Why one of the Rockford area's greatest football powers won't have a team this year
Worried about losing its football team, Freeport Aquin officials pursued a co-op.
And then did lose its team for this year.
Aquin’s storied football program — which has won three Class 1A state titles and made the playoffs 27 times — will resume in the 2024 season with an 8-man co-op with Orangeville.
The Illinois 8-Man Football Association approved the co-op for next year but in March voted down a proposal to let the two teams combine this year. Aquin and Orangeville didn’t present their proposal until two weeks after the Jan. 1 deadline and the 8-man association said it was too late to change the schedules.
“I was pretty surprised,” Aquin football coach and athletic director Todd Kramer said. “There was no secret about our numbers. We had a Jan. 1 deadline to make that decision, but going through the process — surveying coaches and parents and getting the two school boards' approval — that’s not an easy process. I thought we made a pretty quick transition, but that was a lot of people’s hangup. It was after the Jan. 1 deadline when we got the go-ahead from both boards.
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“People are worried about trying to find a team. But if we don’t have a team, they have to find a game anyway.”
And they don’t have a team. Already low on numbers, Aquin dropped from hard-to-field a team to impossible when several football families transferred away from the small Catholic school to other schools. Before the decision, Aquin had a potential roster of 14 players. After eight kids moved to a new school, Aquin had only six.
That was when Aquin announced it was dropping football for one year.
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“When the co-op didn’t go through for this year, that got people starting to think about us having numbers right at the border (of fielding a team),” Kramer said. “That’s tough. They wanted to know if there is going to be a team for sure.
“A couple of them made that decision to leave. That creates a snowball effect. Now one leaves. Now two leave. Three leave. Suddenly, it was not looking good at all.”
Aquin was one of the Rockford area’s greatest small-school football powers for 40 years. The Bulldogs reached the Class 1A state quarterfinals three times in four years from 2017 to 2020 and went 6-0 in the COVID year before joining most of the smallest NUIC schools in a rush to 8-man in 2021.
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Aquin and Orangeville, which had made the playoffs its last three years in Class 1A from 2018 to 2020, both started off strong in 8-man but had losing records last year as their enrollments continued to decline. Orangeville has an official IHSA enrollment of 102 and Aquin is at 81.5 — although Kramer said the recent defections will make it more like 70 for its top four grades.
“I don’t understand,” Kramer said of the co-op being turned down for this fall. “Look at both our records. We were 2-7. Orangeville was 1-8. It’s not like you are taking two powerhouses and putting them together. Deadlines are deadlines, but it’s not like this came out of the blue. They knew we were working on it and we did it as fast as we could.”
Kramer doesn’t expect the families that left Aquin in 2023 to come back in 2024 because IHSA rules would require the players to sit out a year.
"That was the other tough decision," Kramer said. "If you go, it’s probably going to be a permanent because of the transfer rules.”
Kramer thinks the co-op with Orangeville next year will be a “natural fit.” The two schools now co-op in softball, where they finished third in the state in 1A in 2021 and 30-3 this spring.
Aquin’s incoming ninth-grade class had only one student who planned to go out for the football team. Kramer said this year’s eighth-grade class has only three football players. The Bulldogs need a co-op to survive. And Orangeville might need it, too.
“This year, our elementary and junior high sports are going to co-op with Orangeville,” Kramer said. “Their numbers are declining as well. Down the road, it’s just where we’re at.
“Football is a huge part of the school. We have a long tradition at Aquin. We have three state titles despite being one of the smallest schools in the state. A lot of big Catholic families came through the system, with a lot of the same names over the years. Sports is a big part of Aquin. But the numbers are so low, it’s a good point to start making that transition (to a co-op).”
Contact: mtrowbridge@rrstar.com, @matttrowbridge or 815-987-1383. Matt Trowbridge has covered sports for the Rockford Register Star for over 30 years, after previous stints in North Dakota, Delaware, Vermont and Iowa City.
This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Co-op delayed means Aquin won't have a football team this year
