Savage Heat opt out of co-op

For the first time since 2001, the Hot Springs Savage Heat will field their own football team, as the Hot Springs School Board voted to end the cooperative agreement with Plains last night at their monthly meeting.

The Plains-Hot Springs Savage Horsemen had gone 16-33 over the past six seasons including 2-5 this season.

Of the 27 players on this year’s roster, nine were from Hot Springs.

The decision to end the co-op, two years into their three-year agreement with Plains, was made unanimously last by board members in attendance Carol Heath, Kim Baker, Dirk Roosma, Julie White and Terry Prognua.

The idea was first proposed at last month’s board meeting when Hot Springs Athletic Director Chris Clairmont was asked to investigate the possibility of creating the school’s own six-man team.

Clairmont presented data he had gathered from a survey about potential student interest in the venture. He also quoted from a letter written by Plains Athletic Director Orin Kendal. According to Clairmont, Kendall stated that while he hoped the co-op could continue, he and the Plains school district would support any decision made by the Hot Springs School Board.

Clairmont, and Hot Springs superintendant, Larry Markuson, inferred from the survey as well as their own daily interactions with students, that the number of athletes participating in football would swell as the school developed a sense of pride stemming from having complete ownership over its program.

Also cited, was an on-line survey of adults in the community. Approximately 70 percent said they supported the current co-op, while 30 percent did not. When asked if they would support a break from the co-op in favor of an all-Hot Springs team, the voters were split nearly dead even at about fifty percent on either side.

Savage Horsemen head coach Jim Lawson said he was in favor the co-op originally because it gave Hot Springs an opportunity to have a football team. He stressed that whatever decision the board made should be for the good of the students athletes who would have to live with the consequences of the decision. He also added that Kendal and Plains superintendant Thom Chisholm had made a number of concessions not required in the agreement including allowing Hot Springs two home games each season and combining the mascots forming the Savage Horsemen.

Assistant coach Pat Nagy mentioned the amount of time that each player had sacrificed during the season, noting that each had missed study hall in order to catch the bus to practice every day. Also, he said that although everyone in the room had opinions it was the players who would benefit or suffer.

Jenifer Hoff, mother of Hot two Hot Springs football players, presented her calculations on the number of miles traveled by the football team this year. She claimed the team had been on a bus on 46 days this fall and traveled 3,214.5 miles. That number included 1750 miles for practices, 44 miles round-trip to and from Plains each day, which was 286 miles more than the 1464 miles they had traveled for games. If Hot Springs had their own team, those practice miles would be eliminated she said.

Board members and Parents in attendance provided a variety of concerns including the potential lack of a JV team, the number of male students required to sustain a football program, total district enrollment numbers, the potential cost increase of sustaining a program, how to sustain a six-man middle school program, exactly which teams they would face and what division the new team would be in, and fears that players on a six-man team would be overlooked by colleges offering scholarships.

Other parents rebutted that much had changed in the nine years since the co-op had started including both the parents, students and relationships between the two towns. It was said that Hot Springs might be more competitive when playing against schools closer to its size, attendance in home games and revenue may go up as a sense of community might be strengthened.

In the end, however, it seemed nearly everyone in attendance was in agreement that this was a good time for the Savage Heat to begin their own program.