11.8% said no and 27.6% said maybe.

“This speaks to what would the impact be on our other sports programs here in Greenville, should we get into a merger or do a team on our own,” Wickham noted.

She next looked at the costs of implementing and maintaining a football program.

“First of all, you have uniform program costs — usually varsity uniforms, modified uniforms, and then there’s practice uniforms, jerseys and practice pants. Those range in different prices,” she said. “And then there’s safety equipment — that’s where you really get the largest cost for football.”

The largest single expense for safety equipment would be the helmets, which can cost anywhere from $350 to $500 each; shoulder pads cost around $300, a girdle to protect the thighs, hips, tailbone and knees costs $60, mouth guards are $3 and belts are $12 apiece.

There is also a cost for reconditioning the safety equipment between seasons, which costs around $10,000 annually. Reconditioning is required for helmets, and while not required for padding, it will extend the life of the equipment. Helmets have an expected lifespan of 10 years.

There are also transportation costs to be considered, Wickham said.

“It’s an eight-week season and with the postseason, it can be a 10-week season,” she said. “If you merge with another district, say with Coxsackie, your eight weeks would be $13,600 for transportation and 10 weeks is $16,000.”

Another transportation issue is the question of bus drivers. The district already has a shortage of drivers for regular bus runs.

There would also be expenses related to coaches. A varsity team generally has a head coach and two assistant coaches; modified teams typically have one head coach and one assistant. Those costs would vary based on what the district could negotiate.

“Even if you merge with a program you would have to hire a coach, somebody that’s going to be with those kids as they are transported back and forth from another school, so that would be something you would have to work out with the other school district,” she said.

Hiring officials and a referee for each home game would cost $514 per game for varsity and $211.50 per modified game.

There would also be other costs if the district were to create its own team, including facility upgrades, primarily the purchase and installation of goal posts — costing between $11,000 and $17,000 each. Other costs would also be related to the purchase of a chain gang, headsets, field markers, field paint and a blocking sled and dummies for practices.

If the district were to opt to merge with another team, such as Coxsackie-Athens High School, the deadline to propose a merger is Feb. 1.

“I have been in conversations with Coxsackie-Athens’ athletic director,” Wickham said. “The merger deadline for football is Feb. 1, so if this is something that Greenville is considering, then we need to make a decision soon. You can apply for a merger and then at the last minute you can say no, we are not going to merge, but if you don’t do that, that’s a firm deadline — they will not let you in afterwards.”

There would still be costs related to a merged team with Coxsackie-Athens.

“It’s around $49,000 and what they were recommending is that we divide that in half so it would be $24,750 for a merger and that’s plus transportation and coaching stipends. So, eight weeks would be $38,350, 10 weeks for $40,950, and that does not include the coaching stipend for us to hire one.”

The board of education did not make a decision on whether to pursue either option — a merger or creating a new football team — at the January meeting.