Last week local news channels gave the Clinton football team, located 90 minutes from downtown KC, plenty of news coverage.
In the world of #Covid, covering a school cancelling their varsity football season draws some eyeballs. The thing is, for where the Cardinals are, pushing the pause button and playing just a junior varsity schedule makes good sense.
For those more familiar with Clinton as the stoplights between Harrisonville and the lakes, the Cardinals have been pretty bad at football for a while. They were winless in 2020... And 2019… And 2018. In 2017, they finished 2-8.
Last season they gave up over 60 points five times and lost by over 35, the running clock total in Missouri, in every game.
So what happens when you haven’t won since any student has been in high school? Your numbers drop.
The Cardinals were set to open the season with only one senior, a dual sport athlete who was only going to be the kicker.
With a team comprised mostly of freshmen and sophomores, head coach Kevin LaFavor did the right thing calling off the varsity season. It would be one thing if they were playing small schools that will also have handfuls of underclassmen on the schedule. That wasn’t the case. In the MRVC, they’d have faced Harrisonville, Odessa, Oak Grove, Excelsior Springs and others. It becomes a safety issue.
Here’s how you know the administration made the right decision: When you look at the Facebook post announcing it, the majority seem to all sort of shake their heads and agree this group wasn’t ready to play varsity.
It’s an atypical move for a Class 3 team to make, but it’s not unheard of for a new school to play a junior varsity schedule their first year, a season typically when there’s no seniors in the building.
While it’s not a new school, perhaps with this change Clinton can set out in a new direction for their program.
