‘I hate it for those young men,’ said UNC football coach Larry Fedora about the fact that Chapel Hill High will not field a varsity team for lack of participation.
Posted 8:00 a.m. today Updated 28 minutes ago
By Marilyn Payne, WRAL Multimedia Sports Journalist
North Carolina coach Larry Fedora firmly voiced his opinion on both the importance and decline of football last month at ACC Kickoff, catching more criticism for his comments on the (lack of) direct corelation between CTE and football than anything else.
For the high schools geographically around Fedora’s football program, there is at least a consistent truth to his belief that the verve for the sport is shrinking.
Chapel Hill High School announced Monday it will not field a varsity football team this season. Cedar Ridge High School will not have a varsity football team this fall, either. Last fall, East Chapel Hill High School did not field a varsity team. There are only five high schools in Orange County.
“I hate it for those young men, (that) that’s what’s happening because they’re missing out on a tremendous opportunity,” Fedora said. ” You guys know how I feel about the game of football. I’m passionate about it. I feel like it’s something they need. It would be good for them. I hate that for them.”
With his head fully invested in his team mid-UNC training camp, Fedora hadn’t heard the news until asked about it by reporters.
When asked why he believes the football teams in the county are struggling, Fedora said: “I don’t know what the answer to that is, I don’t know what the culture at those schools is so it’d be hard for me to say.”
Fedora recruited Orange County linebacker Peyton Wilson (getting a verbal commitment from the athlete before Dave Doeren flipped him). Otherwise, the seventh-year UNC-Chapel Hill head coach cannot “to (his recollection,” remember recruiting an athlete from any school in the county or spending time on any of the campuses.
Regardless of familiarity, it’s a hard problem to figure out the singular or direct cause of football sputtering in the area.
There could be an argument that perhaps the lack of talent/wins is part of why the schools in Orange County can’t get enough upperclassmen to commit to their varsity programs (CHHS, ECHHS and CRHS’s junior varsity programs haven’t folded). The schools have declined in size (after Carrboro High School opened in 2007), but the football programs haven’t been so terrible that it could all be blamed on not winning or being competitive… even after shrinking down from 4A.
But Chapel Hill HS made a regional final playoffs appearance not too long ago, Carrboro forfeited two games during the 2015 season because they didn’t have enough athletes to compete (because of injuries), but that was just three years after appearing in the 2A State Championship in 2012.
Sports specialization could certainly be playing a role as soccer, baseball and basketball athletes hone in one on sport in hopes of being competitive enough to get college paid for. Ever-growing lacrosse competes head-to-head (no pun intended) with football as a perhaps safer contact sport, even though the seasons don’t interfere with one another at a varsity level.
Growing up, children seem to latch on to sports that they see potential heroes succeeding in — it’s easier to love and root for something that is doing well. It seems the dynamic of the athletic departments in high schools in Orange County mirror the athletic department of the university in Orange County. Because football is a overwhelming male There is steady success in the Olympic/non-revenue sports — UNC men’s lacrosse won the 2016 NCAA National Title, the men’s soccer team won the same in 2011 and the baseball team is one of the most successful in the country in the time since coach Mike Fox arrived.
Proximity likely makes the parents in Orange County — especially the ones whose children play in Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools — privy to the work being done at the Matthew-GfellerSport-Related Traumatic Brain Injury Research Center at UNC. Given the overwhelming number of headlines surrounding the Carolina football program, the enhancements to safety in high school and college football in response to those studies may not rise above the fold as steadily: If it bleeds, it leads is a saying for a reason and the saying may well be contributing to why football is more famous for causing CTE than it is for making more safety-related changes more steadily than any other sport year-in and -out.
Buried in the hot takes and reactions to partial sentences in July, Fedora’s argument was that the sport he loves has declining participation at a youth and prep level because of “soccer moms,” and other people misunderstanding the amount of effort that goes into improving technique, equipment and standards for the sport in the name of safety. In acknowledging the CTE/concussion research that goes on, Fedora expressed feeling like the public impression is that a) football is singularly the cause of CTE and that b) a person who plays football will likely end up with CTE. Maybe, at least in Orange County, the head coach was partially on to something.
