Friday night lights begins, but why are player numbers so low?

Watch Logan at Eau Claire Memorial live online

The Wisconsin High School football season got underway with a couple games last night. 

Central opened its season with a 19-12 victory over Eau Claire North on the road. 

The Red Raiders broke a 13-13 tie with just 3 minutes left in the game when A.C. Riley scored the go-ahead touchdown run from 5 yards out.

Tonight, the season really gets into full swing, and you can watch – from your couch – Logan on the road against Eau Claire Memorial via our livestream video here.

All the area teams are on the road tonight: Onalaska at Nekoosa, Holmen at Chippewa Falls and Aquinas at Prairie du Chien and Onalaska Luther at Blair-Taylor.

A lot of teams in the area are reporting low numbers of students out of football this year.  

A disappointment for a lot of coaches, who know the sport is a once-in-a lifetime opportunity for most.

“Some kids choose video games and some kids choose a job to make money,” Onalaska coach Tom Yashinsky said. “It’s a lot of hard work, but it’s an experience that you don’t get in other sports. You don’t go play football when you’re done with high school, for the most part.” 

The reasoning for the low numbers could be a range of things: risk of injury like concussions, other sport specialization. 

With that, Aquinas coach Tom Lee joked about one theory.

“We’ve got about nine or 10 Division I basketball players walking around the school, just ask them,” Lee said with a laugh.

Lee is, of course, joking, but he may be onto something, as well, not that it’s anyone’s fault.

In a way, one could blame Aquinas graduate Bronson Koenig and Onalaska graduate Matt Thomas for low football numbers.

Koenig heads into his redshirt junior season the starting point guard for the Wisconsin Badgers, while Thomas will be a senior shooting guard at Iowa State.

Surely there are kids in the area that see their success and are wanting to follow in their foot steps, so they don’t go out for football to either work on their basketball game or just fear getting injured during football.

Something a lot of college coaches aren’t really impressed with, because playing football adds experiences that basketball and other sports can’t provide – an experience even college basketball coaches appreciate.

And when those high school football numbers get low, they tend to stay there in kind of a snowball effect, says Lee.

“Kids and their parents are nervous about getting throw into varsity when they’re not ready,” Lee said, “so they’re getting out.”