Six-man football has sparked a unique and exciting new brand of the sport with decreasing numbers of enrollment at a number of high schools across Kansas.
The new format is now officially a Kansas State High School Activities Association sanctioned classification after numerous schools in the state were having trouble fielding teams in the 8-man football classification. This season, 26 high schools across the state will compete for the first 6-man state championship.
This is a jump from last season when 15 high schools were involved with the 6-man football format.
“The reason it took so long is it took a little bit to grow,” said Golden Plains High School head coach Travis Smith. “KSHSAA put out a survey to see what the interest was for other schools and when that number grew past 24 they got involved and have now taken it over.”
The first school to start up 6-man football was Weskan High School in 2014.
Le Roy’s Southern Coffey County High School is the closest school to Iola to implement 6-man football. The change allows smaller schools to field competitive teams with plenty of alternates.
“As our numbers in this area started to dwindle, we were having trouble competing. With the smaller numbers it’s also hard to scrimmage. You’re not getting anything out of practice to prepare for games. We are trying to keep football in our schools. The fall sports season really sets the tone for the entire school year,” said Smith.
Other schools implementing six-man football include Chetopa, Altoona-Midway, Natoma High School, Cunningham High School, Ashland High School, Northern Valley High School and Moscow High School.
Natoma High School was the champion of the Wild West Bowl, the 6-man football state championship, last season after finishing the season undefeated at 9-0. The Tigers took down Cunningham in the championship game, 60-12.
Cunningham High went undefeated in 6-man football last season up until the championship. Their slimmest victory was an impressive 44-15 drubbing of Cheylin.
“I really believe since the activities association took on 6-man it gave us some legitimacy. Before, we had our own association, we were 15 schools, but everybody knew it wasn’t sanctioned by the state. Now that it’s sanctioned by the state I really believe it will continue to grow,” Smith said.
The 6-man football concept is completely different from 8-man and 11-man, at least according to Smith’s perspective. This is partly because the formations are more spread out and there is more running and open-field plays.
As Kansas coaches learn and catch on to this style of football, other states’ coaches have been more than welcoming in teaching 6-man football.
“Eight-man is really not that different from 11-man but once you get into 6-man, you’ve really got to study. There’s things out there on the web, you can find every state championship game in divisions in Texas, Colorado, Nebraska,” said Smith. “Nebraska’s coaches are great about letting you dig into their playbook and they love to talk football.”
Fall sports practices began Monday.
