St. Anthony football suffers setback

By Fred Guzman
MauiNow.com

You could see in coming in the face of the school’s declining enrollment.  Finally, and sadly, it did come to pass.

After several years of battling – and barely surviving – the numbers game, St. Anthony has officially announced that it would not be fielding a varsity football team for the coming season.

It will mark the first time the Trojans will not compete on the gridiron since 1943.

The Trojans, however, are planning to create a club team to play 8-man football in hopes of encouraging other small schools — both in the MIL and around the state — to do the same.

But that’s going to take time and money, of which there seems to be little of in the current economic climate.

With St. Anthony out of the picture, the MIL will play a double round-robin schedule for the coming season, with Baldwin, King Kekaulike and Maui High competing in Division-I and Lahainaluna and Kamehameha-Maui playing in D-II.

FORFEIT:  Kealakehe was stripped of its Big Island D-I football title after the Kona-based school self-reported using an ineligible player last season.  A Mainland transfer who also had been home-schooled participated as a fifth-year high school student.  As a result, Kealakehe’s record went from 9-3 to 0-12 and deprived the Warriors of a league title.  Kealakehe lost to Farrington in the first round of the state D-I tournament.