By Tom Haley
THE RUTLAND HERALD
RUTLAND, VT- John Callahan gave Vermont high school football one great gift when he stood up at the Vermont Interscholastic Football League meeting in the Hartford High cafeteria and proposed a State Championship Day for football.
Prior to that, every division had its state title game at a different venue.
State Championship Saturday has showcased Vermont high school football in the best way. The ardent fan can now go and spend a day seeing all three championship contests.
The recent decision to rotate State Championship Saturday has certainly promoted plenty of discussion.
The event will be held at Rutland High’s Alumni Field in 2023, the place where it has been for a number of years.
Then, the rotation begins — St. Johnsbury in 2024 and South Burlington in 2025.
The argument for a permanent site is that the people at that locale get very good at event management after doing it year after year.
That was the case in Rutland where the RHS boosters supplied an army of volunteers who were very proud of putting on a day-long extravaganza of football.
Year after year, they had plenty of manpower and they delivered.
Poultney coach and Vermont Shrine Maple Sugar Bowl Athletic Director Dave Capman said that volunteers from St. Johnsbury will be shadowing the Rutland volunteer workers on Nov. 12 to help prepare for the 2024 game.
A rotation also has its strong points. Spreading football enthusiasm to other parts of the state is good for the sport. The Vermont Principals’ Association sees this as a way of growing the game.
Criteria for applying to be the host school includes having a turf field and lights.
When you have three games with possible delays, you have to have lights in November.
Artificial turf is also extremely important. This is Vermont and it is November, after all.
Anyone who was at the Eastern Collegiate Football Championship game in mid-November of 2009 at Norwich University’s Sabine Field will tell you that turf is necessary.
Norwich defeated Mount Ida 49-14 that day in a driving rain that turned the field into a quagmire.
It was no different to the south where Windsor was beating Springfield in a state championship game that afternoon.
Conditions were deplorable.
If Castleton University and Norwich know their football schedules far enough in advance, it would be wonderful to have those two schools in the rotation now and then.
You might have really started something, John Callahan. Now, the soccer people are chiming in about having their own State Championship Weekend.
It would be great for that game to have such a showcase, but soccer would be a far more complicated endeavor because you have 16 teams in the state finals owing to having both genders and four divisions as opposed to three.
The boys and girls should not be split up for the sake of fan convenience. It is not unusual to have the same school playing for both the boys and girls state soccer championship.
Frequently, families have siblings in each of the games.
Proposal: If the University of Vermont can be available each year, have UVM be a northern site and Applejack Stadium in Manchester, the southern venue.
As the season progresses and you get a feel for which teams are likely final participants, decide which two divisions will be at UVM and which will be at Applejack.
Applejack does not have turf but it has the best natural grass surface in the state. It has always been superb at that time of year.
It is perhaps as fine of a soccer facility as you can find in the Northeast. There have been improvements made to it each year including the installation of stadium seats under the historic covered grandstand.
Things change. Sabine Field, the site of that mud bath of 2009, now has turf and Vermont high school football has its own day-long celebration.
Soon, there might be a State Championship Weekend for high school soccer.
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