INGALLS, Kansas — On the edge of town next to the railroad tracks, the sound of pads crunch and whistles echo. A train chugs by toward the grain elevator that backdrops the football field that features only a handful of players. And a bulldog painted on the town’s water tower watches over them.
High school football season is approaching, and this is what many rural Kansas towns feel like this time of year. Even if they are like Ingalls, a community with a population of less than 300.
“When I first drove into town, you see Ingalls Bulldogs everywhere,” Ingalls Head Coach Logan Hernandez said. ”The pride the town of this size has for its team, it runs deep.”
But it’s getting harder to field a football team year after year.
More towns across western Kansas are adopting six-man football, a version of football with smaller teams to help keep the sport alive.
Six-man football is a high-flying and high-scoring game that only has six players on the field for each team, opposed to the usual 11. Smaller schools usually resort to eight-man or six-man football when enrollment is low and there are only a few students who want to play.
Back in 2021, the Kansas State High School Activities Association voted to officially sanction six-man football with 15 teams taking the field that year. Last season it grew to 23 teams in Kansas. This season the KSHSAA expects similar numbers.
But each season it can fluctuate, with some towns having smaller classes and then bigger classes the next year.
Mark Lentz, assistant executive director for the KSHSAA, said keeping the football team going gives small towns a chance to bring their community together.
“When you play a varsity game on a Friday night, that's what's going on in town,” Lentz said. “And that's what we want to keep and we want schools to thrive and communities to thrive and have that opportunity.”
Adapting the game
This is Hernandez's first year as a head coach and first year coaching six-man football.
“There’s a lot of adapting, the rules are a bit different, when I first watched the tape I had to count because I thought surely there wasn’t enough guys on the field,” Hernandez said.
The Bulldogs are coming off a successful 9-2 season. Hernandez is getting his team ready to kickoff the season against the Triplains/Brewster Titans.
They are an example of the lengths rural schools will go to keep the Friday night lights on for their communities. Triplains High School in Winona combined programs with Brewster High School to form a team.
Bucklin High School in southern Kansas also joined forces with Ashland High School’s team this year to give their students an opportunity to play.
“These towns, they're kind of away from everybody, and with schools consolidating, if they couldn't play, that'd be a real big issue,” Hernandez said.
But that doesn’t stop them from getting creative to keep the tradition alive for their towns and their youth.
Six-man football is heavy on offense and scoring. Take Golden Plains High School in Rexford, Kansas, for example. Last season, the team played in games with scores of 82-45, 62-16 and 58-0.
The game is played on a slightly shorter field of 80 yards opposed to the standard 100 yards. And unlike standard football rules, everyone including linemen are eligible to catch a pass, leading to wildly entertaining plays.
“A lot of teams of this size don’t have anyone real big on their team, so it’s more about speed,” Hernandez said. “When you see a running back break off a 60-yard run you drew up, it’s hard to contain your excitement.”
Shrinking towns
Lentz said more small towns that are shrinking may soon get in on that excitement.
About three out of four counties in Kansas lost population from 2020 to 2022. There’s not a lot of entertainment or amenities in small towns in the High Plains, but high school football remains a gathering opportunity for these communities.
And for the teens growing up there, six-man allows them to pursue the game they love and receive opportunities despite their rural surroundings, Lentz said.
“It's just an opportunity for smaller schools who don't have the enrollment, or may not have a lot of boys in their school to play the game of football,” Lentz said.
KSHSAA this year raised the maximum enrollment threshold so more small schools could join the program. Before only schools with less than 55 students could drop down to six-man football, but now the maximum is 65 students.
Lentz believes that in the upcoming seasons, Kansas might see several more teams join the trend to keep a consistent team together. He said KSHSAA hopes in the next few years the state will have up to 32 teams playing in that division.
“I'm not saying the community is going to shut down if they don't have a football team,” Lentz said. “But, you want the community involved in your school, and football's part of that school.”
Calen Moore covers western Kansas for High Plains Public Radio and the Kansas News Service. You can email him at cmoore@hppr.org.
The Kansas News Service is a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio focused on health, the social determinants of health and their connection to public policy.
