By DON FLETCHER
News Staff Writer
Escambia Academy officials announced this week that the school’s football team, riddled with injuries that left only a dozen players available, will not play the final two games of its 2024 schedule.
“We’re devastated, but we will be OK,” Headmaster Susan Kirk said. “We started with 25 players; now we only have 12 healthy players, and three of them are junior varsity. We met with board members, students, parents and staff. We got together and laid it out there.”
The cancellations — which follow cancellation of last Friday’s Monroe Academy contest — will go in the books as forfeits, a first in the school’s 54-year history.
“As far as I know, this is the first time EA has ever forfeited a game,” said Athletic Director (AD) Chris Kirk, who pointed out that every angle was explored before the decision was made to pull the plug on the rest of the season. “If all 12 players had been big, experienced boys, we might have tried it, but our kids weigh an average of 150 pounds. We might have tried to tough it out if we had 14 or 15 kids, but just about every kid would have had to play every down.”
The decision, which Chris Kirk pointed out was made “with an abundance of caution for the kids,” led to forfeiture of last week’s game against Monroe Academy, and will result in 2-0 forfeit losses to Bessemer Academy, where the Cougars were to play this week, and to Patrician Academy, which was to visit the Canoe school on Senior Night, November 1.
“We’ll celebrate our senior players and our cheerleaders later, at another event,” Susie Kirk said. “About half of them begged us to go ahead and play, and it breaks my heart, but there wasn’t much else we could have done.”
The straw that broke the camel’s back came when a senior starter, who had missed two games and was thought to have a sprained ankle, showed up at school wearing a boot on his leg due to the discovery of two torn tendons. EA already had two players with broken arms.
“That was pretty much the deciding factor,” she said. “That happened two games ago, and we had hoped he would be able to play by last week. When we found out he would be in a boot for four more weeks, we decided to go ahead and cancel the last three games.”
She said first-year head coach Larry Nichols was disappointed in how his debut season ended but was trying to keep a positive spin on things.
“Coach Nichols is very disappointed for the boys, especially the seniors,” the headmaster explained. “But he’s a natural encourager, and he keeps everybody’s spirit up.”
Chris Kirk stressed that the setback won’t mark the end of the school’s football program, which captured Alabama Independent School Association (AISA) state championships in 2014 and 2017.
“We will play football next year,” he said. “This is not going to stop our program.”
Susie Kirk added that everyone associated with Escambia Academy will work with school officials to get through the current situation.
“We’re a family here at EA, and families go through things like this together,” she said.