January 2021 - 40

especially future collegiate athletes, they have a hard
time keeping them because people get in their ears and
they say, 'Hey, you're not ever going to get a look.' "
In terms of progressing to the next level, non-11-man
football presents defensive players with a challenge at the
high school level that 11-man players don't get - making
their transition to college easier.
" I take a defensive kid who played eight-man football
over a defensive kid who played 11-man football any day
of the week, " Ryan Hasselstrom, head coach of Prairie
(ID) Jr./Sr. High School's eight-man football program,
said. " Because (the eight-man defender) has got so much
more ground to cover.
" A linebacker in 11-man has his own area to cover, a
six-yard by six-yard area or something. Where, in eightman
football, you get a linebacker who might have to
cover from midfield all the way to the sideline - like a 20yard
area he's got to be able to cover. (Eight-man football
defenders) are also a little better at open-field tackling
because they have to do more of that kind of stuff. "
Aside from helping players deal with that feeling of being
on an island on the defensive side of the ball, coaching eightman
football versus 11-man are very similar.
" You only have five guys on the line of scrimmage and
lose one backfield player, but (eight-man football) is just
more wide open, " Hasselstrom said. " There's not as much
of a difference as a coach. Some coaches try to make it
a lot different. They look at it like Arena Football and
38 JANUARY 2021
do all kinds of crazy, wild stuff. But we stick to a lot of
I-Formation and Twins Formation. We pound the ball and
do, basically, everything you would do in 11-man. "
Still, to the average high school football fan, anything
that's non-traditional 11-man football can seem foreign.
It's a problem Been faced at Dewar - which was an 11man
program back when he suited up for the Dragons.
" In the beginning, people that were my age that played
here and played 11-man just couldn't understand why we
had to play eight-man instead of 11-man, " he said. " But
the truth is, and I tell people this all the time, if we have
23 kids on an eight-man football roster, then you take a
couple academic issues plus a couple injuries, and pretty
soon you're down to 16-18 kids. If you're playing 11-man
football, you don't have enough guys to go out there and
lineup guys at practice to show them where people are
going to be week-to-week. With 23 or 24 players, we have
enough for three teams. We can take 10 kids to a JV game
on a Tuesday night after the junior high game to get those
guys some experience. There are a lot of advantages.
" Most of the schools in our county are bigger, and
they come to watch us. They're like, 'Man coach, you
got some talented kids.' I feel like kid-for-kid, if we had
to put 11 guys on the field, I feel like we could play with
most people in our area. When you start running into
depth and being able to rotate guys and all of that, (the
numbers) would become a big factor. I think that's the big
advantage of playing eight-man football. "
January 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of January 2021
